Mitt Romney just publicly raked Trump over the coals for trashing America’s character

The morning after the first Republican finally managed the courage to tell his colleagues and the world that the emperor has no clothes, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) chimed in to say essentially that he’s ugly too.

Yesterday, Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI) shocked his party with a lengthy Twitter thread explaining that after having read the entire Mueller report he could only conclude that President Trump’s conduct has risen to the level of impeachable offenses.

This morning, Senator Romney added insult to injury in an appearance on CNN‘s State of the Union. While the Utah senator hesitated in joining Representative Amash’s conclusion that Trump was worthy of trying for impeachment, his indictment of the president’s moral character was as damning for Trump as any calls for his removal from office.

“I think he could substantially improve his game when it comes to helping shape the character of the country,” Romney began his assessment of the president’s role as a behavioral examplar for the nation.

“I think young people, as well as people around the world, look at the president of the United States and say ‘does he exhibit the kind of qualities that we would want to emulate?’ And those are qualities of humility, of honesty, integrity,” he continued.

While those qualities may be so alien to President Trump that he may need to research their meanings in a dictionary, Romney has no illusions about what he believes the true answer to his rhetorical question will surely be, and in his patrician manner, he provided it in the most delicate way possible.

“The president has distanced himself from some of the best qualities of the human character,” Romney judged the president.

While the former presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor may have couched his words in a curiously passive and emotionless form, the essence of his opinion about Trump’s sociopathic behavior is perfectly clear.

The wall of Republican unity protecting the misdeeds of their leader is crumbling as incriminating new details of the coverup of his attempts to obstruct justice and his financial scandals emerge with each passing day.

Now the Democratic leadership has to decide whether they will stand by principles and begin impeachment proceedings or continue to dither over political calculations that merely further embolden an administration that remains unchecked from destroying the constitutional order of our democracy.

With the GOP glacier beginning to melt, the time to move is now.

You can watch an excerpt of Senator Mitt Romney’s appearance on CNN‘s State of the Union in the video clip below.

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Original reporting by Rachel Frazin at The Hill.

Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.