Hillary Clinton News: Democratic Nominee Pushed For Mitt Romney To Join Trump Cabinet
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged former 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to accept the position as President Trump's nomination for secretary of state after it was revealed that he was on the shortlist.
Romney, who was speaking to a group of Republican officials, donors, and business leaders at a luxury Utah resort in Deer Valley said that he reached out to the former first lady after he got the phone call from Vice President Mike Pence indicating to him that he was being considered for the position.
A fierce critic of the president during the campaign, Romney said that he received the phone call when he was golfing in Hawaii and that the consideration "shocked" him. In response, he consulted secretaries of states, including the recently defeated Clinton, as to whether or not he should take the post if it were eventually offered to him.
“In each case, each of them said, ‘Please, please take that job if it’s offered to you. We’d very much like to see you serve in that capacity,’” Romney said of the former secretaries of state.
The former Massachusetts governor noted that the president and he have extremely different viewpoints on just about every topic concerning foreign policy and that up until the point when he was told he hadn't even considered getting a place in the Trump cabinet.
“Why would I consider it? It’s not that at that point I suddenly had a different view of the president and the things that I had felt about him in the past. But instead, I was very concerned about the fact that we saw things very differently on the foreign policy front with regards to Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea, China. NATO. Almost across the board, we were miles apart,” he said.
He continued saying that the consideration gave him hope that Trump would be open to alternative points of view.
“And the idea that the president-elect would say, ‘I’d like to consider you as my secretary of state,’ suggests to me he’d be open to the kind of perspectives I might provide,” Romney added.
Romney wasn't chosen for the position, and the CEO of Exxon Rex Tillerson got the nomination and was confirmed by the Senate. Romney praised the choice saying, “by the way, he chose someone else, and I thought that was a very good choice.”
READ: Trump Cabinet Update: Republicans Concerned About Mitt Romney As Potential Secretary Of State
At the summit, Romney praised the Trump administration for some of their decisions, particularly the president's reversals to his previous positions concerning NATO and China and his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to serve as a Supreme Court justice.
However, Romney also offered criticism of the chaotic nature of the administration that's been plagued by scandals and palace intrigue, and suggested focusing on the passing of legislation.
“We could reduce some of the temperature around those things, the theater, and more and more about the policy things that are going to make a real difference in the lives of Americans,” he said.
It was reported in April that Romney was considering running for the Utah Senate seat that's going to be vacated in 2018 by the 83-year-old Orrin Hatch, according to a report by The Atlantic. Like Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden has encouraged Romney to run for the vacated Senate seat.
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