The Daily - Mitt Romney’s Lonely Vote

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

President Trump was acquitted by the Senate on Wednesday of both articles of impeachment. While the vote largely fell along party lines, one senator crossed the aisle to vote to convict him. Today, we hear from Senator Mitt Romney about that choice.Guest: Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who spoke with Mark Leibovich, the Washington-based chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: In a speech before voting to convict, Mr. Romney grew emotional as he pronounced the president “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.”“I think this is Senator Romney’s moment to shine,” Senator Amy Klobuchar said before the vote, “I hope he can bring some people with him.” Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at Mr. Romney’s isolation in the Senate and the expectations placed on him before his vote.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, President Donald Trump is acquitted of both articles of impeachment. Just one senator crossed party lines to vote to convict him. Just one senator crossed party lines to vote to convict him. A conversation with Mitt Romney about that decision. It's Thursday, February 6th. Mark Leibovich, tell me about these conversations that you've been having with Senator Mitt Romney.

Well, Mitt Romney has always fascinated me as kind of a wild card in his political life. As a moderate governor of Massachusetts, as a, quote, severely conservative presidential candidate in 2012. Then as a critic of Donald Trump when Donald Trump took over the party, then as a potential Donald Trump cabinet member when he talked to him about being Secretary of State in 2016, then as a Senate candidate, someone who I wouldn't say embraced Donald Trump, but someone who certainly didn't push him away, and then as a senator, someone who has been fairly unshy at times about defying Donald Trump, being critical of him. Right. Somebody who is seen as ideologically malleable, someone who's seen as inconsistent. Correct. And in this impeachment proceeding, he has been the

ultimate wildcard. No one knew what he was going to do, really. People had ideas back and forth, but you never know what you're going to get with Mitt Romney. So I had been asking his office, and I'm certainly not the only reporter who had been asking, whether I could hang around with him a little bit, whether I could actually go through this process with him, which I figured was a bit of a long shot because he's been in such demand. And to my surprise, last week, like right as we were leading up to the big vote on witnesses, Mitt Romney agreed to sit down with me. We went up to his hideaway office, which is like a kind of remote office. Every senator gets one. And Mitt Romney's was filled with M&Ms. This was like a little break in the proceedings, so we didn't have a lot of time.

I feel your body language, so I'm going to be real quick here. And I was amazed at how open he was about the kinds of things he was thinking about. Hello. Hi. It's good to see you. Good to see you. So, sitting there, you've sat there now, what, a week and a half? No, it's been a couple of months.

It's been a couple of months. It feels like a couple of months. What do we say, nine days? Does the experience of sitting in the chamber listening to this day in and day out intensify the burden at all? Does it make it seem weightier? Does it make it seem less weighty? What's it been like for you? I think it was most weighty having the chief justice come in

the first time and i think there was a a sense of how important this is and how historic it is we have to do what we feel feel is right in the case but i think we also have to think more broadly as to what are the implications nationally and what are the implications for the institution of the senate what about the presidency? And the presidency. Both. Put aside impeachment, what about just the nature of right and wrong? Like what a chief executive of this country should do? I mean, isn't that on trial to some degree?

Well, I think if there were a president that really was going to be removed under the crime or misdemeanor standard, he or she would have done something wrong by definition. But by and large, most matters of right and wrong associated with the president are going to be determined by the electorate in the upcoming election. Impeachment is not to judge right and wrong alone. It's to judge right and wrong in the context of has there been a high crime and misdemeanor. And one of the last things he brought up to me was a sense of obligation he felt to the

United States Constitution. This is, it's a constitutional issue. I feel a sense of deep responsibility to abide by the Constitution and to determine, absent the pulls from the right and the pulls from the left, what is the right thing to do, what does the Constitution demand? So it was very clear that this was weighing on him. Thank you. And I got sort of ushered out of his office, and he had to go back to the floor to continue the trial. Okay, wait, do we go this way or this way?

We're walking out. He goes back to the floor. I took a right turn in a hallway, and there was Amy Klobuchar, who was back in Washington for about 36 hours to do her impeachment stuff, taking a break from her presidential campaign. And I said, Senator, can I ask you a few questions about Mitt Romney? Good. Mitt Romney, have you thought of this role here, just as kind of a fellow centrist, not centrist, but someone who is a bit of a wild card in all this?

