On the day he banned the Washington Post from covering his campaign events (an unprecedented move even President Richard Nixon didn’t impose during Watergate) presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump called the last GOP nominee a “pathetic loser.”
“Mitt Romney’s a loser. He lost the election badly,” said Trump. “He should have won that election. That election was easier than this election. He should have won that election. He choked. He was a choker. And I was very tough on him at the beginning, because we don’t want to give a choker, I backed him, but we don’t want to give a choker a second chance. We can’t afford to. He wasn’t going to win anyway. He would have choked the same way. Whatever happened he was way off.”
Romney, who was the 2012 Republican nominee, held his annual summit last weekend for GOP leaders at his home in Park City, Utah. A number of top Republican fundraisers and elected officials have announced they will not back Trump in November.
“I don’t want to see trickle-down racism,” said Romney. “I don’t want to see a president of the United States saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that are following. Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny, all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America.”
Romney and Trump were a lot happier in 2012.
Later, an emotional Romney, with tears, told an audience of top GOP fundraisers, “I find this so troubling, and I know a lot of folks are saying, ‘Mitt just get off your high horse on this and get behind the guy.’ But these things are personal. I love this country. I love the founders. I love what this country is built upon and its values and seeing this is breaking my heart.”
Trump responded by saying Romney is jealous of him and should go into retirement.
“Now he goes around having meetings about Donald Trump.He ought to go into retirement and relax, because he’s wasting a lot of people’s time,” said Trump. “He’s a very jealous guy. He’s got a lot of problems. I watched his statement over the weekend. Actually, it was sort of sad and pathetic at the same time. It was pathetic, but it was sad, too, to watch him.”
The fact that the last GOP nominee. and the 2016 presumptive GOP nominee, can’t stand each other says a lot about the current state of the Republican Party.