Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on Sunday brushed off Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) threat to vote against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) if he doesn’t “effectively work” with former President Trump.
Asked whether Graham’s threat is a fair indicator for Republicans’ support for McConnell’s re-election bid for leader, Romney told MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” that McConnell shouldn’t sweat it.
“Oh, I think there’s full support for Mitch McConnell, no question about that,” Romney said. “I haven’t heard anything other than a solid support for his continued leadership.”
Romney, who is amongst the former president’s favorite punching bags, added that he doesn’t associate with the people who are “always trying to placate” Trump.
Last week, Graham parroted Trump’s war on McConnell for supposed insufficient loyalty a day after McConnell announced his plans to run for leader again. McConnell became one of Trump’s punching bags after he condemned the former president for his role in inciting the deadly Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. Since then, Trump has gone on a series of rants against McConnell, which include deriding the Senate minority leader as a “dumb son of a bitch” and an “Old Broken Crow.”
“I’m not going to vote for anybody for leader of the Senate as a Republican unless they can prove to me that they can advocate an ‘American First’ agenda and have a working relationship with President Trump,” Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week. “Because if you can’t do that, you will fail.”
Romney himself has become known for his vocal criticism of Trump, even prior to his vote to convict him for “incitement of insurrection” last year. Romney took aim at the Trump administration’s disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory that Trump and his GOP allies pushed, and Trump’s efforts to suppress mail-in voting during the 2020 presidential election.
Last week, Romney came to Sen. Mike Rounds’ (R-SD) defense after Trump attacked the GOP senator for daring to call the 2020 presidential election “fair” during an interview with ABC News. Trump accused Rounds of being “woke” for not playing along with his election fraud falsehoods, and vowed to never endorse Rounds again after the GOP senator wouldn’t commit to endorsing the former president if he launches another presidential run in 2024.
In his tweet defending Rounds, Romney pointed to other prominent conservatives who have bucked Trump’s election fraud falsehoods and attempts to subvert the election results — and have become targets of the former president for doing so.
Watch Romney’s remarks below:
