Campaign

Buttigieg: It was ‘disgraceful’ to hear Trump’s attacks on Romney

by Julia Manchester - 02/06/20 10:35 PM ET

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Democratic presidential hopeful and former mayor of South Bend, Ind., Pete Buttigieg condemned President Trump’s attacks on Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday after the senator’s vote to convict the president on one charge during the impeachment trial, calling Trump’s remarks “disgraceful.”

“It was disgraceful, especially to hear the way he attacked Sen. Romney for clearly following his own conscience and being more concerned about, as Sen. Romney clearly was, more concerned about the judgment of history and perhaps about his relationship with God, than about party loyalty,” Buttigieg told CNN’s Chris Cuomo at a town hall.

Romney took the political world by surprise on Wednesday when he voted to convict Trump on the charge of abuse of power, saying “the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust” and “a flagrant assault on our electoral rights.” However, he did not vote to convict the president on the second charge of impeachment, obstruction of Congress.

Trump in turn launched a series of attacks on the Utah senator, who has had a contentious relationship with the president for years.

“Had failed presidential candidate @MittRomney devoted the same energy and anger to defeating a faltering Barack Obama as he sanctimoniously does to me, he could have won the election,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

Trump later referred to Romney during the National Prayer Breakfast, claiming that he used his faith as a justification to convict the president.

“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” the president said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also defended Romney in the face of Trump’s attacks at the CNN town hall on Thursday.

“I think that Mitt Romney showed a great deal of courage and I wish there were other Republicans that shared the same sense of decency,” Sanders said.