There was nearly no mention of Joe Biden in the long, simmering preamble to the 2020 Democratic primaries. The septuagenarian had largely been seen as a horse already put out to pasture, having gone out on the tails of a strange meme-resurgence that painted him as the oblivious white fuddy-duddy to Barack Obama’s much smoother operating style.
But then, as it became clear that Donald Trump was going to steamroll just about anybody the Democrats trotted out there, the party began to panic.
As it turned out, some within the Republican Party began to panic as well.
On the night of the 2018 midterm elections, as a wave of anti-Trump sentiment swept Democrats to take control of the House, top Republican Mitt Romney urged Joe Biden to run for president.
“You have to run,” said Romney, the Republican presidential nominee Biden and Barack Obama defeated in 2012, speaking to the former vice-president by phone.
The same night, Romney was elected a US senator from Utah, a post from which he would twice vote to convict Donald Trump in impeachment trials.
Romney’s exhortation to a man then seen as a likely challenger to Donald Trump in 2020 will probably further enrage the former president, his supporters and the Republican party they dominate.
Mitt Romney has long been a known nemesis to Donald Trump, but this revelation paints him as a traitor to the entire Republican Party as well – something that certainly isn’t going to sit well with the rise of the MAGA Movement with the ranks of the GOP.
