GOP Sen. Mitt Romney Says Trump Supporters Are ‘Out Of Touch With Reality’

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) criticized supporters of Donald Trump for not caring that the former president sexually assaulted columnist E. Jean Carroll and refusing to believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected.

“I think a lot of people in this country are out of touch with reality and will accept anything Donald Trump tells them,” the former presidential candidate told CNN. “You had a jury that said that Donald Trump raped a woman. And that doesn’t seem to be moving the needle. There’s a lot of things about today’s electorate that I have a hard time understanding.”

Romney stated his belief that voters have expressed less faith in the nation’s institutions – such as the media – and that this lack of faith has helped Trump.

“Don’t look at me,” Romney stated. “It had an impact on me. I don’t know why people don’t respond the way we did a decade ago, but I think part of it is we just don’t have the same trust we used to have in institutions and I’m talking about the media, the press generally.”

The former presidential candidate said the lack of trust also extends to the American judicial system.

“We don’t have the trust in those institutions that we once did,” he claimed. “If someone is convicted, my guess is some people say, ‘Well, that’s just the partisans who convicted them.’ That is very different than what we’ve seen in the past.”

Romney declared that if the United States is going to pull through and do so as a great democracy, then people must be confident in its institutions again.

“That requires leaders that call on us to come together and work together and find common ground, as opposed to leaders in the field of the most extreme wing of their respective party,” he stated.

When Romney was asked whether he believes the former president is a threat to democracy, he replied by saying that he is worried about extremism being conveyed by both Democrats and Republicans.

“But most of the observers that are saying what are the greatest threats in the world today are saying the dysfunction of American government is one of the greatest threats, if not the greatest,” the senator said.

He noted that this dysfunction is the country’s greatest threat, not just because of politicians, but because Americans are less united, less angry and have less faith in one another.

“And we have been [behaving this way] for a long time,” Romney argued. “And that I think, is a real threat to our future and we need to come together. In the past, great leaders have been able to make that happen. We’re not seeing that today.”

In October 2023, Romney declared that he would vote for a Democrat over the former president or entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 presidential election.

Romney was in the news last month when he wrote in his book that Oprah asked him to run for president with her on a “unity ticket.”