Romney: 'I'm not running'
The 2012 Republican nominee also says he was once complimented by a masseuse on his legs.
A day after the New York Times Magazine published a profile of Mitt Romney in which he seemed to leave the door wide open for another presidential run, the 2012 Republican nominee appeared to close it.
"I'm not running," Romney told Bloomberg Politics' Mark Halperin and John Heilemann on Monday. "I'm not planning on running, and I got nothing new on that story."
Romney was asked if he'd consider throwing his hat in the ring if the GOP field ultimately does not include former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
"Well, I think Jeb is an excellent person, could be a terrific president," Romney said. "I think that about a lot of the people who are running on the Republican side or who I think will get in. My guess is you're going to see 15 or so people on the stage at the first debate. I don't know who they all are going to be at this stage."
But does he think any of them can win?
"Among those people, we're going to find someone who catches fire, who ignites the interest of the Republican base, and you're going to see someone who can go on to become president," Romney said.
That someone, he said, is not him.
In the Times profile, Romney, who was soundly defeated by President Barack Obama in 2012, left the possibility of another White House run open.
“We’ve got a lot of people looking at the race,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”
In June Romney dismissed talk that a GOP fundraising event he hosted in Park City, Utah — attended by many of those same potential nominees — was a precursor to another presidential run for him.
"I'm not running for president," he said on "Meet the Press." "I brought a number of the 2016 contenders here to meet with my fundraisers. If I had been running, I wouldn't be doing that."
On Monday, Romney was asked to recall the oddest thing to ever happen to him on the campaign trail.
"I shook so many hands at a couple of events that I began to get kind of a kink my back," he said. "So I asked the guy who traveled with me, Garrett Jackson, who's a brilliant guy, I said, 'Can you find someone to get me a back massage at the hotel tonight?' We were at the Marriott San Francisco Airport hotel. And he got a massage therapist I think from the Ritz-Carlton to come over and come in our room. And so he sat there to make sure that we had two people there at all times. And she gave me a massage. And she was Hispanic-American. And after I left to go get changed and showered and so forth, she turned to [Jackson] and so forth and she said, 'Is he a dancer?'"
Why did she think that?
"The legs, strong legs," Romney joked. "They're bird legs actually, but she thought they were strong."
