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Mitt Romney: ‘I’m in the fight,’ and with Trump’s policy agenda

Over a plate of oversized buttermilk pancakes, Mitt Romney said Friday he’s running for Senate because he wants to be “in the fight” and supports President Donald Trump’s policy agenda.

“I’m in the fight. Just because you don’t get promoted to general doesn’t mean you stop fighting. There are things I believe in very deeply,” the 2012 GOP presidential nominee exclusively told the Deseret News in his first interview as a candidate.

Romney, who launched his campaign for the seat held by retiring Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, via an online video early Friday, said he also believes he’d be able to do more for Utah than the average freshman senator.

That’s because he has built personal relationships with many members of the Senate, he said, including the dozens of Republicans he has campaigned for, as well as the Trump administration.

Although Romney was one of Trump’s harshest critics during the 2016 presidential primary, labeling the now president a fraud and a phony in a speech at the University of Utah, he said he sees Trump differently now.

“The president and I have spoken a couple of times in the last few months,” Romney said, noting that he got to know him better when Trump briefly considered appointing him secretary of state.

“I’m with his domestic policy agenda that he has put in place so far — lower taxes, lower regulation, lower bureaucracy,” Romney said, although he added he considers himself more conservative when it comes to the nation’s growing debt.

But Romney said that despite seeing policies from the White House that are similar to what he campaigned on in 2012, he will continue to call out Trump when he disagrees with what the president is doing…

 

… The left-leaning Alliance for a Better Utah called on Romney to release his platform.

“Unfortunately, there seems to be a perception that once Romney announced his candidacy, he was effectively anointed our next senator from Utah,” said Josh Kanter, the board’s chairman. “This might give Romney reason to believe that he can breeze through the election with little to no accountability for his stances on various issues, to the detriment of an election based on ideas and policy.”

See the full article from Deseret News here.

See the story on KSL here.

 

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