Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a longtime critic of President-elect Donald Trump, gave Trump “credit” Sunday on CNN for successfully transforming the Republican Party with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
For years, Romney has been vocal in his criticism of Trump, writing an op-ed in 2019 for the Washington Post questioning the former president’s “character.” On “State of the Union” Sunday, host Jake Tapper asked Romney whether he believes MAGA is “now the Republican Party” or if there could be a GOP post-Trump.
“Oh, MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today. If you were to ask me who the nominee will be in 2028, I think it’ll be [Vice President-elect] JD Vance. He’s smart. Well spoken. Part of the MAGA movement,” Romney said.
Tapper then interjected, highlighting how Romney had called out Vance previously, saying he could “not have less respect for someone” than Vance. Romney quickly pushed back, noting he would not “rehash history” before explaining why Democrats should be concerned about their own base.
“I’m not going to rehash history. We’ve worked together in the Senate since then, but that is what the Republican Party is,” Romney said. “Will the party need to change? Look, the Republican Party has become the party of the working class, middle class voter. You’ve got to give Donald Trump credit for having done that, taken that away from the Democrats. Democrats pushed him out. All right? The Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren faction of the Democrat Party with some of this, defund the police and transgenders — excuse me, biological males in women’s sports. These things had a lot of people in the middle class just flee the Democratic Party. They’re now Republicans.”
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“Now, one of the challenges in my party is that our policies do not necessarily line up with the interests of our voters. So there’ll be some, you know, some reorientation that’s going to be necessary in my party. The Democrat Party is the one in trouble,” Romney added. “I don’t know how they recover and, you know, I’m not going to tell them what to do because I would begin to have the capacity to do so. But they’ve lost their base. I mean, union guys and gals have left the Democratic Party and are voting Republican. The Democratic Party is seen not as rich people, but as college professors and woke scolds. That’s not an attractive feature.”
Following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Romney became one of seven Republicans to vote to convict Trump in his Senate impeachment trial. In defense of his stance, Romney said he believed “it is a high crime and misdemeanor” to attempt to “corrupt an election to maintain power,” adding that he had “no choice under the oath that I took but to express that conclusion.”
However, Romney joins a growing list of Trump critics who are becoming open to working with him after he won both the Electoral College and popular vote. Shortly after Trump’s election victory, MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski announced they had visited Trump face-to-face at Mar-a-Lago for the first time in several years. Despite repeatedly comparing Trump to former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and accusing him of being a fascist dictator, the hosts expressed a willingness to “restart communications.”
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