Mitt Romney Calls Republican Refusal To Acknowledge Election Results ‘Sad’ & ‘Embarrassing’

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) criticized President Donald Trump for refusing to accept the election results, while bemoaning the loss of the Republican Party’s central beliefs in a television interview on Sunday.

On a segment of CNN’s State of the Union, Romney told host Jake Tapper that the party had taken a “different course” from its target concerns with free trade, limited government spending and containing Russia.

After discussing foreign policy, namely China and Russia, Tapper proceeded to press Romney about his tendency to break with the Republican Party. Particularly, Tapper alluded to the senators lone vote in the Senate impeachment trial to convict Trump of abuse of power, saying, “Senator, you’re consistently one of the only Republicans in Washington willing to criticize President Trump and break with your party on issues of principle. There are two or three guys in the House. You’re pretty alone in the Senate.”

“Well, the party has taken a different course than, obviously, the one that I knew as a younger person,” Romney said. “The party that I knew is one that was very concerned about Russia and [Vladimir] Putin and Kim Jong Un and North Korea, and we pushed back aggressively against them. We were a party concerned about balancing the budget. The party that I knew is one that was very concerned about Russia and Putin and Kim Jong-un and North Korea. We pushed back aggressively against them. We were a party concerned about balancing the budget. We believed in trade with other nations. We were happy to play a leadership role on the world stage, because we felt that made us safer and more prosperous. And we believed that character was essential in the leaders that we chose.”