The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins is out with the first excerpt of his highly anticipated biography of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), timed to the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s announcement today that he will not seek re-election.
Why it matters: Romney — the only GOP senator to vote to convict former President Trump in his first impeachment trial — was brutally honest about his Republican colleagues over the course of two years of interviews with Coppins, a fellow Utahn.
Highlights:
- On Jan. 2, 2021, Romney texted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to warn about extremist threats law enforcement had been tracking in connection with pro-Trump protests on Jan. 6. McConnell never responded.
- Romney kept a tally of the dozen-plus times that Republican senators privately expressed solidarity with his criticism of Trump. “You’re lucky,” McConnell once told him. “You can say the things that we all think.”
- Romney shared a unique disgust for Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who he thought were too smart to believe Trump won the 2020 election but “put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.”
- He also was highly critical of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who reinvented his persona to become a Trump acolyte after publishing a best-selling memoir about the working class that Romney loved. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney said.
Zoom in: After House impeachment managers finished a presentation about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, McConnell told Romney: “They nailed him.”
- Taken aback, Romney said Trump would argue he was just investigating alleged corruption by the Bidens — the subject of House Republicans’ present-day impeachment inquiry.
- “If you believe that,” McConnell replied, “I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.”
The bottom line: Romney said he never felt comfortable at a Senate GOP conference lunch after voting to convict Trump in 2020. “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution,” he told Coppins a few months after Jan. 6.
Jumping to conclusions much?
I argued with coworkers about Trump back in 2015 and 2016, and back then, most in my area didn’t like Trump. Look at the 2016 GOP primary results in Utah and you’ll see Ted Cruz (who has his own massive issues) beat Trump in a landslide here. Trump didn’t even get a majority of the votes in 2016, when GOP candidates usually win with more than 60% of the vote.
My parents (not in Utah) are very conservative and refused to vote for Trump as well in both elections. I personally voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 (with McMullin, there was no way Clinton was winning) and Biden in 2020 despite Biden/Harris being my two last favorite Democratic Party candidates. I urged many people to vote either libertarian or independent if they weren’t willing to vote Democrat to at least show disapproval of Trump. I consider myself libertarian and actively debated other self-proclaimed libertarians about Trump, arguing that if you see anything good in Trump, you’re not a libertarian (accompanied with facts and whatnot). I have contacted state and federal representatives on key issues. The only things I haven’t done is join protects or run for office, and that’s because I have young kids that need my attention.
Trump is not the GOP and does not represent the average conservative. He has a very vocal base, but they’re a small part of the actual party (and many when l are outcasts), and I firmly believe most conservatives are closer to Romney/McCain. However, he has had an uncharacteristic impact on the GOP, and the party is paying for it (Trump lost reelection, the GOP did a lot worse than expected in the midterms, etc). I expect the GOP to do poorly in 2024 as well.
I really disagree with this whole line of reasoning, but let’s try a slight modification as a thought experiment.
If a Nazi sits next to 9 people at a table and they largely ignore the Nazi, does that make the other 9 people Nazis (i.e. are the others obligated to leave)? What if 9 people sit at a table with someone who has previously sat with a Nazi, but doesn’t actually consider themselves to be a Nazi?
Trump isn’t a Nazi, at least in the white nationalist sense, but he does seek their support. So the GOP is like my first or second example, depending on which GOP member you’re talking about. Romney is like one of the above examples, except he vocalizes what others are the table are thinking by calling out the BS from the newcomer.
Trump is not a Nazi in the sense that he’s goose stepping and wearing Hugo Boss uniforms. Trump and the right wing extremists are every bit the neocon fascists of our time. Replace the swastika with maga hats and you have exactly the same presentation leading up to Hitlers consolidation of power. The same arguments floated around then. It won’t be that bad. They’re not going to do anything to the Jews. Ok so what if they have to wear stars it’s only fair because of what they did to our economy after the Great War. So what if they are moving them to relocation camps, it was our land to begin with.
Fascism is not a chasm you leap over, it’s a series of small steps that starts with xenophobic nationalism and ends with concentration camps. No one starts out supporting Nazis but they can be convinced to give little concessions here and there. It’s always easier to swallow in small bites.
I knew in 2015 if he won we were in trouble. All of that has come to pass and more . If they win again we won’t have to muse about whether or not they’re Nazis, we will find out quickly. They tried their version of a stupid beer hall putsch. Next time they won’t need to because all subsequent elections will be pre-decided. Rest assured trump was never my biggest concern. It’s the people who worked to put him in power and used his presidency to gut our institutions and sell our secrets to the highest bidder. As far as I’m concerned they are the biggest threat to our democracy and the world at large.
Lots of people tell me I’m overreacting, I need to get outside. Unfortunately I’ve been right so far about everything. I screamed it from the rooftops since 2015 and before and in spite of all the people telling me to calm down, it just keeps going exactly how we fear it will go.
As did I, which is why I actively debated friends about him. My main concern was that he didn’t have a platform and instead was a populist, which is a clear recipe for disaster as it attracts the wrong sort of attention.
However, I still, to this day, don’t think he is a fascist. I think he’s dangerous and a fascist enabler, but I think he’s first and foremost a narcissist that just wants people to remember and praise him. He’s not like Hitler, who had a master plan, he just wants attention.
I think our institutions can survive Trump. However, if he somehow overturned the election, that would’ve set a dangerous precedent.
So I think we’re largely in agreement, I just disagree with the urgency. He tried to do something stupid and is now paying for it. Many of his supporters that were present in DC are now in jail, and he’s being tried on a variety of related charges. Things could’ve turned out differently, but they didn’t. And I don’t think they will, he just doesn’t have enough support.
But there’s no way I’m ever voting for him, and I have objected to him with friends (most of them conservative) every step of the way.