Romney stands by Trump criticism but says MAGA is now the Republican Party

(CNN) — Sen. Mitt Romney, a frequent Donald Trump critic who will soon retire from Congress, stood by his criticism of the president-elect’s character but said Trump and his MAGA movement now define the Republican Party.

“I’m, as you know, not a supporter of President Trump’s. I didn’t support him in this election. I didn’t the last time he ran either, largely for matters of character,” the Utah Republican, who was the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a wide-ranging interview on “State of the Union” on Sunday.

But Romney acknowledged Trump’s grip on the party he once led.

“MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today,” he said.

Asked about his sustained criticism of Trump, which dates to the president-elect’s first White House run in 2016, Romney described himself as “kinda outspoken” and said he felt that Trump “was wrong for the country, wrong for our party, that he wouldn’t win,” but he noted, “I was wrong about that.”

“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,” he said.

But Romney argued the incoming president deserves a “chance” to do what he has promised upon his return to the White House.

“I agree with him on a lot of policy fronts. I disagree with him on some things,” Romney said of Trump. “But it’s like, OK, give him a chance to do what he said he’s gonna do and see how it works out.”

Asked about the fact that Trump has made some unorthodox Cabinet picks, Romney called it “an unusual collection of individuals, not the people that I would have chosen,” but said Trump is “entitled” to make his picks because he won the election.

But, Romney said, “the Senate has a responsibility to make sure that these people are legitimate, that there’s no skeleton that could be an embarrassment to them or the country” and that nominees are qualified for the position.

Elected to the Senate in 2018, Romney has become known as a distinctive voice in the chamber who was willing to take on his own party. During Trump’s first impeachment trial, Romney was the only Senate Republican to find him guilty of abuse of power. In 2021, he was one of seven Senate Republicans who crossed party lines to find Trump guilty of inciting the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Asked what he thinks the legacy of the January 6 attack will be, Romney said he thinks that it will be seen as “a very dark day in American history” and that “it’s unfortunate that there are some in the MAGA world that try and paper over it, but I don’t think it’s possible to do.”

But Romney also said he thinks American institutions will hold up in the years to come “because I think people, when faced with the reality of what’s at stake, they’re going to want to protect the roots of freedom.”

Trump and his allies have suggested that, in his second term, he could unleash the Justice Department on his political enemies.

Asked whether he is worried that he or his family could become targets for political retribution by Trump, Romney said, “No, actually, I’ve been pretty clean throughout my life. I’m not particularly worried about criminal investigations.”

“I don’t know how much, by the way, of what the president says is hyperbole,” he said, adding, “I think President Trump is likely to try and focus on the future.”

The Utah Republican also had words of praise for Vice President-elect JD Vance, calling the Ohio senator “smart” and predicting that he will be the GOP nominee in 2028.

“If you were to ask me who the nominee will be in 2028, I think it will be JD Vance, all right? He’s smart, well-spoken, part of the MAGA movement,” Romney said, downplaying past criticism of Vance as comments from “long ago,” and saying, “I’m not going to rehash history, and we’ve worked together in the Senate together since then.”

Reflecting on the results of the recent presidential election, Romney said Trump deserves “credit” for bringing working-class voters over to the GOP from Democrats.

“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, taking that away from the Democrats,” he said.

Romney said that after some voters crossed over to the GOP from the Democratic Party, “there’ll be some reorientation that’s going to be necessary in my party,” but that the Democratic Party “is the one in trouble.”

He also reflected on his long political career on the national stage, including his unsuccessful run against Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, and how he went from being a focus of high-profile attacks by Democrats during his presidential bid to being praised by Democrats during his time in the Senate for his willingness to break with Trump.

“As I look back at campaigns and think about the angst that surrounded any mistake that I or a campaign member made, some small thing, these things were blown into huge proportion,” he said. “It’s kind of amusing to see the kind of things that, looking back, look quaint.”

Romney said Obama was “in some respects smart to go after me and say, ‘Here’s a rich business guy, we’re going to characterize him as a plutocrat that doesn’t care about people.’ He went with that narrative, put it out there before I could really effectively respond and was successful in doing so.”

Romney shrugged off a question about how he would want history to remember him, downplaying his legacy as “a footnote for somebody who’s reading ancient history,” but saying that he would want his family to remember him.

“I want my family to remember me as someone who stood up for the things I believed, was not embarrassed by my fundamental beliefs, who loved the country and did what I believe was right to help preserve the greatest nation on Earth,” he said.