Yeah, yes. Okay. And the name Mitt Romney sort of stopped her in her tracks a little bit. Hold on. I'm sorry. Yes, that's a good question. So I hope he plays that leadership role that I think John McCain would have played if he was here. I thought like every hour about if Senator McCain was here. And she used this as sort of a prompt to talk about John McCain,

the very important role that John McCain, the maverick, played in the United States Senate as someone who could recruit other potentially dissident Republicans to his side and sort of create a counterforce within the prevailing force that is the Republican Party in the Senate. So she's raising the specter that Mitt Romney could be a John McCain in this moment, i.e. could buck the party and perhaps even take other Republicans with him in siding with Democrats in impeachment. Correct. She saw him as someone who was genuinely agonizing, someone who could be a leader and someone

that no one really had a grip on at this point. Has he demonstrated at all that he could have that sort of like capability to actually play the game? Well, at least he's been willing to tell the truth here about the need to have the witness, which I've appreciated. This is his moment to shine and hopefully he can bring some people with him. Thank you. So after my conversation with Amy Klobuchar, I left the Hill. I said to Romney's office,

I'd say, I'd love to keep in touch with him. We did not talk about his ultimate decision. He didn't want to talk about it yet. He made that pretty clear. But also, I wanted to get a window into his decision-making process, and we had about five days until this was all going to come to a head. So, to my surprise and delight, they said, come on back on Wednesday morning. Wow. The day of? The day of the decision. The day of the final vote. Senator. Long time no see.

I know. How are you? Okay, so on Wednesday morning, what happens? What do you do? Wednesday morning, 10.30, I went in to Mitt Romney's office. Let's do this. We have a table. Yeah, a little table there. I felt myself getting quite nervous, which is interesting because I almost, you always

sort of know what you're going to get in an interview. I just didn't know how this was going to go. This was a real jump ball. You called it a wild card. It was a wild card. You could call it whatever you want, but I just didn't know how this was going to go. He looked exactly like he always looks, which is fresh as a daisy.

He hadn't been sleeping, but he couldn't tell. He looked ready to go. He didn't look like he was in a mood for any kind of small talk. I wasn't either. Anyway, so anyone care about what you have to say today? Probably. Probably. All right. Well, let's get right to it. Do you have, you know how you're going to vote? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to vote yes on the first article, no on the second. He said that he would vote yes to convict the president on charges of

abuse of power, and he would vote no on the second impeachment article, which is obstruction of Congress. There's no question the president fought providing documents and witnesses, but he did so through the use of the law. And the House, in my view, should have gone to the courts to get that resolved. By not going to the courts, I don't think they make the case. And as soon as he started talking, I could see the emotion in his face. I could hear him not choke up, but certainly there was a strain in his voice that I had not heard before. On the first article, I think the case was made. And I believe that attempting to corrupt an election to maintain power is about as an egregious an assault on the Constitution

as can be made. And for that reason, it is a high crime and misdemeanor. And I have no choice under the oath I took, but to express that conclusion. He said, basically, I think he'd gone back and forth. There's an old Protestant hymn that we sing in our church called, Do what is right, let the consequence follow. I'm pretty, I'm sure I'm doing the right thing. I don't know that I can weigh the consequence at this stage, but it's going to be substantial.

Yeah, I mean, this is, it's interesting. Wow. I mean, I'm... But, you know, you know I'm a very religious person. And when you swear an oath before God to apply impartial justice, that's what I believe I have to do. Yeah. And by the way, I believe other senators do the same thing. I'm not the only one voting my conscience.

Yeah. I'm not the only one voting my conscience. But not voting my conscience in order for me to have a better political and personal benefit would subject my own conscience to its censure. So I just, I don't have a choice there. country must work, which is that people have to be seen as honest in fulfilling the oath that they take. When did you make this decision? I tried to keep from forming a final decision as I listened to both sides and I went all the way as a juror. As I was going, of course, sometimes I'd be sway swayed one way sometimes it'd be swayed the other i reached my conclusion really after the last day

of questions and answers so that would have been friday or thursday yeah yeah thursday but i can tell you that throughout the throughout this entire period there's not been a morning i've gotten up after 4 a.m yeah just obviously thinking about how important this is when the consequence is but then also analyzing going back and looking at the the testimony reading the briefs of the two sides going back through federalist papers uh and then applying logic to it what was it like for you to sit in or stand in some cases and through what was a very tribal gathering last night at the state of the union and i was watching you quite a bit because I was in the gallery. It was quite a speech.

