Mitt Romney Only Republican Senator Excluded From White House's Coronavirus Team

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, is the only GOP senator not included in a new coronavirus task force set up by the White House. The group's aim is to plot a course out of the lockdown for the country.

The White House said it had invited nearly 70 senators to join the new task force, dubbed the “Opening Up America Again Congressional Group.” Every Republican senator was invited except Romney – indicating that the Utah senator’s feud with President Donald Trump and his supporters is still playing out.

Trump and Romney have long had, at best, a strained relationship. They clashed during the 2016 presidential race, when Romney became one of the most vocal opponents to Trump’s nomination by the Republican party.

In return, Trump blasted the former 2012 Republican presidential candidate as being among the “worst candidates in the history of Republican politics.”

For a brief moment, it had appeared that both men had come to an understanding when Trump dangled the possibility of adding Romney to his cabinet in 2017. That was short-lived, however, and the two men have since clashed frequently -- especially after Romney began serving as a senator in 2019.

The big split with Trump came over the past year when Romney became one of the few Republicans to back the House’s impeachment proceedings and voiced his belief that the President had acted inappropriately.

Later, Romney would become the only Republican senator to vote in favor of convicting Trump during the impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power. Not only did this infuriate Trump but it also served to ostracize Romney somewhat from his peers; ultimately, Romney was formally uninvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The feuding hasn’t ended there. More recently, Romney again proved himself to be a thorn in Trump’s side when he, alongside Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., publicly warned the President earlier this month to not interfere with congressional oversight of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill. At the time Trump had been pushing to retain the final oversight authority in the White House.