“I’m sure to hear abuse from the President and his supporters,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) predicted as he was announcing his momentous vote to convict and remove President Donald Trump in the impeachment trial on Wednesday.
Right on cue, President Donald Trump dished out exactly that.
“Had failed presidential candidate @MittRomney devoted the same energy and anger to defeating a faltering Barack Obama as he sanctimoniously does to me, he could have won the election,” he tweeted early Thursday morning. “Read the Transcripts!”
Several hours earlier, Trump tweeted a video with footage of his victory in the 2016 presidential race and Romney’s defeat in 2012. Part of the video included material from an attack ad that accused the Utah senator of being a “Democrat secret asset.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2020
The ad, crated by conservative activist group Club for Growth, was released in October after Romney criticized Trump for pushing Ukraine and China to give him dirt on 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
“By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling,” Romney had said.
The Utah Republican broke from the rest of the GOP on Wednesday and voted to have Trump removed for abuse of power, making him the first senator in U.S. history to convict a president of his own party.