Mitt Romney entertained the idea of serving Donald Trump as secretary of state – a flirtation that ended in humiliation on the world stage – out of “a mix of noble motivations and self-centered ones”, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, now a Utah senator, reflects in a new biography.
Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins, the product of close cooperation between biographer and subject, will be published in the US on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.
In late 2016, Trump had won the presidency in one of the biggest political shocks of all time but, Coppins writes, nonetheless “clearly needed all the help he could get when it came to foreign affairs.
“… Unlike past presidents-elect who carefully coordinated with the state department before having any post-election conversations with world leaders, Trump was haphazardly taking calls on an unsecured line without regard for protocol or diplomacy.
“… None of these faux pas were catastrophic on their own, but they signaled a fundamental unseriousness. ‘I looked at what was happening in the world, and these were really troubling times,’ Romney told me.”
According to Coppins, Romney identified issues including the emergence of China and the danger of Russian aggression and thought: “Somebody had to quell the chaos … or the results could be disastrous.”
But the former Massachusetts governor, who ran for president in 2008 and 2012 and according to Coppins even considered a late “unity” bid in 2016 with Ted Cruz to stop Trump, could not shake his own hunger for power once Trump had won.
“[Romney] wanted the job. ‘I like being involved and being in the middle of things, and having something important to do,’ he admitted. ‘It’s like, you know, I wanted to be president. If you can’t be president, being secretary of state’s not a bad spot to come thereafter.’”
During the election, appalled by Trump’s reluctance to disavow support from David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Romney denounced Trump as a fraud and a phony. That did not stop Trump dangling the most senior cabinet role in front of him.
According to Coppins, Mike Pence, the vice-president-elect, called Romney with the offer. Romney demurred, then called back and said he would be “honored” to meet with Trump. “Looking back on it later,” Coppins writes, “Romney would acknowledge that his willingness to entertain Trump’s offer was propelled by a mix of noble motivations and self-centered ones.”
The meeting, at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, provided Romney’s first taste of the media gauntlet to come. Cameras caught him entering and leaving. Inside, Coppins says, Romney told Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and advisers Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus he would accept the job on four conditions.
Romney wanted a standing weekly meeting with the president; control of all foreign policy; to select his own deputies; and veto power over ambassadorial appointments. Romney, Coppins writes, “dreaded the prospect of overseeing a diplomatic corps polluted by Paul Manaforts and Roger Stones” – Republican operatives eventually convicted (and pardoned) in connection with their work for Trump.
Coppins says Trump raised no objections, dismissed his aides and told Romney he was “right out of central casting … perfect … just what I need”. Pence, however, told Romney he needed to go tell the media he had been wrong to attack Trump, and “that what you’ve learned has given you much more confidence in him being president”.
“Romney nearly guffawed,” Coppins writes, describing how Romney pointed out how ridiculous he would look if he reversed after a mere one-hour meeting but adding: “It would not occur … until later that Trump didn’t care about the sincerity of the retraction – he wanted a show of subjugation, nothing more.”
Romney parried press questions and left, figuring he would not hear from Trump again. But “a wide range of prominent people”, reportedly including Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, all former secretaries of state, and the former president George W Bush, urged him to stay in the running.
Ten days later, Priebus invited Romney to Trump Tower in New York, for a dinner Coppins says stayed “friendly and insubstantial”, because regular guests were also dining, meaning sensitive subjects could not be discussed.
But “the most memorable document of the evening was a photograph … of the two men at their table. Trump is smirking impishly at the camera, his face awash in Can-you-believe-I-got-him-to-do-this? glee. Romney’s lips are pursed, his eyebrows raised in forlorn defeat. Adding to the effect, they are both underlit by a soft orange glow that looks as if it is emanating from the bowels of hell.”
The picture went viral, social media users saying it showed Romney’s willingness to sell his soul for power. Coppins says Romney insists “his expression in the photo was not humiliation or shame, but simply irritation at being photographed. ‘It had nothing to do with Donald Trump. It had to do with the awkwardness of being in a public restaurant and cameras coming in and taking pictures.’”
“But,” Coppins writes, “sometimes a photo can convey a truth greater than the actual moment it captures.”