You knew the current you were going to be swimming up against in 24 hours. What was that like? I think people have a very hard time understanding how you just don't vote with the team and how you can make a decision of this significance unless you're just doing it with the team. It's like's like well then think back to a jury you may have been on yeah and ask did you just go with whether it was a male or a female or a black or a white or hispanic or non-hispanic or did you try and apply a partial justice did you take your oath seriously and you take your

oath seriously i agree with most of the things the president has done. The policies he put in with regards to the economy are very close to the policies I campaigned on four years before. I agree with those things. The fact the economy is doing as well as it is is in part because of those policies. So he's going to take a bow for those policies. I'm with him. So I'm with the president. By the way, I think he's going to get reelected. I think if Bernie or Elizabeth is the nominee on the Democratic side, he'll get elected in a landslide.

I will still vote for the policies I agree with. I'll stand and applaud when he says things that are right. But then he did one thing we know of that was a very seriously wrong thing. It was a very seriously wrong thing. And not to call it grievously wrong would be to violate my oath, violate my conscience, subject me to the censure of history. What kind of consequences do you think you'll endure for this? Unimaginable. I don't know what they'll be. There's some I know.

I know there'll be consequence, and I just have to recognize that and do what you think is right. What was interesting to me, and this is one of those things that doesn't pick up so much on tape, but you see his facial expressions. I mean, Mitt Romney is a very smooth character in some ways. His face got red. He had a bit of dread in his eyes. It was as if he knew that a chandelier was about to drop on his head. The reason I wanted witnesses, and that was the area that there was the greatest discussion within our caucus, was we don't get witnesses. The reason I wanted to hear from John Bolton is that I hoped beyond measure

that he would say something that would provide reasonable doubt so I wouldn't have to vote to convict. So you were looking for reasons not to vote for him. Look, my personal and political and team affiliation may be very much not want to have to convict. I mean, I want to be with my colleagues in the Senate. I don't want to be the skunk at the garden party. I don't want to have the disdain of Republicans across the country. I was in a grocery store this weekend, and a guy went by me and said,

traitor. Where was this, in Utah? No, it was in Florida. I was down at one of Ann's competitions. Another person yelled from their car as I was taking my groceries out of the car, yelled from his car, stick with the team. So I recognize there's going to be a whole different level. But why do you think Romney did this interview with you?

I mean, he could have decided to show up and vote to convict the president. Why sit down with the New York Times and talk about all the agony and explain himself? Well, I mean, one thing I've always been interested in with Mitt Romney is that he has always been, not in a self-absorbed way, but he's always been very aware of his own political narrative.

He has been aware of how he was viewed maybe as a political opportunist, him maybe doing things out of expediency rather than principle. And I think ultimately one of the things that this Senate chapter has done for him in his career is it has enabled him to maybe rewrite the ending, maybe recast himself as someone who did feel as if he was doing the right thing at the expense of whatever the expedient decision at the moment would have been. Does any of that weigh on you? You're in your 70s now. This is probably your last job. You know, maybe this is an important enough issue that I could really take a stand and just do the right thing. Do you ever think about these decisions in light of other decisions you have made when

you had more politically to lose? You know, I haven't given the full analysis to my whole political history that I will with time, particularly, I I'm sure in retirement. My guess is that I was influenced in some cases by political benefit and I regret that. And probably not to the extent to which my opponents tried to characterize it. But looking back, there's an item or two where I say, I wish I'd said that differently or taken a different position, rather. I don't even make it seem like just a couple of words.

No, I took the position that I'd... And as is often the case, I have found in business in particular, but also in politics, that when something is in your personal best interest, the ability of the mind to rationalize that that's the right thing is really quite extraordinary. And I'm talking about myself. Right. And I've seen it in others. I've seen it in myself. Especially in politics generally. And by the way, you could swear on a Bible that you were doing exactly what is right. And that's because our mind has the capacity to do that.

