Tangle - Mitt Romney retires.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Starting point is 00:01:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my tape. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Senator Mitt Romney, the Republican from Utah who just announced that he will be retiring after his term ends. We're going to talk about some of the reactions from the right and the left to that retirement and what I think about it. Before we jump in, though, as always, we're going to kick things off with some quick hits. First up, Iran freed five wrongfully detained Americans in exchange for clemency for five Iranians who had been convicted of nonviolent crimes. The U.S. is also giving

Starting point is 00:02:05 access to $6 billion of funds that were frozen by American sanctions. Number two, top leaders from over 145 countries will convene in New York City for the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Volodymyr Zelensky, who just dismissed his entire defense cabinet after a series of corruption scandals, is expected to attend before speaking in Washington, D.C. Number three, Hunter Biden sued the IRS, alleging that it illegally disclosed his tax information and failed to safeguard his personal records. Number four, Bill Maher, Jennifer Hudson, and Drew Barrymore all reversed their decisions to resume their talk shows amid the ongoing writer's strike. Number five, President Donald Trump said he will skip the GOP debate on September 27th in California, instead opting to travel to Detroit for a speech.

Starting point is 00:03:11 on Capitol Hill, Senator Mitt Romney, known for breaking ranks with his party, says it's time to move on. Utah Senator Mitt Romney will not run for reelection in 2024. In a statement, the 76 year old referred to his age, saying, quote, It's time for a new generation of leaders. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, the first Mormon nominated by a major party. As senator, Romney was the only Republican in the chamber to vote to impeach Donald Trump. I've spent my last 25 years in public service of one kind or another. At the end of another term,

Starting point is 00:03:52 I'd be in my mid-80s. Frankly, it's time for a new generation of leaders. Last week, Romney announced he would not seek re-election in 2024, opting instead to retire after one term as senator in 2025. Romney resisted pleas from colleagues like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky to stay in the Senate, citing his age and a changing party for his decision. Romney's decision likely means an end to his career in politics that has spanned several levels of government in multiple states. Romney's father, George, was the governor of Michigan and served in President Richard Nixon's administration. Romney became a multimillionaire in private equity business before running for governor himself, winning a 2002 race in Massachusetts. He ran for president twice, first in 2008 and again in 2012, when he won the Republican primary and ran against Barack Obama. Romney then moved to Utah, where he was elected to the Senate in 2018. He's widely considered the most successful Mormon politician in American history.

Starting point is 00:04:50 After a Senate election, Romney would become one of the most outspoken critics of President Donald Trump and the only Republican senator who voted to convict him at both of his impeachment trials. Those votes and his criticism of a new wave of Trump-like politicians caused his support in Utah to dip and many of his Republican colleagues to now view him as a pariah. In June, a Deseret News poll found that Utah Republicans said Trump best represented them compared to Romney by a 47% to 39% margin, though Romney's poll numbers appeared to rebound recently. By stepping away, Utah's Senate seat is likely to be taken over by a politician more aligned with Trump, much like Senator Mike Lee, the other Republican senator

Starting point is 00:05:30 from Utah. In stepping down, Romney said he hoped to see Biden and Trump both leave politics and let younger candidates run, and said he planned to dedicate his time to ushering in younger Americans to politics. Trump called the retirement fantastic news for America. Shortly after the news of the retirement broke, journalist McKay Coppins published an excerpt from a forthcoming biography on Romney, which included details on the way Republicans would disparage Trump behind closed doors, how they navigated Trump's impeachment inquiry, harsh criticisms from Romney about the direction of his party, and Romney's firsthand experience during the January 6th riots. Today, we're going to take a look at some reactions from the left and the right, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left offers a mix of praise and

Starting point is 00:06:29 criticism in response to Romney's announcement, noting the many ways in which he stands out from the rest of the GOP. Some say Romney was a force for good in his willingness to work across the aisle, even as he was attacked by his Republican colleagues for it. Others suggest that in his announcement, Romney is ignoring the role he played in creating the same GOP that he's criticizing. In the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg wrote about Romney's tragic ambivalence. In announcing he won't run for re-election, Romney said it's time for a new generation of political leadership. The problem with this argument is that Romney despises the next generation of Republican leaders. He's watched the transformation of Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio into a Trump lackey with disgust. He's similarly contemptuous of Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri

Starting point is 00:07:15 for indulging the lies that led to the January 6th insurrection. I doubt he's a fan of the Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz or the hucksterist presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy, Goldberg said. Romney has given up on a second Senate term because his brand of stolid, upstanding conservatism has become obsolete, replaced with a conspiratorial, histrionic, and sometimes violent authoritarianism. His reluctance to say so clearly at the cost of breaking with his party definitively is evidence of something tragic in his character. Further, by putting age at the center of his argument, he's setting himself above the fray, pretending that both parties are equally at fault in bringing the country to this perilous pass. Romney has shown far more decency and courage in response to Trump than almost all his colleagues,

