Donald Trump aide calls Mitt Romney a ‘coward’

“I don’t want to see trickle down racism”, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee told CNN earlier.

The group at the retreat represented a mix of the Republican Party, divided between those who have said they can not support Trump, like Romney, and those who have grudgingly endorsed him, like Ryan, who was Romney’s running mate in 2012.

“I don’t want to see trickle-down racism”, Romney said in an interview here in a suite overlooking the Wasatch Mountains, where he is hosting his yearly ideas conference.

Romney said Friday on CNN that he wouldn’t vote for Trump’s “trickle down racism”.

The former governor, who has openly opposed the businessman’s candidacy and pushed efforts to block his nomination, said his issues with Trump are not just a matter of policy, but character and integrity. Blinking back tears as he spoke, an impassioned Romney said many have asked him to get off his “high horse” and back Trump, seeing presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as unacceptable.

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. June 11, 2016.

Mr. Trump and the party have gotten a late start on fund-raising for the general election and need as numerous party’s reliable donors as they can attract. However, Republican voters chose him over the more than a dozen others. And he recognized as legitimate the notion that some Republicans may choose to back Trump exclusively to prevent Hillary Clinton from appointing Supreme Court nominees, calling it a “darn good reason”. But, he added, “I stand by what I said about Trump”. “They did it with IN, they did it with New York – “We’re going to win New York” – and I won IN a massive landslide”.

Romney, however, shot down the the suggestion that he would wage another White House run.

“Had I been in the race”, he said, “I can assure you, I would have taken him on”.

He said the participants, including business leaders and GOP strategists, needed to hear from Romney that there could be disagreement within the party over Trump while still looking to the future. He criticized Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush in particular for their long and expensive campaigns against each other and Marco Rubio, and for their failure to target Trump.

While Romney spent almost a decade cultivating relationships with party benefactors, Trump is only now trying to attract major financial support, after largely self-financing his primary campaign.

The former MA governor has come out strongly against Trump. “They’re just sore losers”, he said.

He also said he told Ohio Gov. John Kasich that he should think about exiting the race sooner than he did: “It was a divided not-Trump vote until the very end”. The difference, though – and it’s an important difference – is Donald Trump is running against the system that he thinks is rigged, that he thinks hasn’t worked, that he thinks has hurt the people of the United States.