Mitt Romney running for US Senate in Utah, but will he keep his anti-Trump sentiment?
The 2012 Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor said he will seek to succeed Orrin Hatch, a strong Trump supporter who decided not to run for an eighth term
Mitt Romney announced on Friday he will run for the US Senate in Utah, potentially bringing to Washington a popular Republican who has been a scathing critic of President Donald Trump.
The 2012 Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor said he will seek to succeed Orrin Hatch, a strong Trump supporter who decided not to run for an eighth term despite the president’s efforts to persuade him to stay.
“I am running for United States Senate to serve the people of Utah and bring Utah’s values to Washington,” said Romney, 70, on Twitter.
In a speech in March 2016, Romney called presidential candidate at the time, Trump, “a phoney, a fraud”. He also called for Trump to apologise to the nation in August for his rhetoric following a violent white supremacists’ march in Charlottesville, Virginia. He said the president’s suggestion that both sides were to blame “caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn”.
Still, Trump interviewed him as a candidate for secretary of state. Romney said in June 2017 that he would have accepted the job if he had been offered it, and that he and the president were not as far apart on issues as he once feared.
