Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is taking a swipe at President Donald Trump regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
Romney, a senator who has frequently criticized Trump, was asked during Thursday night’s CNN interview where Trump’s leadership is amid the pandemic.
“This hasn’t been the focus of his rhetoric apparently and I think it’s a great human tragedy, without question,” Romney responded.
He continued:
“The extraordinary loss of life is heartbreaking — and in some respects unnecessary. Not all respects, but we’ve relaxed our standards as individuals.”
The Utah senator added, “Some states haven’t had mask mandates. And from Washington we have not had a constant, consistent plan and plea for people to wear masks, to social-distance, to take all the measures that would reduce the spread of this disease.”
Watch Romney’s interview below:
"This hasn't been the focus of his rhetoric apparently and I think it's a great human tragedy," says Sen. Mitt Romney of Trump's approach to the Covid-19 pandemic.
— CNN (@CNN) December 4, 2020
"The extraordinary loss of life is heartbreaking… From Washington, we have not had a constant, consistent plan.” pic.twitter.com/pmHsJjykxw
Romney also called it “unfortunate” that the public health recommendations amid the pandemic have “become a political issue.”
“This is public health, and unfortunately we have not made that message clear enough to the American people, and people are dying because of it,” he said.
Romney later said, “We needed to have a far clearer message from the very beginning that this was serious, that we should take every step we possibly could in order to constrain this virus’ spread, and we haven’t done that and we’re suffering the consequences even today.”
Additionally, Romney expressed that he is “quite confident there will be a COVID relief measure” passed by Congress soon. He noted the $908 billion compromise coronavirus relief bill unveiled this week by a bipartisan group of senators.
This week former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum that he believes President Donald Trump’s biggest “policy error” while seeking re-election was choosing “to go for opening the economy versus public empathy.”
“I think if he would have been publicly empathetic he would have won by a landslide there. I think he could have leaned into it instead of run away from it,” Parscale said.
There have been 180,327 positive coronavirus cases reported in the U.S. on average over the past week. This is an 8% increase from the two weeks prior, according to The New York Times.