Starting point is 00:08:00 but in this case, he's still pulling his punches. The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board said it's time for Utah voters to step up when deciding who will take over Romney's Senate seat. Nothing in Mitt Romney's long political career became him like the leaving of it, the board said. Romney's announcement Wednesday that he was stepping aside after a single term in the U.S. Senate says a lot about the Utah's best-known and, outside the radical right wing of his own party, most admired politician. Much of it good. And it says a lot about the state of politics in America today. A lot of it bad. The GOP has been hijacked by a carnival barker with fascist leanings. Meanwhile, Romney's desire to work across the aisle when possible to reach solutions that serve the nation is increasingly derided by fellow Republicans, most of all here in Utah as some kind of treason.

Starting point is 00:08:50 For Utahans, the 2024 election will draw national attention and tons of outside money. Romney's successor will almost certainly be a Republican, given that party's supermajority in voter registration and activism. The question is, what kind of Republican? The kind that stands in the grand tradition of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, or the kind that can't open its mouth without embarrassing itself and the nation? Also in the New York Times, Jamil Bowie wondered if Romney's harsh words for his GOP colleagues are really sublimated criticism of himself. Romney's announcement has generated a number of odes, retrospectives, and more or less hagiographic assessments of his political career,

Starting point is 00:09:30 each colored by his genuinely admirable opposition to Donald Trump. Romney was, after all, the first senator in American history to ever vote to remove a president of his own party from office, Bowie said. But Romney also gave Trump credibility by accepting his endorsement in the 2012 Republican presidential primary. And beyond Trump, Romney, in both of his campaigns for president, eagerly and enthusiastically pandered to the right-wing rage and resentment that eventually found its champion in Trump. Romney was willing to say whatever it took to win power, which makes it interesting that he has such tough words for his colleagues who he says do the same. But speaking as an observer of his career, it seems to me that there are tough words that Romney ought to have for himself. And if he isn't

Starting point is 00:10:13 willing to go that far in public, he should at least do more than leave the scene with a parting jab at the former president. If Romney is serious about challenging extremism in the Republican Party, he can prove it by telling the country exactly who he thinks should prevail in the 2024 Trump-Biden rematch. All right, that is it for the leftist thing, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right is also conflicted in their takeaways from Romney's announcement, particularly on his criticism of Republicans. Some laud his consistent focus on policy over politics, even as his party has moved away from this approach. Others say there's been nothing courageous about his time in politics. In National Review, Philip Klein said Romney was no profile in political courage.

Starting point is 00:11:06 Though Romney may be remembered for his most recent role as a reasonable anti-Trump Republican senator, his broader career is one of political shapeshifting. He never had consistent ideological principles, he helped usher in an era of greater government control over healthcare, and he played a key role in the political rise of Donald Trump, Klein said. During his runs for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012, he desperately sought to change his image from being an independent-minded Northeastern Republican to becoming a staunch conservative. Further, Romney's weak-kneed, consultant-driven 2012 campaign is often cited as one reason why Trump's pugilistic brand of politics took hold of the party four years later. As a senator, Romney started to adopt the posture for which he is

Starting point is 00:11:50 most recently known, that is, as an independent-minded Republican who is willing to stand up to Trump when few others in his party would. But his attitude is not consistent with who he was earlier in his career, when he regularly changed his beliefs with breathtaking speed. Perhaps Romney was ultimately embarrassed by his political legacy up to that point of soulless pandering. Or, perhaps he never intended to serve a second term, Klein said. Either way, Romney should not be remembered as a profile in political courage. In CNN, Lanhee Jae-Chen, the policy director for Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, said the senator has left a remarkable legacy.

Starting point is 00:12:28 Romney possesses a pragmatic streak that has allowed him to partner with both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate on issues as wide-ranging as infrastructure reform, religious liberty, and overhaul of entitlements, Chen wrote. The departure of such a decent and dignified figure from public life is a loss for our country and politics. In my view, Romney is one of the last remaining true policy wonks in Congress, someone who takes time to understand a problem, revels in becoming well-versed in the details, and then makes informed decisions on how he should vote. He has never been strictly rooted

Starting point is 00:12:59 in politics or ideology. While Romney has repeatedly expressed dismay at his party, he is also not above self-critique. Recently, his observations about the state of the GOP have often been followed by self-critical musings about the role he might have played in facilitating the environment that exists today, and that he is willing to both reflect on and admit some fault is, in part, what defines him as a leader of conscience. Now, unencumbered and untroubled by a future election campaign, Romney has the opportunity to enjoy a grand finale by moving the needle even a little on the issues he cares about. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in

Starting point is 00:13:43 a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.

