Romney secretly urged Biden take on Trump back in 2018, book claims

Senator Mitt Romney urged Joe Biden to run for president in 2020 to defeat Donald Trump on the night of the 2018 midterm elections, a new book claims.

The call was reported in Gabriel Debenedetti’s forthcoming book The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, which will be released next week, The Guardian reports.

Mr Romney lost to Mr Biden and Mr Obama in 2012 when he was the Republican presidential nominee with then-Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate.

On election night in 2018, Mr Biden called numerous candidates, but also spoke to Mr Romney, who had won the Senate election in Utah. Despite the fact Mr Trump endorsed Mr Romney in 2012, Mr Romney emerged as the most prominent critic of the president within the Republican Party.

At the same time, Mr Romney courted Mr Trump about being his Secretary of State. Still, Mr Romney urged the former vice president to run for president.

“At one point he connected with Mitt Romney, who’d been easily elected to the Senate that night as a rare Trump-opposing Republican. They were warm as Biden cheered Romney’s win,” Mr Debenedetti reports. “Then Obama’s old rival got to the point: You have to run, Romney said.”

Mr Debenedetti says in the notes of his book “When someone’s words are rendered in italics, that indicates an approximation based on the memories of sources who did not recall exact wordings.”

Mr Romney voted to convict Mr Trump during the former president’s first impeachment in 2020, making him the first Senator to convict a president of their own party. He later voted to convict Mr Trump for his second impeachment trial for his role inciting the January 6 riot.

Since Mr Biden’s election, Mr Romney has occasionally worked with Mr Biden, helping to negotiate the bipartisan infrastructure bill last year and voting to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court when Mr Biden nominated her.