On Thursday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) ripped into his fellow colleague Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) for giving credence to the Democratic Party’s push for the impeachment of President Trump based on his phone call with Ukraine President Vlodomyr Zelensky in July.
Appearing on Fox Business with host Charles Payne, Scott said that Mitt Romney has essentially adopted Democrat talking points while always thinking the worst of President Trump.
“Senator Romney has gone down the same path as the Democrats like Nancy Pelosi,” Scott said. “He thinks the worst of the president instead of the best, before he ever gets all the facts. We have to go through the process to get the facts. Senator Romney doesn’t speak for the Republican Party. He can have his own opinions, and he doesn’t speak for all Republican senators.”
Earlier this week, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that the Democratic Party will be looking into a possible impeachment inquiry against President Trump based on a whistleblower’s allegation that he pressured Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden’s potentially corrupt dealings in the country, Mitt Romney said that Trump’s actions were “troubling.”
“My reaction was the same as I had a view days ago, which is this remains deeply troubling and we’ll see where it leads. The first reaction is troubling,” Romney said in response to the released transcript of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine. “I don’t know if I’d focus so much on the quid pro quo element as perhaps some do. I’ve said this in my first reaction, if the President of the United States asks or presses the leader of a foreign country to carry out an investigation of a political nature, that’s troubling. Clearly, if there were a quid pro quo that would take it to an entirely more extreme level.”
Sen. Romney’s anti-Trump rhetoric has been steadily consistent throughout the former real estate mogul’s tenure as president, beginning with the scathing op-ed he penned for The Washington Post earlier this year in which he said that President Trump had not risen to the level of his office.
“To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation,” Romney said at the time. “A president should unite us and inspire us to follow ‘our better angels.’ A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect.”
Romney then lamented that President Trump stands out of line with the great presidents of the past. “As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit,” said Romney. “With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.”
“The world needs American leadership, and it is in America’s interest to provide it,” he continued. “A world led by authoritarian regimes is a world — and an America — with less prosperity, less freedom, less peace.”