OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney attempted to ambush House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and it did not end well for the Never-Trump lawmaker.
Romney has made a slew of comments over the course of the year attacking New York Republican Rep. George Santos, who has come under fire for embellishing his professional record and other personality traits. Romney took particular issue with Santos being “outspoken” on the Senate floor and speaking with other lawmakers, including at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
“I didn’t expect that he’d be standing there trying to shake hands with every senator in the United States,” Romney told reporters while leaving the building. “That’s a given. And given the fact that he’s under an ethics investigation, he should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet.”
“If you look at like he said, he says he knows that he embellished his record. Look, embellishing is saying you got an A when he had an A-minus. Lying is saying you graduated from a college you didn’t even attend. He shouldn’t be in Congress,” he continued. “And they’re going to go through the process and hopefully get him out but he shouldn’t be there.”
Romney also took a shot at McCarthy, saying he was disappointed that the Speaker was not calling for Santos to resign.
McCarthy responded recently and said: “Romney should be disappointed that Swalwell hasn’t resigned.”
McCarthy is referring to California DemocratRep. Eric Swalwell, who was outed as having had a sexual relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.
Romney’s no stranger to ruffling feathers.
Last week, he attacked Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson for airing unseen footage from the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The American people saw what happened on Jan. 6,” Romney told reporters. “They’ve seen the people that got injured. They saw the damage to the building. You can’t hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It’s so absurd. It’s nonsense. It’s a very dangerous thing to do, to suggest that attacking the Capitol of the United States is in any way acceptable and it’s anything other than a serious crime, against democracy and against our country. And people saw that it was violent and destructive and should never happen again. But trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting.”
Carlson called Romney and other establishment Republican senators “weak” and “vicious” after they criticized him for airing the tapes.
Carlson was provided access to some 40,000 hours of previously unseen surveillance video by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last month.
Earlier this month, Romney attacked GOP Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s idea for a national divorce and he is not a fan.
“I think Abraham Lincoln dealt with that kind of insanity,” he said to The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday. “We’re not going to divide the country. It’s united we stand and divided we fall. There are some people in my party and the other party that say things to try and get a headline and get people to send them money. And that happens to be in today’s ‘loony left,’ or I should say ‘loony right.'”
But the Georgia firebrand representative hit back: “Mitt Romney is so bad I couldn’t even vote for him for president against Barack Obama.”
Former Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard recently tore into Romney after he previously accused her of treason.
It was revealed earlier this year that Romney played a role behind the scenes in helping President Joe Biden get elected, according to a new book.
Romney, who then-President-elect Donald Trump passed over for secretary of state, spoke on the phone to Biden in 2018 and reportedly pressed him to run for president in 2020 to get Trump out of the White House.
“You have to run,” New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti quoted Romney as saying to Biden, an exchange that is contained in Debenedetti’s upcoming book.
