Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said on Wednesday night that there’s no chance he’d vote for Donald Trump in November’s election.
“No, no, no, absolutely not,” he said when asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins if he could cast a ballot for the former president.
He said he considers both policy and character when choosing “the person who is the example of the president for my kids and my grandkids.”
Trump’s a mixed bag on policy: Though Romney agrees with much of the former president’s domestic agenda, he said he disagrees with him on foreign policy.
“But there’s another dimension besides policy, and that’s character,” Romney said. “And I think what America is as a nation, what has allowed us to be the most powerful nation on Earth and the leader of the Earth, is the character of the people who have been our leaders, past presidents, but also mothers, fathers, church leaders, university presidents and so forth.”
That’s where Trump falls well short of the mark, he said.
“Having a president who is so defaulted of character would have an enormous impact on the character of America. And for me, that’s the primary consideration.”
Romney didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, and he said last year he would likely make the same decision at the polls in November should Trump be the nominee.
“It’s pretty straightforward. It’s the same thing I’ve done in the past. I’ll vote for Ann Romney, who’ll be a terrific president,” he said on CNBC, referring to his wife.
Romney and Trump have had a contentious relationship for years. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, delivered a speech in 2016 urging his party to reject Trump, whom he slammed as a “phony” and a “fraud.”
“He’s playing the American public for suckers,” he said at the time.
When Trump won, however, Romney infamously sat for an awkward dinner with him, reportedly in hopes of being named secretary of state. When that didn’t pan out, he ran for Senate. Since winning that election, he has consistently criticized Trump and was one of just seven Republican senators to vote to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial.
Romney is retiring from the Senate rather than run for reelection this year.