Romney felt a pit in his stomach on Trump’s early election numbers: book

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Senator Mitt Romney predicted Trump’s election victory early on election night, in a new book. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, noted Biden’s less powerful performance in Florida. Romney has not voted for Trump in any of the Republican presidential campaigns. Subscribe to our daily 10 Things in Politics newsletter. Something is loading.

On election night last November, Senator Mitt Romney watched the early results and developed a “hole in his stomach” in President Donald Trump’s strong performance in early states, an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Washington Post correspondent Carol D. Philip Rucker said.

The Utah Republican, the 2012 GOP presidential candidate who has had a turbulent relationship with Trump over the years, has been watching the returns with his wife Anne and other members of his family and saw the early numbers as positive for the president.

In fact, the numbers were “surprisingly good” for Trump, with incumbent President Joe Biden performing poorly in Miami-Dade County, Florida, where Democratic presidential candidates need to perform strongly in order to capture the swaying, populous state.

That night, Romney told his family that Trump would win the presidential election, as stated in the excerpt from “Only I Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Disastrous Final Year.”

“I think he’s going to win,” Romney said in the book. “The polls were out of reach. I think he’ll pull it off.”

In the White House, the mood was cheerful early into the night, and Trump supporters were delighted with the initial results.

According to the excerpt, Matt Oczykowski, who is responsible for Trump’s statements, saw positive signs in the president’s overperformance among Florida’s minority groups, along with his success in turning out white voters in rural North Carolina.

However, Trump campaign manager Bill Stebbin has tried to keep the president’s expectations in check, telling him to “keep calm” as states continue to report their findings, according to the excerpt.

Read more: Where are Trump’s White House staff now? We built a searchable database of 327+ senior employees to show where they all come from

Romney, less shocked by Trump’s 2016 victory than most, has seen the Republican Party become more religious to far-right figures over the years, but still seeks to deny the president a second term in office.

As the night wore on and states called for Biden, along with the fact that several key states had more votes to count, expectations for a Trump victory became increasingly dim.

Instead, Trump, eager to be declared winner on election night, gave an early morning speech in which he challenged the validity of the remaining votes and sought to have the Supreme Court in the race.

Romney expressed his “sadness” after watching the president’s nationally televised address, according to the excerpt.

“We are in a global battle for the survival of liberal democracy in the face of authoritarian regimes and authoritarian regimes that are trying to take over the world,” he said. “So saying something and doing things that would suggest that in the free nation of the United States of America and the model of democracy for the world, that we cannot have free and fair elections would have a devastating effect on democracy around the world, it is not just mentioned here.”

The senator voted to convict Trump of abuse of power in the first impeachment trial for that role in the Ukraine scandal, and later went on to vote to convict the former president of inciting rebellion in connection with the January 6 riots at the Capitol in his second impeachment trial.

Trump was acquitted of charges in both Senate trials, with the upper house failing to reach the two-thirds threshold needed for a conviction.

Romney said last year that he did not vote for Trump in the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections.

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