Starting point is 00:14:17 It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. In the American Conservative, Declan Leary wrote that Romney is both a coward and a narcissist. When the final history of the American empire is written, Mitt Romney, if remembered at all, will be remembered as a coward. As the leader of the private equity investment firm Bain Capital, he was complicit in the theft of innumerable American jobs, which were resold for profit to the tyrants of the second and third worlds, Leary said. As a politician, the best thing

Starting point is 00:14:59 that can be said of him is that he was never shrewd enough to lead his people to destruction, though he did try. In his retirement announcement and excerpts from his forthcoming biography, the picture that emerges is the overpowering image of a narcissist. Mitt Romney's first and final belief is in Mitt Romney. This is why he left his home state of Michigan, first to rebuild a fortune and then to usurp the old populist order of Massachusetts, the historic cradle of American conservatism. It is why, in that first successful campaign, Romney abandoned any pretense of both principle and conservatism, racing his opponent to the left on abortion, homosexuality, and just about everything else besides a promise to cut taxes, Leary said. It is also why he hopped states yet again to run for Senate in 2018. In Romney's eyes,

Starting point is 00:15:46 he is the one man standing in the breach, the paragon of virtue at the end of the republic. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So it shouldn't be a major story that a 76-year-old senator steps down after one term, but given where things are in our politics, it obviously is. Kudos to Romney. What he said was simple, to the point, and honest. It's something more politicians like him should say. I served, I'm of the retirement age, and it's something more politicians like him should say. I served, I'm of the retirement age, and it's time for the next generation of leaders. It isn't that hard. And honestly, who could blame him? He's healthy, he's a millionaire, he owns homes in Utah and

Starting point is 00:16:36 New Hampshire, he has five kids and 25 grandchildren. Who would choose to stick around for the Biden-Trump Wars 2.0 when you could live out the last years of your life with all that? It's the same thing to do. As a mile marker of this political moment, Romney is a fascinating person to consider. He represents so much that was condemnable about the older Republican Party and so much that was worth preserving about it, too. He is a political chameleon, changing color depending on who his audience was, moving freely between political positions when the time was right. He's a classic flip-flopper. Matt Taibbi once summarized his critics as calling him a cardboard opportunist who will say anything to get elected, which was spot on. firm that destroyed jobs. He made his career by borrowing money from others and leaving them with the bill. He was, in so many ways, precisely the kind of politician that made so many voters so resentful of Washington, D.C. that they turned to figures like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.

Starting point is 00:17:37 But, as he showed as a senator, he also represents so much about the old GOP that is worth preserving. He's willing to live in dissent, disagreeing openly with leadership or even the president that is from his own party. He is pragmatic, one of the few remaining moderates in the Senate, willing to work across party lines, and genuinely pursues fiscal responsibility. He adores traditions and norms, the real glue of Congress and, frankly, our nation, in this vast world of unwritten law. He is a Constitution-first politician, more interested in the law and the framers than social media clout or Twitter dunks. He wasn't in Congress acting like a celebrity or a pundit

Starting point is 00:18:15 or a social media influencer as so many politicians do today. Agree or disagree with him, he was genuinely trying to get things done and willing to find allies from any corner to get there. With his Senate days waning, it appears Romney is going to go out in a blaze of glory and the tell-all biography we got a taste of earlier this month has the whiff of a must-read. He is already dishing on all things he claims Republicans refuse to acknowledge publicly. He's an idiot, Mitch McConnell purportedly said of Trump. Some Republicans were scared to vote for impeachment because they feared for their lives, Romney claimed. New GOP senators like Ohio's J.D. Vance are simply playing a part, etc. I'll certainly be curious to see what his post-Senate confessionals look like.

Starting point is 00:18:59 For now, though, Romney is stepping away from an increasingly polarized and divided Senate, one where politicians like him seem to have a harder and harder go of it. On the simple math of how many senators are willing to criticize their own party and how many senators are willing to work across the aisle will be worse off without him. He's a flip-flopping political opportunist who happily sold out Americans to make his fortune and eagerly jumped states to climb the political rungs. But he's also one of the few left genuinely tied to tradition, willing to speak his mind, and unafraid of upsetting his party's base. When push came to shove, he spent his final years doing and saying what he actually

Starting point is 00:19:35 thought was right, even if he was wrong. The truth is, most everything you read about Romney from his critics and his allies is true. I'm glad he served in the Senate and I'm glad he's retiring. He chose the right time for both. All right, next up is your questions answered. This one is from Tony in Missouri. Tony said, I have heard that the big media story about mass graves in Canada containing indigenous children had turned out to be not proven. Is this another case of the media rushing to preconceived ideas? Can

