Exclusive: Mitt Romney Says Trump Is “Such a Whack Job”

Inside the Hive host Brian Stelter explores Mitt Romney’s path from Republican standard-bearer to party pariah with author McKay Coppins, who interviewed Romney dozens of times for Romney: A Reckoning. Coppins, an Atlantic staff writer, discussed Romney’s decision to unburden himself after the January 6 attack, the senator’s own complicity in the GOP’s Trumpian trajectory (along with his unvarnished thoughts on the former president), and the fragility of American democracy.

“One of the biggest revelations to me in my conversations with Romney was just how important the threat of political violence was to the psychology of elected Republicans today,” said Coppins, who recalled Romney telling him “story after story about Republican members of Congress, Republican senators, who at various points wanted to vote for impeachment—vote to convict Trump or vote to impeach Trump—and decided not to, not because they thought he was innocent, but because they were afraid for their family’s safety. They were afraid of what Trump supporters might do to them or to their families.” That “raises a really uncomfortable question,” Coppins said, which is “how long can the American project last if elected officials from one of the major parties are making their political decisions based on fear of physical violence from their constituents?”

Coppins said Romney has been grappling with what complicity he, and others in the party, have with Trump’s political rise. “He was looking back at the moments in his pursuit of the presidency that he sort of flirted with the more extreme elements of his party,” Coppins said. “I think he realizes now that the mistake he made, and the mistake that a lot of the Republican establishment made, was thinking that they could basically harness the energy of the far right without succumbing to it.” Romney, Coppins said, has been reflecting on “all those little compromises he made that didn’t seem like a huge deal at the time,” such as accepting Trump’s endorsement in 2012. “He wishes he didn’t do it,” Coppins said. “And I think that that’s emblematic of a lot of these these small ethical compromises that he and a lot of his party leaders made not realizing the kind of Pandora’s box they were opening.”

Trump, predictably, lashed out at Romney in response to details surfacing from Coppins’s book, calling the Utah senator “a total loser that only a mother could love” and bragging how he “forced this Left Leaning RINO out of politics.” Coppins said, “I sent that statement to Mitt and hold on, I want to, I’ll just pull up the text. He wrote back, ‘Ha, ha, ha. He’s such a whack job.’ So Mitt kind of enjoyed Trump’s response.” 

The conversation also turned to why Romney, at 76, decided to speak so extensively, and candidly, to a journalist, along with providing his own journals for the book project. “When I first approached him, it was just a couple months after January 6. I remember our first meeting was in his Senate hideaway, which is this little cramped windowless room that the senators get near the chamber in the Capitol building. And there was still barbed wire fence around the building because the riots had just happened. And I think, honestly, his initial decision to cooperate with this book was just born of, like, extreme frustration and disappointment with the leaders of his party and fear for the country,” said Coppins, adding, “I think he thought of this book as a warning.”