Mitt Romney, Not Seeking Reelection, Unloads on Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance, and Ted Cruz

Republican senator Mitt Romney, now relieved of the reelection anxieties that once forced him to play nice with members of his own party, went on a score-settling tear in an upcoming biography by McKay Coppins. Among the colleagues he finds most grating or morally hollow: Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and J.D. Vance, according to an excerpt from Coppins’s forthcoming book, Romney: A Reckoning. The exclusive, published Wednesday by The Atlantic, was timed to coincide with Romney, a one-term Republican senator from Utah, announcing that he will not seek reelection next year.

In the book, Romney specifically rips freshman Vance for building a national brand on bashing Donald Trump only to later grovel for the former president’s endorsement when he ran for Senate last cycle. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J.D. Vance,” Romney told Coppins. Vance’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

As for Hawley and Cruz, Romney accused them of devious calculations in their support of Trump’s 2020 election lies and—following the Capitol riot—said he would likely never work with Hawley. “They know better!” the outgoing senator argued. “Josh Hawley is one of the smartest people in the Senate, if not the smartest, and Ted Cruz could give him a run for his money.” He added that the two senators “put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.”

In response, Darin Miller, Cruz’s communications director, commented in a post on X, “out of context this is a pretty good quote”—the “good” part being Romney’s description of Cruz as among the “smartest” in the Senate. Miller did not respond to a request for comment. Hawley did respond, saying of Romney, “That’s like one of the nicest things he’s said about me. You should see what he says about me privately! I did like the part where he said I was smarter than Ted Cruz. So he was, like, 47% right.”

Coppins’s book also includes a number of cameos from Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, including a time he commended Romney’s outspoken criticisms of Trump. “You’re lucky,” Romney recalled McConnell telling him. “You can say the things that we all think.” Romney even claimed that leading up to Trump’s first impeachment trial, McConnell told him that Trump was “an idiot,” adding, “How stupid do you have to be to not realize that you shouldn’t attack your jurors?” (A McConnell spokesman told Coppins that McConnell had no memory of that conversation and that he fully supported Trump during his 2020 impeachment.)

According to Romney, McConnell also privately mocked the Trump defense team’s argument that the then president had just been investigating corruption by the Bidens in Ukraine. “If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I can sell you,” McConnell reportedly said of the influence-peddling scheme that Republicans accuse Joe Biden of operating while vice president. (McConnell told Coppins he doesn’t remember that conversation either.)

Perhaps the most damning allegation centers on the Capitol riot, which Romney said he warned McConnell about—but to no avail. “There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch; to smuggle guns into DC, and to storm the Capitol,” he texted McConnell at the time. “I hope that sufficient security plans are in place, but I am concerned that the instigator—the President—is the one who commands the reinforcements the DC and Capitol police might require.” McConnell, for reasons unknown, reportedly never responded.