
Romney stands by Trump criticism but says MAGA is now the Republican Party
CNN
Sen. Mitt Romney, a frequent Donald Trump critic who will soon retire from Congress, stood by his criticism of the president-elect’s character but said Trump and his MAGA movement now define the Republican Party.
Sen. Mitt Romney, a frequent Donald Trump critic who will soon retire from Congress, stood by his criticism of the president-elect’s character but said Trump and his MAGA movement now define the Republican Party. “I’m, as you know, not a supporter of President Trump’s. I didn’t support him in this election. I didn’t the last time he ran either, largely for matters of character,” the Utah Republican, who was the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a wide-ranging interview on “State of the Union” on Sunday. But Romney acknowledged Trump’s grip on the party he once led. “MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today,” he said. Asked about his sustained criticism of Trump, which dates to the president-elect’s first White House run in 2016, Romney described himself as “kinda outspoken” and said he felt that Trump “was wrong for the country, wrong for our party, that he wouldn’t win,” but he noted, “I was wrong about that.” “I think most people disagree with me. I’m willing to live with that. I just put emphasis on different things than I think the public at large does right now,” he said.

The Justice Department’s leadership asked career prosecutors in Florida Tuesday to volunteer over the “next several days” to help to redact the Epstein files, in the latest internal Trump administrationpush toward releasing the hundreds of thousands of photos, internal memos and other evidence around the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The US State Department on Tuesday imposed visa sanctions on a former top European Union official and employees of organizations that combat disinformation for alleged censorship – sharply ratcheting up the Trump administration’s fight against European regulations that have impacted digital platforms, far-right politicians and Trump allies, including Elon Musk.











