While many in the GOP hem and haw their way around impeachment, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) isn’t holding back.
The former presidential candidate doubled down on his criticisms of President Donald Trump in a series of tweets Friday morning, calling Trump’s “brazen and unprecedented” calls for foreign meddling in the 2020 election “wrong and appalling.”
Romney was among the first Republicans to speak out on the allegations, which first appeared in a whistleblower report alleging that Trump ordered aid to Ukraine withheld unless the country delivered him a political favor.
In response, Trump mocked Romney, referencing the senator’s failed 2012 presidential bid against incumbent President Barack Obama.
“Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous ‘ass’ who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him),” the president tweeted.
On Thursday, while attempting to defend his actions, Trump instead openly asked another foreign government, China, to also influence the 2020 election. Hours later, CNN reported Trump had brought up the “political prospects” of former Vice President Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren while on a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping in June.
“If the President asked or pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rival, either directly or through his personal attorney, it would be troubling in the extreme” Romney said last week. “Critical for the facts to come out.”
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse (R) echoed that sentiment last Wednesday after he read the complaint.
“This [is] going to take a long time but there’s obviously some very troubling things here,” Sasse told CNN at the time. “But I think the partisan tribalism that’s always insta-certain is a terrible idea. There are real troubling things here.”
“Republicans ought not just circle the wagons and Democrats ought not be using words like ‘impeach’ before they know anything about the actual substance,” Sasse continued.
Meanwhile, much of the rest of the Republican Party seems content parroting the same lines members used during the Mueller probe.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Wednesday baselessly accused Democrats of having “rigged” the process, while House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) retreated to conspiracy theories and blamed it on “a deep state scheme.”