Mitt Romney has supplanted Rudy Giuliani as President-elect Trump’s preferred choice to lead the State Department, but Trump’s closest allies are still pushing him to find someone else.
Trump is “leaning toward asking” Romney to take over as secretary of state in his first term, according to the Wall Street Journal, after Trump met with the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee on Saturday.
Romney’s reputed front-runner status is at odds with other reports that Giuliani, who met with Trump on Sunday, remained the leading candidate, but the topic is a subject of infighting within the Trump team, according to the Journal.
“Delaying Mr. Trump’s decision about secretary of state is an internal tug of war between supporters of Mr. Romney, and those urging the selection of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani,” the report says. “A third group is pressing the president-elect to keep searching for candidates.”
Romney’s critics aren’t shy about arguing that his attacks on Trump during the GOP presidential primaries should disqualify him from consideration. “There’s only one way that Mitt Romney could even be considered for a post like that, and that is he goes to a microphone in a very public place, and he repudiates everything he said in that famous Salt Lake City speech,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said on Fox.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is also campaigning against Romney.
“I think that, if you want someone who is going to go out and be a very tough negotiator for America and represent American interests in the way that Trump campaigned, I think that probably Rudy is a better pick and has the right temperament,” Gingrich told reporters on Monday. He said Romney might “work to make Trump Romney’s version of the presidency.”
Huckabee and Gingrich ran for president against Romney in 2008 and 2012, respectively, but Gingrich’s argument also reflects the fact that Romney and Trump ran on very different foreign policy platforms.
Trump famously exchanged compliments with Russian President Vladimir Putin and — in keeping with the recommendations of former Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security advisor — expressed hoped that the United States and Russia could work together to defeat the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.
The choice of Romney would reassure foreign policy hawks alarmed by Putin’s annexation of Crimea and support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. “This is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe. They fight for every cause for the world’s worst actors,” Romney said in 2012.
