Sen. Mitt Romney stopped by “Meet the Press” on Sunday to examine the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, the Kate Cox abortion case in Texas and, of course, leading 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump. Of the latter, the 2012 presidential candidate told Kristen Welker, “Donald Trump is kind of a human gumball machine, which is a thought or a notion comes in, and it comes out of his mouth. There’s not a lot of filter that goes on.”
“There’s not a lot of, ‘What’s the implication?’ No, no,” Romney continued. “He just says whatever. I don’t attach an enormous amount of impact to the particular words that come out and trying to evaluate each one of them.”
Instead, Romney continued, Trump’s record as a leader speaks for itself. The senator added, “I do think you can look at his record as president, and particularly in the last months of his presidency, and say, ‘This is a dangerous approach. It’s an authoritarian approach.’ That gives me far more concern than him playing to the crowd as he did.”
Romney made it clear to Welker that there is “no question he has authoritarian rulings, and interests, and notions which he will try and impose,” but shut down Liz Cheney’s recent claim that Trump would not leave office after four years if he is reelected in 2024.
“I don’t think Donald Trump would want to stay in longer than four years,” Romney said. “And the reason I say that is because I think he is running for retribution, and I think he will have finished his retribution after four years, if he’s elected.”
He continued, “I don’t think he particularly likes being around the White House. I think he’d rather be back at Mar-a-Lago or other properties of his. But he wants to show that he’s not a loser, he won. And he wants to go after the people who were tough on him. So, I think he’ll be finished after four years and go back to other occupations.”
The senator also said that if given the opportunity, Trump would conduct a second term differently. Instead of having “the generals” around him, “he would have people around him encouraging his impulses and perhaps adding to them. And I’m afraid you’d find the nation more divided.”
Watch the interview with Romney in the video above.
