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.
Oh some of them are vile shitstains and it doesn’t matter what their status is, they’re gonna be shitstains no matter what. Look at Lee Atwater. He was one of the founding fathers of the racist shithead GOP. Only when he had terminal cancer did he do an about face, claim to have found Jesus, and repent his many sins. But when he was dead and gone and they were clearing out his things they found his bible, it was still shrink wrapped. Dude must have had a crisis of conscience and wanted to either get right with his legacy or right with the lord. Whichever the case it was self serving bullshit.
I think that Mitt is on the more tolerable end of American fascism, but that’s not saying much. He was still instrumental in getting us here. That’s his legacy and people like me will never let the true story be altered. It’s like all the pro bush sentiment that started circulating during trumps presidency. Just because he wasn’t functionally retarded like a certain president doesn’t mean he wasn’t a war profiteering criminal.
You have to be careful about how people try to alter the narrative. Liz Cheney is another example of this. No one should be celebrating her because she had the smallest amount of common sense. Her actions have harmed millions.
I'm definitely not celebrating them, it's so bad that lip service is refreshing from a group that is incredibly rotten.