Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is flipping the script on former President Donald Trump, who liked to call him a “RINO” or “Republican in name only.”
The Utah senator is suggesting it is Trump who is a RINO after his comments about the Constitution.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Romney said, “The Republican Party has long been the party of the Constitution.”
“And so when President Trump says he wants to suspend the Constitution, he goes from being MAGA to being RINO. We’re the Constitution party,” he added.
Watch the video below:
NEW: Sen. Mitt Romney calls the GOP the “party of the constitution” and says when Trump calls for “terminating” parts of it he goes “from being MAGA to being a RINO”. pic.twitter.com/H9qSfwU9Xu
— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) December 5, 2022
His comments come after the former president sent out a bizarre and unhinged post on his Truth Social platform insisting parts of the Constitution should be terminated.
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote.
He added, “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False [and] Fraudulent Elections!”
Today, Trump says the “Fake News” falsely claimed he “wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution” over the weekend – then doubles down on his claim from the other day (that the 2020 election should either be “redone” or “go to the rightful winner”) pic.twitter.com/AQCQvhHqjI
— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) December 5, 2022
On Monday, Trump tried to claim he did not call for parts of the Constitution to be suspended.
“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION [and] LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES [and] SCAMS,” he wrote.
The former president insisted, “What I said was that when there is ’MASSIVE [and] WIDESPREAD FRAUD [and] DECEPTION,’ as has been irrefutably proven in the 2020 Presidential Election, steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG.”
Of course, it has not been proven there was “massive” and “widespread fraud” in the 2020 election. Trump simply lost and refuses to accept it.
His clean-up attempt is nothing but a lousy effort to escape the rightful criticism for calling for parts of the Constitution to be terminated. He did not simply say “steps must be immediately taken.”
He clearly claimed there is some right for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Unless you do not believe sentences have meaning, there is not really any other way to read what the former president wrote. There was no hedging, nuance, or even clarification about what specific rules — he said the termination of “all rules.”
Romney is by no means a fan of Trump. But his comments are not wrong. It was not too long ago when Republicans repeatedly mocked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams for suggesting their elections were stolen.
However, under Trump and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, election denialism has tried to make its way into the Republican Party.
There is no provision for re-doing an election. And there is certainly nothing courageous, conservative, or Republican about attacking the foundation of our system of government because you’re mad you lost an election.
Politicians who lose and lash out and suggest parts of our nation’s founding document — which was crafted with enough wisdom to survive nearly 250 years despite all the trials our nation has been through — should be terminated so they can obtain or keep power are not the kind of people we need in office.
In fact, they are exactly the kinds of would-be tyrants our founders fretted about.