Mitt Romney Trump Endorsement Comes Back To Haunt Him In Grueling New Interview

The Mitt Romney Trump endorsement of 2012 has come back to haunt the former nominee for the 2012 presidential race in a grueling new interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press.

In the interview, host Chuck Todd held Mitt’s feet to the fire on his takedown of Trump in spite of the fact that he gladly accepted his endorsement four years before.

While discussing the fallout of Super Saturday in which Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump evenly split Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maine, Romney said he thought his speech against Trump had “a big impact.”

“A lot of people were surprised by how well Ted Cruz did,” Romney said. “Trump was uncharacteristically low energy last night… Cruz is emerging [as a viable candidate], and I wouldn’t write off Marco Rubio or John Kasich.”

Mitt said that he planned on endorsing someone and that “any of those three” would be candidates he could support, but he would never endorse Trump.

“I’m leaning towards supporting someone. A real deal Republican if you will,” he added. “Trump pretends to be one thing and is something else entirely.”

It was at this point that Todd played back the 2012 Mitt Romney Trump endorsement (video below), in which Romney said that Trump “has shown an extraordinary ability to understand how our economy works and to create jobs for people.”

He also noted that while he had been successful in business, he was “not quite as successful as this guy,” he said, turning to Trump.

Todd was particularly curious how Romney could come out so strongly against Trump last week, naming off a list of failed businesses that, for the most part, had been failures for several years, while accepting the Mitt Romney Trump endorsement four years ago.

Here, the normally polished Romney hesitated.

“This is not a guy, who’s a self-made man, and this is a guy, who’s crushed a lot of people along the way. He’s made a lot of money for himself.”

Romney then said that he was “gracious enough” to tout Trump’s successes while accepting the endorsement, but that he did not apparently agree with his previous words.

He also tried to seize on Trump’s vulgar personality, at which point Todd played a clip of Trump’s vulgarity in 2011, one year before the Mitt Romney Trump endorsement. The natural followup question: why is it his vulgarity matters now, but didn’t then.

“There are a lot of people, who supported me who I’m sure used the F bomb,” Romney said. “I’m happy to accept the endorsement of a lot of people I disagree with on some issues.”

Romney stopped short of saying that he regretted “mainstreaming” Trump, when asked, by accepting his endorsement in 2012. He then said that he wasn’t disappointed by Rubio’s, Cruz’s, and Kasich’s vows to support Trump if he was the eventual nominee, stating that he thought “it was expected.”

As for whether Romney would support a Trump candidacy against Hillary Clinton, the former Massachusetts governor said it would be a tough call.

“Both of them are pretty darn bad. As Lindsey Graham said, would you rather have poison or a bullet?” He said he “may write in a name” if it came down to it.

As for whether he would accept a nomination from the Republican party, he indicated that it wouldn’t be something he turned down if the GOP establishment came to him with it, but reiterated that he couldn’t imagine “anything like that happening.”

“I’m not a candidate. I’m not going to be a candidate. I’m going to be endorsing one of the people running for president, and three of the four [sans Trump] are people I would endorse.”

What do you think of the above interview? Do you think the Mitt Romney Trump endorsement from 2012 dulled any impact Romney’s speech last week had on stopping Trump’s candidacy? Sound off in the comments section.

[Image via Flickr Creative Commons / davelawrence8]