Having spent a lot of his Senate time period as a lonely Republican foil to Donald Trump and his allies, Mitt Romney is now utilizing what stays of his time within the chamber to go on the offense. In Romney: A Reckoning, an upcoming biography by McKay Coppins, the junior senator from Utah will be learn attacking Ron DeSantis, Mitch McConnell, and a number of different present and former congressional colleagues. However he reserved a few of his most biting criticism for a trio of conservative media heavyweights.
In keeping with an excerpt seen by CNN, Romney writes that Sean Hannity was at one level overcome with jealousy towards Tucker Carlson, the previous Fox Information host who spent a number of years atop the cable information rankings hierarchy. “I can solely think about that Sean is consumed with Tucker Carlson being forward of him, and his on a regular basis effort is to seek out methods to reclaim the throne as essentially the most watched,” Romney reportedly instructed Coppins. The senator goes on to recommend that Hannity has tried to ape Carlson’s model, writing, “He’s in the identical vein as Tucker. Simply not as efficient as Tucker—Tucker’s sensible.”
For his half, Hannity not has to deal with Carlson’s dominance. Carlson was fired by the community in April and now airs an impartial present on X, the platform previously often known as Twitter. Hannity, in the meantime, responded to Romney’s remarks by mocking his loss to Barack Obama within the 2012 presidential race. “It’s very clear shedding the presidency has turned Mitt right into a small, indignant, and really bitter man. It’s unhappy to see,” the host instructed CNN by a spokesperson.
Romney’s relationship with the Fox host apparently got here to a head in 2019, when Hannity described the Utah lawmaker on-air as a “weak, sanctimonious Washington swamp politician,” possible in response to the senator’s criticisms of Trump main as much as his first impeachment trial. In keeping with the ebook, Romney then referred to as Hannity up, which led to a less-than-reconciliatory dialog: The host reportedly {accused} Romney of solely looking for “reward on MSNBC” and demanded to know why Romney wasn’t higher knowledgeable on Hunter Biden’s enterprise dealings in Ukraine.
Hannity and Carlson aren’t the one Fox associates to get a point out within the ebook. Per Coppins, Romney thought of Lou Dobbs, a former Fox Enterprise host, “a moron” and Fox his “enabler” after seeing one among Dobbs’s anti-immigrant segments, main him to explain Fox as a “major problem.” (Fox canceled Dobbs’s present in 2021, a call that was reportedly associated to the host’s conspiracy theories in regards to the 2020 election and the voting-machine corporations that helped facilitate it.)
Whereas Romney has made identified his hope for the GOP to maneuver on from Trump, he isn’t precisely a fan of the previous president’s most formidable challenger within the 2024 Republican major. In keeping with The New York Instances, Romney mentioned that Florida governor Ron DeSantis had “no heat in any respect” and shared a number of the “odious qualities” present in Trump, together with his obsession with culture-war battles. Nonetheless, Romney reportedly mentioned supporting DeSantis could be a “no-brainer” if that meant stopping Trump, even when DeSantis “seems to be like he’s obtained a toothache” each time he has to glad-hand with voters.
The Utah senator’s unfiltered takes on his fellow Republicans have been spilling out within the days forward of the ebook’s publication, with Politico’s Playbook offering a rundown of jabs on the likes of Newt Gingrich (“A smug know-it-all, smarmy, and too happy with himself”), Mike Huckabee (“huckster,” a “caricature of a for-profit preacher”), and Rick Santorum (“Sanctimonious, extreme, and unusual”), amongst others.
Romney, 76, introduced final month that he wouldn’t be looking for one other time period within the Senate. “On the finish of one other time period, I’d be in my mid-80s. Frankly, it’s time for a brand new technology of leaders,” he mentioned in a video statement shared on X. “They’re those that have to make the selections that can form the world they are going to be residing in.”
