

One thing that Romney has in common with other conservative critics of the president? His religion.

(Romney announced on Wednesday he would delay his announcement in the wake of the Florida school shooting.) On Thursday, Mitt Romney was expected to announce his candidacy for US Senate from Utah – to the likely displeasure of President Trump, who reportedly worked the phones to try to block Romney, a frequent Trump foil, from running. “I’d love to go up to every single one of them to thank them for being in this country, and apologize to them on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump.” “Are there any Muslims in the hospital?” the former senator asked his wife and son shortly before he died, in a scene first reported by the Daily Beast. He was particularly disturbed by Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslim immigration to the United States, which Bennett saw as immoral and incompatible with the tenets of his faith.Īn observant member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the scion of an influential Mormon political family, Bennett saw parallels between the historical persecution of Mormons, who were driven from state to state by anti-Mormon mobs, and Trump’s rhetoric toward Muslims and Hispanic immigrants. In the last years of his life Bennett had become convinced that there was something ugly and malignant growing in the Republican party as cancer ate away at Bennett’s own body, he watched nativism, triumphalism, and hatred of compromise eat away at the party and turn it into something he barely recognized. In 2016 Bennett lay dying in a Virginia hospital, the victim of pancreatic cancer and a stroke that had left him partly paralyzed.
