Trump trashes Romney over criticism of Ukraine scandal: he’s a “pompous ass” who “begged me” for cabinet job

Always quick to fire back when facing any kind of criticism from his own party, President Trump took to Twitter on Saturday morning to publicly trash Utah Senator Mitt Romney over the failed 2012 presidential candidate’s performative pushback against the president’s efforts to solicit election interference from China and Ukraine.

Slamming Romney as a “pompous ass” and mocking him for “choking” in the 2012 election, Trump also shamed Romney for allegedly “begging” to be Secretary of State.

Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian President was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics. If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019

Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous “ass” who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him). He is so bad for R’s!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019

Considering that now-infamous picture of Romney eating dinner with Trump in November 2016, it’s not too far-fetched to believe that the ambitious Romney did make that request of the president — which makes his criticism, along with voting with Trump 80% of the time since taking office, hard to take seriously.

He’ll just kiss and make up in another week. https://t.co/kp2K0DznMg

— Mark Ratledge (@markratledge) October 4, 2019

On Friday, Romney tweeted his disapproval with Trump’s demands that China and Ukraine open investigations into alleged corruption by the Biden family. While it is the strongest condemnation to date from a Republican politician against the President’s absurd efforts to get dirt on a potential 2020 election challenger, it would be nice to see him back it up with some kind of concrete action.

By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019

The president’s furious backlash is a reminder why so few Republicans dare to stand up to him — but the “all talk, no action” approach that we see and have seen from Trump’s Republican critics like Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, and John McCain is a reminder of why we don’t need to go overboard in applauding the few that do make a cursory effort to seize the mantle of the Principled Republican.