Starting point is 00:20:11 you look into this? So, one of the biggest stories from 2021 was the discovery of what the New York Times described as a mass grave of Indigenous children at the Camp Loops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada. Apparently, some 215 children of the First Nation were buried on school grounds. The Canadian press called the discovery of the unmarked mass burial sites of Indigenous children the story of the year, as other sites have been found across Canada. However, nearly two years later, no graves have been confirmed. Further, some attempts to recover human remains suspected at other schools have conclusively uncovered no human remains. This is the biggest fake news story in

Starting point is 00:20:51 Canadian history, Tom Flanagan, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary, told the New York Post. All this about unmarked graves and missing children triggered a moral panic. They've come to believe things for which there is no evidence and it's taken on a life of its own. So first off, there's truly no way around it. The initial reporting from the New York Times and elsewhere was factually incorrect. Researchers surveyed the grounds of the Camp Loops Indian Residential School using ground-penetrating radar, also known as GPR, which can detect anomalies deep in the soil that indicate potential human remains, as the initial reporting of this story carefully described. Those anomalies are suspected to be buried bodies, but physical remains have yet to be recovered at Kamloops. However, an article

Starting point is 00:21:36 by Ian Austin published by the Times is still online claiming exactly that. Secondly, this whole story isn't exactly fake news for which there is no evidence, as Flanagan said in the post. The GPR findings aren't inclusive, but they are at least evidentiary. There's also a long, undeniable, and sordid history of forced relocation and assimilation programs of First Nations children in Canada, a history that many Canadians were cognizant of when reacting to this story with a shared sense of grief. As Jonathan K wrote in an excellent and thorough piece in Collette, no one disputes that many students were subject to cruel and sometimes even predatory treatment and substandard medical care. Certainly

Starting point is 00:22:15 the death rate for Indigenous children attending these schools was much higher than that for children in the general population. The initial 2021 reporting conflated preliminary findings of GPR anomalies with confirmed findings of human remains. The coverage definitely indicated confirmation bias, or what Kay called the herd behavior of Canada's intellectual class. But that overzealousness also sparked an equally overzealous reaction of broad denialism, which is a false belief on a much larger scale. The upshot here is that we know that terrible dehumanizing things took place at these schools, but what we can't be certain of is whether these preliminary GPR findings are of mass graves. There have been a lot of GPR

Starting point is 00:22:55 detected anomalies near Indian relocation schools, but we don't yet know what we'll discover from those findings. All right, that is it for our reader question today, which brings us to our under the radar section. On September 6th, a missile strike in eastern Ukraine went down as one of the deadliest in months, killing at least 15 civilians and injuring more than 30 others. President Volodymyr Zelensky and many U.S. media outlets pinned the strike on Russia, but a new analysis of missile fragments, satellite imagery, witness accounts, and social media posts from the New York Times strongly suggest the deadly strike was launched by Ukraine and an errant missile from its air defense system accidentally landed in the heavily populated market. The attack appears to have been a tragic mishap, the Times reports. A spokesman for

Starting point is 00:23:43 Ukraine's armed forces says it is investigating the incident, but can't comment any further. The New York Times has this story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. Mitt Romney's job approval rating among Utah Republicans in May was just 40%, according to Deseret News. In August, that approval rating was up to 56%. The percentage of all Utah voters who said they strongly or somewhat approve of Romney's performance was 54%, according to an August poll. Romney's estimated net worth as of 2018 was $174 million. Romney's wealth ranking among members of Congress is seventh, according to a 2021 report. The number of Republicans who voted to impeach or convict Donald Trump that are still in Congress, including Mitt Romney, is now six out of the 17.

Starting point is 00:24:40 All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. The World Health Organization estimates that 10 million people across the globe are infected by tuberculosis every year. And despite the existence of life-saving technology and medicine, 1.6 million still die of the airborne illness each year. These are facts that motivated the author and philanthropist John Green to get involved. It's the deadliest disease in human history, but for most of human history, we couldn't do much about it. However, since the mid-1950s, TB has been curable, yet we still allow TB to kill over 1.6 million people per year, Green said. This is horrifying to me. Green and his group of nerd fighters have already been successful in getting Johnson & Johnson to share its patent on the TB drug betaquiline, and it's now pressuring testing manufacturers to make their products cheaper

Starting point is 00:25:29 and more accessible. Good Good Good has the story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and consider becoming a member. Don't forget, we've got a new video up on our YouTube channel asking the question whether college is still worth it. Getting some interesting feedback on that video. Be sure to check it out. We'll be right back here, same time tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:26:01 Have a good one. Peace. Elena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll be right back. to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider Thank you.

Tangle - Mitt Romney retires.

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