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Romney Tells Reid the Senate Is Better ‘Without You In It’

By Chris Deaton
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Harry Reid claims he has lost respect for Mitt Romney. It’s likely Romney lost his for Reid sooner.

The outgoing Senate minority leader told the Huffington Post that Romney’s willing participation in the competition for Donald Trump’s secretary of state revealed a lack of character. “Mitt Romney is somebody I had respect for. I have none any more,” said Reid, who repeatedly allocated speaking time on the Senate floor in 2012 to baselessly accuse Romney of not having paid his taxes for more than a decade.

Romney responded to Reid through a spokesperson, via the Huffington Post:

“I was indeed very critical of Mr. Trump during his campaign. But now he has been elected president and accordingly, if I could have helped shape foreign policy to protect the country I love, I would have been more than willing to do so. As for Mr. Reid, I lost respect for him when he repeatedly lied about my taxes and later admitted to it cheerily. Good riddance, Mr. Reid. The Senate will be better served without you in it.”

As THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Fred Barnes referenced in a piece for the Wall Street Journal, the “cheery” admission to which Romney referred was this explanation Reid gave the Washington Post in September:

… it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. Why? Because I knew what he had done was not be transparent and forthright about his taxes and to this day he hasn’t released his tax returns. … Did I want to do that? No. I had the information, I tried to get somebody else to do it. I tried to get somebody in the Obama ‘reelect,’ I tried to get one of the senators, I tried to get one of the outside groups, but nobody would do it. So I did it. And with that, like everything, I think in life, here’s something I learned from my father, if you’re going to do something, don’t do it half-assed, don’t play around. With the Mitt Romney stuff, I didn’t play around.

In September of the 2012 campaign, Romney released tax information that showed he paid his state and federal income taxes in each of the previous 20 years.

Reid said in the same Post interview that he wasn’t sure what line he wouldn’t cross “when it comes to political warfare.” In his farewell address to Congress four months later, he said the Senate “should be given the dignity it deserves” in the future.

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