DON’S MITT STORM
President Trump took a shot at Republican Sen. Mitt Romney on Monday — and commended Democrats for their solidarity in the impeachment inquiry while calling on fellow GOPers to get “tougher and fight” to defend him.
Democrats “want open borders. They don’t care about crime. They want sanctuary cities. They don’t care about drugs. They don’t care about almost anything. They don’t care about USMCA. I think they’re lousy politicians,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, referring to the US-Mexico-Canada trade pact.
“But two things they have — they’re vicious and they stick together. They don’t have Mitt Romney in their midst. They don’t have people like that.”
Blasting House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, Trump said he watched a “couple of people on television” who talked about “what a phony deal it is. What a phony investigation it is.”
“And Republicans have to get tougher and fight,” he went on. “We have some that are great fighters, but they have to get tougher and fight because the Democrats are trying to hurt the Republican Party for the election, which is coming up, where we’re doing very well.”
While Trump slammed Romney, he praised Rep. Will Hurd (RTexas), who defended the president’s phone conversation with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, which sparked the inquiry.
“That’s why I respected so much what I watched with Will Hurd today because he was one of the few who didn’t seem to be there and yet he made a statement: ‘I haven’t seen any complaints whatsoever from the Ukrainians,’ ” Trump said.
Romney (R-Utah) called out Trump in an Axios interview aired Sunday for asking Ukraine and China to find dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“We certainly can’t have presidents asking foreign countries to provide something of political value. That is, after all, against the law,” Romney told Axios.
During the White House meeting, Trump once again defended the July 25 phone chat with Zelensky as “perfect” and lashed out at House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, who is leading the impeachment effort.
“Schiff is a corrupt politician,” he said, declaring that the two whistleblowers in the incident “seemed to have disappeared.”
“So was there actually an informant? Maybe the informant was Schiff. In my opinion, it’s possibly Schiff,” Trump said.
Republican allies of Trump sought a House censure of the California Democrat for his handling of the inquiry.
The resolution claimed that Schiff “manufactured a false retelling” of Trump’s telephone call with Zelensky during a congressional hearing last month.
But the Democratic-led House voted 218-185 Monday night to table the resolution.