When he was running for president in 2012, Mitt Romney went to Trump Tower to secure the endorsement of Donald Trump, a reality-TV star who had publicly attacked him while flirting with the idea for launching his own White House bid.
Four years later, Romney delivered what Slate called “a keynote address for the nascent #NeverTrump movement.” In a blistering 20-minute speech urging fellow Republicans to do whatever they could to prevent Trump from securing the GOP presidential nomination, he called the candidate a “phony” and a “con man,” adding, “He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president.”
Weeks after Trump won the election, he made a big show of interviewing Romney to be his secretary of State, taking him out to dine on frogs’ legs and pose for one of the greatest photos of the Trump era. Later Trump adviser Roger Stone claimed the president-elect only interviewed Romney “in order to torture him.”
As it turns out, Trump could have saved the $215 he spent on Romney’s dinner. After he reportedly urged 83-year-old Utah senator Orrin Hatch to run for reelection rather than creating a place for Romney in the federal government, on Monday night Trump suddenly endorsed his longtime rival:
In the past year Romney has criticized Trump on a number of occasions:
The Senate candidate even included some thinly veiled Trump attacks in last week’s campaign launch, saying, “Utah welcomes legal immigrants from around the world, Washington sends immigrants a message of exclusion. And on Utah’s Capitol Hill, people treat one another with respect.”
Yet it took Romney less than 40 minutes to accept Trump’s endorsement.
Who knew Romney was so prone to self-sabotage?
