Sen. Mitt Romney praised ‘genunely good man’ President Joe Biden — who once accused him of plotting to put black people ‘back in chains’ — in an Independence Day column for the far-left online magazine The Atlantic.
The failed 2012 presidential candidate and Utah Republican’s “pox on both their houses” approach blasted Democrats for blowing out the national debt and opening the border and ripped Republicans for downplaying the January 6 Capitol riots and climate change. The nation needs a true leader, Romney wrote in the magazine owned by late Apple founder Steve Jobs’ widow, billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs.
“President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man, but he has yet been unable to break through our national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust,” Romney wrote. “A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable.”
Romney’s basic premise was that Americans on both sides of the aisle are in denial an ill-prepared to confront the challenges that confront us. But while his over-the-top praise for Biden might surprise some, his scathing attack on Trump shouldn’t.
Romney has never made a secret of his dislike for Trump. During the 2016 presidential race, he called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud.” After he was elected to the Senate in 2018, Romney twice voted to impeach Trump, first for allegedly withholding aid from Ukraine in order to pressure Kyiv into investigating the Biden family’s deals there and then over Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 riots.
Twitter users noted that Biden is not likely to return Romney’s kind words. In 2012, then-Vice President Biden accused Romney of wanting to enslave black Americans.
“Romney wants to let the—he said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules –unchain Wall Street,” Biden told a mostly minority crowd in Danville, Virginia. “They’re going to put y’all back in chains!”
Joe Biden said during a campaign speech that Mitt Romney would re-enslave African Americans. https://t.co/1hIbxy97ky
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 4, 2022
“This is why most Republicans can’t stand Mitt Romney,” tweeted BonchieRedState. “Forget the predictable hysteria about Donald Trump for a moment. Presenting Biden as some kind of innocent bystander who just hasn’t been able to “break through” is nuts. Absolutely nuts.”
Romney described the kind of president he hopes wins the White House in 2024, but didn’t name names.
“I hope for a president who can rise above the din to unite us behind the truth,” he wrote. “Several contenders with experience and smarts stand in the wings; we intently watch to see if they also possess the requisite character and ability to bring the nation together in confronting our common reality.”