Mitt Romney: I Won't Support Donald Trump for President
During an interview with the FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto, former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney explained why he is speaking out about Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump is having an effect on the party which I think is very serious and negative and I’m trying to make people understand, while we still have a chance, that the Republican Party stands for something,” he said.
Romney argued people don’t understand who the real Donald Trump is.
“I’m someone who cares very deeply about the country and about my party, and I’ve watched from the sidelines a long time playing kind of a role as an umpire, calling foul balls now and then, but I just couldn’t sit back and say nothing as I watched Donald Trump be more and more outrageous, say terrible things about George Bush, about John McCain, and positive things about Vladimir Putin,” he said.
While Romney sought Trump’s support in the 2012 election, his actions on the campaign trail would have changed his mind.
“I want the support of everybody in the country, that doesn’t mean I want to endorse all of them for President,” he noted.
“The Donald” struck back at Mitt Romney on Thursday, criticizing the former GOP Presidential Nominee for seeking his endorsement. “He was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, ‘Mitt drop to your knees.’ He would have dropped to his knees.”
Romney responded, “Well it’s characteristically disgusting on his part first of all, I mean it’s beneath the dignity of the office of president and even being a candidate for president,” he said.
While he won’t support Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton as the candidate for the President of the United States, he said he has no plans to sit it out.
“I’ll either vote for a conservative who runs or I’ll write in the name of a conservative… I cannot in good conscience vote for a person who has been as degrading, disruptive and unhinged as I’ve seen Donald Trump be.”
So, is he wishing for a brokered convention? Romney says he’d rather see someone other than Trump be the nominee outright on the first ballot but if that doesn’t happen he’d like to see an open convention.
Meanwhile, despite former presidential candidate Lindsey Graham’s harsh opinion of Donald Trump, he thinks a brokered convention would be unfair to the frontrunner and Trump would leave and has a right to leave.
“Well if he wants to leave, that’s fine… everyone has a right to do whatever the heck they want to do but in a convention. Trump has forty percent of the delegates and the other guys have thirty percent each, so in a case like that, you say that’s sixty percent that don’t want Trump. Let’s say they get together and form a ticket, that’s how politics works,” said Romney.
Romney ruled out a scenario of being the nominee and advancing himself.
“I’m going to support whoever our nominee is… If I wanted to advance Mitt Romney, I would have filed as a person seeking delegates in the various states."