Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) “issued a scathing condemnation of President Trump’s leadership” throughout the coronavirus pandemic while speaking with CNN‘s Wolf Blitzer Thursday night. He called Trump’s rhetoric a “great human tragedy.”
“Well, this hasn’t been the focus of his rhetoric, apparently, and I think it’s a great human tragedy, without question,” Romney said when prompted for a response to the pandemic under the Trump administration.
Romney said he believed the pandemic might not have been so shocking if a mask mandate was issued uniformly.
“Well, no question, unless you take this very, very seriously and communicate that this is not a political matter, this is not a matter of liberty, this is a matter of safety and public health,” Romney responded. “And we have people who are very, very sick, many people in the hospital. We have people who have died and are dying. It’s unacceptable.”
He added, “We needed to have a far clearer message from the very beginning.”
Blitzer also asked Romney to share his thoughts on the president’s so-called election “fraud” scheme.
“The idea of widespread fraud has simply not been shown to us … For the president or anyone else to go out and allege widespread fraud and say the election is rigged, and the election was stolen, that obviously strikes at the very foundation of democracy,” Romney told CNN.
He added, “For the president to go out and allege widespread fraud and say the election is rigged,” Romney said. “Russia and China have to be just laughing.”
Watch the clip below.