Utah Sen. Mitt Romney might be the only Republican to vote to convict former President Donald Trump in both of his impeachment trials, but he still said the former commander in chief could win another presidential primary.
Romney, the junior U.S. senator from Utah, said on Tuesday he’s “pretty sure” Trump would win the 2024 GOP presidential primary if he ran for a third time.
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“Will President Trump continue to play a role in my party? I’m sure he will, he has by far the largest voice and a big impact in my party,” the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said. “I don’t know about his family members, whether they intend to do that. But I expect he will continue playing a role. I don’t know if he’ll run in 2024 or not, but if he does, I’m pretty sure he will win the nomination.”
“A lot can happen between now and 2024, and I’m not great at predicting,” Romney said at a New York Times DealBook virtual event. “I look at the polls, and the polls show that among the names being floated as potential contenders in 2024, if you put President Trump in there among Republicans, he wins in a landslide.”
More than half, 53.5%, of Trump supporters responded in a USA Today/Suffolk Poll released Tuesday that they feel more loyalty to the former president than they do to the party he led for four years. Only a third of the 1,000 respondents said their loyalty is to the party as opposed to Trump himself.
More than half of the people surveyed, 58.9%, want him to run for president in 2024, while 75% said they would support him in the Republican primary, and 85% said they’d vote for him in the next general election. The survey was conducted between Feb. 15-20, with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
Even though Romney said the former commander in chief could win the party’s nomination for a third consecutive general election, he won’t be supporting Trump should it happen.
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“I would not be voting for President Trump again,” Romney said when he was asked if he’d campaign against Trump. “I haven’t voted for him in the past. I would probably be getting behind somebody who I thought more represented the tiny wing of the Republican Party that I represent.”
The former president declined to comment on Feb. 17 as to whether he planned on running, saying, “I won’t say yet, but we have tremendous support. I’m looking at poll numbers that are through the roof.”
He will be speaking at the annual CPAC conference later this week in his first public address since leaving office.
The two Republican officials have frequently butted heads during Trump’s term in office, especially given his vote to convict the former president in his first impeachment trial on one of the two charges, where he was the only Republican to vote that way. He became the first politician to vote to remove a president from their own party.
