Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Friday that he’d feel comfortable sending his family to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
“I believe the games will be safe,” he said in an appearance on NBC’s “Today.” “That doesn’t mean there’s a 100 percent guarantee anywhere in the world today. But this is, after all, a dangerous corner of the world.”
Romney knows a thing or two about the security preparations for such a large event, as he headed the organizing committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. He told “Today” he believes there’s never been an Olympic games targeted with so many specific threats, but “the level of security preparations appears to be at unprecedented level” in Sochi, at least in the secure “hard” areas where the Olympic events take place.
“It’s the soft places that you can’t be 100 percent certain will be entirely safe, but my guess is that Russians have done everything humanly possible to protect the games,” he said.
Romney called Russia one of the U.S.’ biggest geopolitical foes on the 2012 campaign trail, but told “Today” the country’s politics shouldn’t hold it back from hosting the Olympic games.
“But there’s no question in my mind that Russia has been and continues to be a geopolitical adversary, not a military foe,” he added, noting Russia’s connection to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Their friends are some of the world’s worst actors.”
