The chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence ripped Sen. Mitt Romney as an ungrateful politician who repeatedly begged for the president’s support then turned on him.
Marc Short said that the media was focusing too much on concerns that President Trump might ostracize Romney for being the lone Republican in the Senate to vote to convict the president on one of the impeachment counts. Instead, he said the focus should be on Romney’s beef with the president.
On Fox’s Varney & Co. show, he said, “I saw the interview on your network with Chris Wallace in which he questions whether or not this president will go after him and forgive Mitt Romney.”
Short then said, “At some point, when are we going to ask the other question: In 2012, Donald Trump endorsed [Republican presidential nominee] Mitt Romney. In 2016, Mitt Romney led the Never Trump campaign. In 2018, he asked for Donald Trump’s endorsement, and Donald Trump gave it to him for his Senate race. And as soon as he comes to Washington, he writes an op-ed in the Washington Post about how he’s going to oppose this president.”
He added, “At some point, we have to ask the question, who’s not giving forgiveness here?”
Short spoke as the president and vice president were attending Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, during which the president shrugged off claims by his critics that they pray for him.
Host Stuart Varney asked about Romney’s statement Wednesday that his Mormon faith drove him to condemn the president. Short noted that fellow Mormon and Utah Sen. Mike Lee didn’t vote to convict Trump.
“If his Mormon faith led him to want to convict the president, I don’t know if that is an indictment of Mike Lee’s Mormon faith because his fellow senator from Utah, I don’t know if he is implying Mike Lee didn’t rely on his prayer to come to his conclusion for acquittal,” said Short.
And he ripped the hypocrisy in the media that is quick to condemn politicians who cite their faith in supporting conservative causes but herald others who use it criticize Trump, like Romney did.
For example when politicians cite faith to support a pro-life agenda, said Short, “typically they are condemned by the media.”
But, he added, if they cite faith to impeach the president, like Romney did, then the “mainstream media celebrates that,” he said, adding, “That’s a serious contradiction.”
