While Ryan has endorsed Trump (or at least said he will vote for the real estate mogul), Mitt Romney delivered a speech in March in which he said “Donald Trump is a phoney, a fraud who’s promises are worth no more than a degree from Trump University”. He said he respected people, including Romney, who might not get there.
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Those fears were given form in quotes attributed to Meg Whitman, the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, at this weekend’s closed-door meetings of about 300 elite Republican at a retreat in Park City, Utah, held by former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.
He acknowledged that 90 percent of Republicans will vote for Trump, but said both the controversial businessman and the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be destructive to the nation.
“They would like to see a unified party, but if I hear anything consistently, it’s country before party”, said Spencer Zwick, a Romney confidant and his former national finance chairman, who helps run the E2 summit.
Mitt Romney suggested Friday that Donald Trump’s election could legitimize racism and misogyny, ushering in a change in the moral fabric of American society.
“The Republicans have to be tough because we have the better ideas”, he said.
“I would have been just another establishment person”, he said, before adding that he would have “more aggressive and more assertive”.
“Romney is not one to criticize and Donald Trump, who has tapped in to an angst in America, has got a campaign strategy and is running a campaign that’s focusing on people”, Manafort said. Trump’s focus on “birtherism” – questioning President Obama’s birthplace – back then was “nutty” but not xenophobic, racist, or misogynist. I mean, it’s coming together very nicely, which is one of the underreported – another underreported fact.
But Romney was also challenged by some questioners who were trying to whip up support for Trump.
The former governor’s criticism drew pushback from Trump, who shot down racism claims and took aim at the former GOP nominee’s failure to win the White House. “The next five months are going to be painful for all of us, but it’s not about just the next five months.’ It’s much, much more than that”, Matheson said. We’re still in primary mode, I guess because it has a reality TV feel. Trump told supporters in Pennsylvania that Clinton wants to repeal the right to keep and bear arms.
He followed that up with a tweet thanking Don King, an African American boxing promoter, for his endorsement: “Don King, and so many other African Americans who know me well and endorsed me, would not have done so if they thought I was a racist!”
Trump “played it extraordinarily well”, running a shoestring operation focused on connecting with the “high degree of frustration and resentment” among voters, winning “fair and square”, he said.
If the attendees were mixed on Trump, they were bullish on the party’s 2012 ticket.
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Information for this article was contributed by Julie Bykowicz, Jonathan Lemire and Sergio Bustos of The Associated Press; by Kevin Cirilli of Bloomberg News; by Laura Vozzella, Fenit Nirappil, Philip Rucker and Dan Balz of The Washington Post; by Kurtis Lee of the Los Angeles Times; and by Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.
