Right around the time this is being written, Mitt Romney is becoming the latest Republican presidential candidate to sit with reality TV star/one-time birther-in-chief Donald Trump.
Democrats are making a big deal out of the meeting, rolling out some opposition research listing all the times that Trump took on Romney during his brief stint as a potential candidate for the GOP nomination (and pusher of birther conspiracies.)
Here’s an example of what that sounded like:
“I’m a much bigger business man and have [a] much, much bigger net worth. I mean, my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney,” Trump told CNN back in April.
Then there was this from Washington Post in the same month:
Asked about Mitt Romney, who recently announced his presidential exploratory committee, Trump was blunt, ‘Mitt Romney is basically a small business guy, if you really think about it.’ Trump went on to accuse Romney of making money on companies ‘he didn’t create’ and eliminating jobs rather than creating them. Romney helped to found Bain Capital, a private equity firm that both hired and fired employees to maintain a profit. ‘I’m a bigger businessman, and I have a much bigger net worth.’ Despite the criticism, Trump went on to say that he didn’t really know Romney.”
And yet Romney is going to hang out with Trump today. The Democrats are using the occasion to once again raise the specter of the Ryan budget, which back in June Trump bashed as a “death wish” for the GOP. Romney has said he’s “on the same page” with the budget proposal.
Check out the DNC web video:
No response yet from the Romney camp to the video. But a Trump adviser told Mike Allen this:
“[T]he DNC will attempt to disseminate negative information about the Republican front runners. What else can they do to divert attention away from the failures of their own party?”