In this case, I worked very hard to prevent my personal feelings and my personal desire from influencing a decision that was going to be an important decision and the most difficult decision I'd ever make. I think history is important to Mitt Romney. It's important to him for a lot of reasons. I mean, part of it is ego. I mean, people in the U.S. Senate want to think that everything they do is actually relevant to history. But I think when you're Mitt Romney, when you've lived a lot of history, when you've been the nominee of a Republican party, when you've run twice for president and lost, when you've held a number of offices, things, when you've run twice for president and lost, when you've held a number of offices, things like how you make a decision that will mark you forever

are important in the historical context. And you could argue, you could be a cynic and say, oh, well, they're just full of themselves. They care about how history will view them. Who does that? But I actually think it was important and a very kind of formative part of the process of coming to this decision for Mitt Romney.

Was to just talk about it. Was just to talk about it, yeah. Right. You can auction that off for charity. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Hold on.

As you're leaving the office, he's just told you what he's going to do. Yeah. What are you thinking? Well, I mean, part of it is just pure straight-ahead opportunistic reporter think, which is, God, I hope they don't call me and say he changed his mind. Because, you know, he's going to go on the floor in a few hours and shock the world. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a very momentous decision that would be a major headline at the end of a process that people had assumed was over, right? I mean, it wasn't a major twist, but it was certainly a twist and something that would be remembered here. But beyond

your own journalistic self-absorption. Beyond my own self-absorption, my thought was, I hope he knows what he is in for. We'll be right back. So, Mark, what happens after your interview with Romney on Wednesday morning? Okay, so Wednesday morning becomes Wednesday afternoon. It was probably about 12, 20 p.m. in Washington. I walked out of the office. I headed back to the New York Times Washington Bureau, and I knew he was scheduled to speak at two o'clock. And he took the mic.

Thank you, Mr. President. The Constitution is at the foundation of our republic's success. And of course, you want to actually be watching this because, one, you don't know if what you just learned is going to hold, whether he'd change his mind or not. The allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious. But the other thing is, how does this look and feel when he's actually delivering it to the world? And one of the things I was struck by is that he looked really nervous.

He looked a lot more nervous on the floor than he did with me. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. And he got emotional at a couple of points. I knew an oath before God as enormously consequential. And he got emotional at a couple of points. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the president, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong. The people will judge us for how well and faithfully we fulfill our duty. And it took him a while to get through this. Yeah, I was watching it. He was flipping the pages and speaking with all sorts of pregnant pauses.

The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did. Absolutely, yeah. And I don't think he was doing that for any kind of dramatic reason. I think it was just a genuinely hard speech to get through. And at the end of the speech, Mitt Romney invoked his children and his grandchildren.

With my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability. This is something he does, you know, fairly regularly, but also you know he's playing for keeps here. I will only be one name among many, no more, no less, to future generations of Americans who look at the record of this trial. We are all footnotes at best in the annals of history, but in the most

powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that distinction is enough for any citizen. But I think maybe there's some false modesty at work here, too. I mean, he's not a footnote. He is a dissenting voice, and the Republican Party has not had many of those at all through this process. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. And then he walked off into history. So, Mark, after Romney's speech, the full Senate formally reconvenes. The majority leader is recognized. Mr. Chief Justice, the Senate is now ready to vote on the articles of impeachment. And becomes a court of impeachment. Each senator, when his or her name is called, will stand in his or her place and vote guilty or not guilty as required by Rule 23 of the Senate Rules on Impeachment.

So what happens? Chief Justice John Roberts gives final instructions to the jury or the U.S. Senate. The formal articles of impeachment are read aloud. Chief Justice John Roberts gives final instructions to the jury or the U.S. Senate. The formal articles of impeachment are read aloud. The question is on the first article of impeachment. Senators, how say you? Is the respondent, Donald John Trump, guilty or not guilty? And he calls a vote.

A roll call vote is required. The clerk will call the roll. Mr. Alexander. Mr. Alexander. Not guilty. Mr. Alexander, not guilty. Ms. Baldwin. Guilty. Ms. Baldwin, guilty. On the first article of impeachment, presidential abuse of power.

