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Tag: mitt romney
Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney Savagely Mocks Trump's Porn Star Payoff

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) hasn't shied away from criticizing former President Donald Trump in the past. But on Tuesday he gave his frank and candid take on the allegations surrounding the ex-president's ongoing criminal trial.

Trump's attorneys have spent the first portion of the Manhattan trial making their case that the former president is a "family man" who has been unfairly painted in the media as immoral. While speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, the Utah senator — a fifth-generation practicing Mormon — offered his opinion on that characterization of Trump to CNN congressional correspondent Kristin Wilson.

"I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump's character, and so far as I know you don't pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you," Romney said.

Romney — who was the GOP presidential nominee in 2012 — appeared to be referencing the hush money payment Trump allegedly made to buy the silence of adult film star and producer Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. Daniels maintains that she and the reality TV star had an affair in 2006, just weeks after Trump's wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. The former president continues to deny the allegations.

Tuesday's trial proceedings featured the testimony of David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc. — the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper. Daniels' story was part of the so-called "catch and kill" scheme in which Pecker would purchase the rights to certain stories in order to bury them and limit public knowledge. Pecker told prosecutors that he agreed during a 2015 meeting at Trump Tower to be the "eyes and ears" of Trump's 2016 campaign.

One such "catch-and-kill" scheme involved the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said she had an ongoing relationship with Trump while he was married. When Trump reportedly asked Pecker his thoughts on whether they should pay McDougal, Pecker responded with, "we should take this story off the market.

"And I said, 'it's my understanding that she doesn't want her story published. I think the story should be purchased and I believe that you should buy it,'" Pecker said on the witness stand.

According to the 34-count indictment unveiled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year, Trump's personal lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen made the $130,000 payment to Daniels at the behest of Trump, who then reimbursed Cohen and labeled it as a legal retainer. Cohen has said repeatedly that there was no such retainer, and that the $130,000 was explicitly done to prevent Daniels from going public with her story.

Cohen will be one of the prosecution's key witnesses, and will be expected to guide the jury through the hush money payment process. In 2018, he was handed a three-year federal prison sentence for his role in the scheme, among other crimes.

Jurors were excused at approximately 2 PM ET on Tuesday, and the trial will be paused on Wednesday in observance of the Jewish Passover holiday. Proceedings are expected to resume on Thursday morning, with the defense expected to cross-examine Pecker on the stand.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

John Cornyn

Why Republican Politicians Fear Another Trump Nomination In 2024

When Donald Trump recently revived his quest to overturn the Affordable Care Act of 2010 , a.k.a. Obamacare, he not only gave Democratic strategists and organizers an issue to use against him in 2024 — he also forced Republicans to have a conversation that many of them were hoping to avoid. Efforts to overturn the ACA proved to be a major liability for Republicans in 2018 and 2020, and a KFF poll released earlier this year found that 59 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the law.

In an article published by Politico on December 4, journalists Burgess Everett, Olivia Beavers and Meridith McGraw cite Trump's unpopular campaign against Obamacare as the type of thing Republicans in Congress will have to contend with if Trump is the 2024 GOP presidential nominee — which, according to countless polls, appears likely.

"Trump's recent call to replace the Affordable Care Act is triggering a particularly unwelcome sense of deja vu within the GOP," the Politico journalists report . "Even as many Senate Republicans steered away from Trump over the past couple years, now they're increasingly resigned to another general election that could inundate them with the former president's often fact-averse and hyperbolic statements. But Hill Republicans are girding to treat Trump the third-time nominee the same way they did Trump the neophyte candidate and then president."

Everett, Beavers and McGraw continue , "They're distancing themselves and downplaying his remarks, which touch on policy stresses like his urge to end Obamacare and political grievances like his vow to come down 'hard' on MSNBC for its unfavorable coverage."

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), a conservative Trump critic, recalled how frustrating it was for members of Congress when Trump was unprepared from a policy standpoint.

Romney told Politico, "He says a lot of stuff that he has no intention of actually doing. At some point, you stop getting worried about what he says and recognize: We'll see what he does."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) acknowledges that things could be chaotic for Republicans in Congress if Trump is 2024's GOP presidential nominee.

Cornyn told Politico, "I'm under no illusions what that would be like. If it's Biden and Trump, I'm gonna be supporting Trump. But that's obviously not without its challenges."

When Politico asked if fellow House Republicans are worried about having to work with Trump again, Rep. David Joyce (R-OH), responded, "S*** yeah. Orange Jesus?"

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kyrsten Sinema

Book: Egocentric Sinema Is Keen To Cash In On Her Senate Infamy

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), who has been a thorn in the side of both President Joe Biden and the Senate Democratic Caucus, is already eyeing a potentially lucrative private sector career if her bid to stay in the US Senate is unsuccessful.

In Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins' new biography of outgoing Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), Sinema — an independent who caucuses with Democrats (although she left the Democratic Party in 2022) — apparently confided to the 2012 Republican presidential nominee that she's apathetic about staying in Washington for another six-year term. Arizona's senior US senator added that she feels she unilaterally "saved" the upper chamber of Congress by bucking' Democrats' efforts to eliminate the filibuster.

"I don’t care. I can go on any board I want to. I can be a college president. I can do anything,” she told Romney. “I saved the Senate filibuster by myself. I saved the Senate by myself. That’s good enough for me."

As the New Republicnoted, the filibuster isn't actually a tradition in the Senate, nor is it even mentioned in the US Constitution. Former President Barack Obama once called it a "Jim Crow relic." Sinema's colleague, Senator Angus King (I-ME), has called for it to be reformed by requiring those who use it to actually hold the Senate floor in what's known as a "talking filibuster."

"[I]nstead of having to have 60 votes to pass something, you'd have to have 41 votes to stop it. That way, the minority would at least have to show up," Sen. King said of the filibuster in 2021, when it was used to stop voting rights legislation. "So we've got to do something about this, at least when it comes to something as crucial as democracy itself, as voting rights."

The New Republic's Jason Linkins wrote last weekend that Sinema's obstinacy in getting rid of the filibuster has led to Democrats being unable to pass significant legislative reforms — not only in the arena of voting rights, but in an assortment of other social programs included in Biden's Build Back Better Act that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema ultimately watered down and killed. Sinema was also a key opposition vote in Democrats' unsuccessful attempt to keep the expanded child tax credit.

"Her steadfast opposition to taxing corporations and the wealthy cut off the one funding mechanism that Manchin was willing to countenance to keep it running," Linkins wrote.

Sinema is currently running as an independent in the 2024 US Senate race against both presumptive Republican nominee Kari Lake and presumptive Democratic nominee Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona). An early October poll showed Lake in front, with 37 percent of respondents saying they would vote for her next November. Gallego was second, with 33 percent, while Sinema came in third with just 19 percent support.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Romney Bio Says GOP Senators Laughed At Trump Behind His Back

Romney Bio Says GOP Senators Laughed At Trump Behind His Back

A new biography of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) is making waves not just for its revealing tidbits about the private details of the Senate GOP and Romney's life, but also for how prominent Republicans mocked former President Donald Trump behind closed doors.

In one anecdote, author McKay Coppins — a staff writer for The Atlantic — shared on NPR's Fresh Air, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blithely referred to then-President Trump in the lead-up to his first impeachment trial in the US Senate as an "idiot" who didn't think before speaking. Romney also recalled a story in which almost the entirety of the Senate GOP laughed at Trump behind his back after he spoke to senators in the aftermath of then-Attorney General Bill Barr's summary of the Mueller report.

"[Trump is] immediately greeted with a standing ovation. The senators - they're kind of treating him like a conquering hero, right? And Trump, as is his wont, launched into some sort of rambling stream-of-consciousness remarks. He talks about the Russia hoax and relitigating the midterm elections. And, you know, he's hitting all of his favorite policy points about China tariffs and border security and, you know, just kind of rambling. And at one point, Trump even said that the GOP would soon become the party of health care," Coppins said. "And Romney kind of looked around the room, saw all the senators nodding dutifully in agreement along with everything that Trump was saying, and then as soon as the president left, the entire Republican caucus burst into laughter" (emphasis added).

Coppins' biography, Romney: A Reckoning, was based not only on interviews with the Utah senator (who announced in September his plans to retire instead of running for another term in 2024), but on journal entries, personal correspondence, and private emails the senator and 2012 Republican presidential nominee kept over the years. The book also includes tidbits about Romney's first impressions of Trump when the two first met.

According to Coppins' account, Romney — who had not yet ventured into politics at the time — went to Mar-a-Lago at Trump's invitation in January of 1995 for business-related reasons. He confided to Coppins that he saw Trump as less of a businessman and more of a "cartoonish celebrity." He added that everything he saw there "confirmed his instincts about Trump."

Coppins said:

"He said that when they first pulled up to Mar-a-Lago, there was a line of servants in white linen, you know, waiting to greet him as though they were - he was, like, a king or a lord or something. And Romney remembered saying - just thinking like, where on earth are we? You know, he said he'd never seen anything like that in America. Later, when Trump gave him a tour of Mar-a-Lago, he kind of was showing off various things in this house, this complex that he had just bought, actually. And he showed him a set of gold colored silverware. And Trump said they didn't know this was here when they sold me the place. And it's worth more than I paid for the house. I'm going to make a fortune. And it's just - it was funny because Romney basically came away from the experience saying, that was everything I wanted out of this. You know, it was weird and memorable and a great story that I'll tell people, and I'll probably never see this guy again."

Coppins' book was published this week and is available in stores and online. Click here to read the full transcript of Coppins' Fresh Air interview.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.