Trump coaxes Hatch to run again for U.S. Senate
SALT LAKE CITY — President Donald Trump on Monday encouraged 83-year-old Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch to extend his streak as the longest-serving Republican in Senate history.
Trump praised Hatch as “a true fighter” during a joint appearance in Utah.
“We hope you will continue to serve your state and your country in the Senate for a very long time to come,” the Republican president told Hatch, who is contemplating retirement as the end of his seventh term approaches.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, is considering running for Hatch’s seat — but only if Hatch retires.
Hatch, who traveled to Utah on Monday aboard Air Force One, said as he disembarked at the end of the day that Trump had been urging him to run. But he said he didn’t make any promises to the president.
“We’ll have to see,” he said.
No president has tried to eliminate a monument, but some have reduced or redrawn the boundaries on 18 occasions, according to the National Park Service. The most recent instance came in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy slightly downsized Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico.
Trump’s move against Bears Ears, covering lands considered sacred to tribes that long pushed for protections, marks his latest affront to Native Americans.
Trump overrode tribal objections to approve the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines, and he used a recent White House event honoring Navajo Code Talkers to take a political jab at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-mass., whom he has nicknamed “Pocahontas” for her claim to have Native American heritage.
Las Vegas Review-journal writer Henry Brean contributed to this report.