Mitt Romney, who has called Donald Trump a “con man” and who was at the forefront of the “Never Trump” movement in 2016, predicted on Thursday night that the president will be re-elected in 2020, according to news reports.
“I think President Trump will be re-nominated by my party easily, and I think he’ll be reelected solidly,” Politico quoted Romney as saying.
Romney, the Republican candidate for president in 2012, made the comment at an invitation-only three-day gathering of business and political leaders he is hosting in Park City, Utah.
“I think that not just because of the strong economy and the fact that people are going to see increasingly rising wages,” he said, according to The Associated Press, “but I think it’s also true because I think our Democrat friends are likely to nominate someone who is really out of the mainstream of American thought and will make it easier for a president who’s presiding over a growing economy.”
He also said he thought Republicans would keep control of the House and the Senate in the midterm elections.
Just last month, Romney, who is running for U.S. Senate from Utah, revealed that he did not vote for Trump in 2016. Instead, he said, he wrote in his wife’s name on the ballot.
In an interview with NBC News, Romney said he wouldn’t “point to the president as a role model for my grandkids on the basis of his personal style. He has departed in some cases from the truth, and has attacked in a way that I think is not entirely appropriate.”
But Romney has also been somewhat supportive of the Trump administration. He said recently that Trump’s first year in office had been “very similar to things I’d have done my first year,” Newsweek reported.