Mr. Romney. Guilty. Mr. Romney, guilty. Mitt Romney votes guilty. He votes to convict. Two-thirds of the senators present not having pronounced him guilty. Mitt Romney votes guilty. He votes to convict. Two-thirds of the senators present not having pronounced him guilty, the Senate adjudges that the respondent, Donald John Trump, President of the United States, is not guilty as charged in the first article of impeachment. On the first article of impeachment, abuse of presidential power, the president was acquitted by a final count of 52 no's, 48 yes's.

Two-thirds of the senators present not having pronounced him guilty. The Senate adjudges that respondent Donald John Trump, president of the United States, is not guilty as charged in the second article of impeachment. On the second article of impeachment, which is obstruction of Congress, Mitt Romney voted to acquit the president. The president was acquitted by 53 no's and 47 yes's. Without objection, the motion is agreed to. The Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, stands adjourned, sine die.

And in the end, Mitt Romney was the only U.S. senator and the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president of his own party of an impeachable offense. You kind of hinted at this, Mark, but there is something really intriguing about choosing this moment for Mitt Romney to take a stand. moment for Mitt Romney to take a stand. His career, and I covered it very closely, covered the 2012 campaign, is littered with examples of moments where it seemed he wanted to be on both sides of an issue, where he evolved in ways that felt opportunistic. Yet at this moment, he becomes a senator of conscience, and he's not malleable. But it's a moment where his vote to convict the president on one of two counts has no impact whatsoever on the process. And when you think back to people like John McCain, as Senator Amy Klobuchar did, he stood for conscience at moments that had huge consequence. The decisive vote.

The deciding vote on Affordable Care Act, for example. In this case, Romney is the lone dissenting voice in a case that he can have no influence over. So, what do you make of that? Here's why that's important. One, Donald Trump has craved some kind of way to say, this is just a partisan witch hunt. Every Republican voted to support me. This denies him that opportunity. The other part in the context of Mitt Romney's career is, again, as you mentioned, this is not something Mitt Romney has traditionally done. Now, you could argue the counterfactual. If he was up for reelection in Utah next year, would he vote differently?

If he was thinking about running for president and going for the Republican nomination in 2020, would he vote differently? I think at this point, he has lived a long career. He has had a long, long life. And he would say at this point that he is answering two different forces. Regardless of whether it changes any of the dynamics of this Congress and the Republican Party and this president? Yeah, I don't think it'll change any dynamics at all except that Mitt Romney's life is going to get a lot more uncomfortable for reasons that I think he can handle, given how he weighed this decision. Well, to that point, what has been the reaction for Romney in the hours since he went on the floor, gave that speech, and then cast a vote to convict the president? I would say quite unpleasant.

Everything from the president of the United States' son, Don Jr., calling for his expulsion from the Senate. Wow. His own niece, Romney McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, publicly rebuking him basically on Twitter. His own niece. His own niece, yes. Calls for recall elections in Utah, things like that. Now, this is a window into the kinds of things that are in store for someone who dissents from President Trump.

And maybe what his colleagues in the Senate deliberately avoided by not doing what he did. It is a fate that they have voted to avoid. I mean, it's obviously, there are a lot of things at work when you decide to make a vote like this, but the noise is an absolutely undeniable part of the experience of voting against the interests of the person who leads your party, Donald Trump. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Michael. On Tuesday night, President Trump himself began attacking Mitt Romney on Twitter,

promoting a video that calls Romney slippery and stealthy, and without any evidence, claims that Romney is, quote, a secret asset of the Democratic Party. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, Democratic officials in Iowa released more results from Monday's caucuses, which left the position of the candidates unchanged and the final outcome of the vote uncertain. With 97% of the results in, Pete Buttigieg maintained a narrow lead over Bernie Sanders that verged on a tie. Meanwhile, in New Hampshire. over Bernie Sanders that verged on a tie. Meanwhile, in New Hampshire. Donald Trump is desperate to pin the socialist label

of socialist, socialist, socialist on our party. We can't let him do that. But if Senator Sanders is a nominee for the party, every Democrat will have to carry the label Senator Sanders has chosen for himself. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who stands at a distant fourth place in Iowa, attacked both Sanders and Buttigieg as flawed candidates for the Democratic nomination. I have great respect for Mayor Pete and the service to this nation.

But I do believe it's a risk to be just straight up with you for this party to nominate someone who's never held an office higher than mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana. I do believe it's a risk. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.