Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is coming to grips with the fact that newly elected President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement are now the core of the Republican Party.
The outgoing senator could not deny that Trump’s far-right faction is now in control, discussing America’s changing political landscape during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
When asked if there was a future for a “post-Trump” Republican Party, Romney bluntly told host Jake Tapper, “Oh, MAGA is the Republican Party, and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today.”
“And if you ask me who the nominee will be in 2028, it will be J.D. Vance, OK,” continued Romney, a staunch moderate and once outspoken critic of both Trump and his incoming vice president, Vance. .
“Look, the Republican Party has become the party of the working-class and middle-class voter,” he added. “You have to give Donald Trump credit for doing that by taking that away from the Democrats.”
Romney also acknowledged that he was wrong to think the new president was “wrong for the country, wrong for our party, that he wouldn’t win.”
“I think most people don’t agree with me. “I’m willing to live with that,” he said. “I just emphasize different things than I think the general public does right now.”
The Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee then addressed Trump’s controversial list of Cabinet picks, calling the contenders “an unusual collection of people” before acknowledging that Trump has every right to nominate whoever he wants.
“I lost, he won, okay. “I would like to revisit that and win, but I didn’t get that chance,” he said. “So these are the kind of people he wants to lead, and he has a right to do so.”
Romney sounded less optimistic about the tone of Trump’s America when he addressed his colleagues in his farewell speech to the Senate earlier this month.
Warning of the dangers of political division, he said: “There are those today who would tear our unity apart, who would replace love with hate, who would mock our foundation of virtue, or who would degrade the values on which the blessings of heaven depend are. ”
“The character of a country is a reflection not only of its elected officials, but also of its people,” Romney continued. “I leave Washington to return to be one of them and hope to be a voice of unity and virtue.”
