Sen. Mitt Romney doesn’t see a post-Trump Republican party in the future, he told “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper Sunday. “MAGA is the Republican Party, and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today,” Romney explained.
“And if you were to ask me who the nominee will be in 2028, I think it’ll be JD Vance, all right? He’s smart, well- spoken, part of the MAGA movement,” he added.
A surprised Tapper asked Romney about his 2023 comment that he could not “disrespect someone more” than JD Vance. “[That was] Long ago. I’m not going to rehash history. And we’ve worked together in the Senate since then,” Romney said.
“But I — you know, that is what the Republican Party is. And will the party need to change? Look, the Republican Party has become the party of the working-class, middle-class voter. And you’ve got to give Donald Trump credit for having done that, taken that away from the Democrats.”
Romney went on to blast Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for their support for “defund the police and transgenders in — or — excuse me — biological males in women’s sports” before he admitted the Republican Party has a problem to overcome. “Now, one of the challenges in my party is that our policies do not necessarily line up with the interests of our voters.”
This will result in a necessary “reorientation” of the Republican Party, he continued.
Tapper also reminded Romney of his 2016 speech in which he spoke out against Trump. “I felt that Donald Trump was wrong for the country, wrong for our party, that he wouldn’t win. I was wrong about that,” Romney said.
“And that I felt that his record was not adequately being exposed and that people needed to recognize he was the wrong person to be president. I think most people disagree with me. I’m willing to live with that. I just put emphasis on different things than I think the public at large does right now.”
You can watch part of the interview with Romney in the video above.
