Mitt Romney excoriated Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and called on primary voters to rally behind three of the remaining GOP candidates in each state where those candidates can best stop Trump. At a speech Thursday at the University of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee warned voters against supporting Trump, whom he called a “phony” and a “fraud.”
“If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are diminished greatly,” Romney said. During his brief address, Romney criticized Trump for everything from his policy proposals (“flimsy at best”) to his personal character.
“Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities: the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics,” he said. “Imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does.”
He made a point of taking on Trump for specific insults, including one last summer when Trump denigrated John McCain’s war service because the future senator and presidential candidate was “captured.”
“There’s a dark irony in the boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam war, while at the same time, John McCain, who he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured,” Romney said.
He also dismissed Trump’s claims to be a great businessman, going down a list of failed ventures like Trump University, Trump Airlines, and Trump Vodka. “Some people may be saying, Isn’t he a huge business success, and doesn’t he know what he’s talking about?” Romney said. “No, he isn’t, and no, he doesn’t.”
Romney called on Trump to release his tax returns and to authorize the New York Times to release a taped meeting between the candidate and the paper’s editorial board. He suggested Trump’s returns would show the billionaire businessman has not donated much to charity and that the Times tape would reveal a different side of Trump’s immigration views. “I predict that he told the New York Times that his immigration talk is just that: talk,” Romney said.
Romney cast the 2016 election as a “time for choosing,” explicitly recalling Ronald Reagan’s 1964 televised address. He spoke about the challenges at home and abroad, and specifically criticized Trump on his proposed trade and foreign policies. “His proposed 35 percent tariff like penalties would institute a trade war,” he said. “I’m afraid that when it comes to foreign policy, he is very, very not smart.”
At the very beginning of his speech, Romney insisted he was neither declaring a run for office himself nor endorsing a candidate for president. He praised Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich for their policy proposals and said “one of these men should be our nominee.”
“Now I know that some people want this race to be over. They look at history and say a trend like Mr. Trump’s isn’t going to be stopped,” Romney said. Instead, he continued, voters should coalesce around the remaining candidates in the states where those candidates can best challenge Trump. Romney said he would vote for Rubio in Florida and Kasich in Ohio, for example.
Romney also spoke about the need for Republicans to defeat Hillary Clinton and argued that Trump is in a bad position to do that. “A person so dishonest and as untrustworthy as Hillary Clinton must not become president,” he said. “A Trump nomination would enable that.”
But throughout the speech, Romney made the case against nominating Trump not simply on electoral grounds but on leadership ones.
“He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president, and his personal qualities mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill,” said Romney.
Will any of this matter? Romney remains respected and popular among Republican primary voters, and his status as perhaps the party’s only true “elder statesman” could convince voters in upcoming states that Trump isn’t a real Republican. On the other hand, Trump and his supporters in the media had already preempted Romney’s speech with dismissals that the former Massachusetts governor is a member of the “establishment” trying to stop Trump’s rise. Those supporters and even Trump himself have noted that Romney graciously accepted Trump’s endorsement during the 2012 election.
Romney didn’t mention that in Thursday’s speech.
