Some of the biggest Mitt Romney controversies involve him speaking French, strapping his dog to the top of the family station wagon, and owning a horse who danced in the Olympics. So you’d be forgiven for thinking his forthcoming tell-all biography wouldn’t actually be all that scandalous. Sure, we know from early excerpts of the McKay Coppins book Romney: A Reckoning that the Utah senator calls out various Republican colleagues for their hypocrisy, and even reveals that Oprah Winfrey wanted to run for president with him in 2020 (a claim she denies). But does Romney stick with substantial insights into the inner workings of American politics, or will this book also contain pointless, bitchy gossip?
Fortunately, it seems Mitt isn’t above dishing some dirt.
In an excerpt of the book obtained by Rolling Stone Romney claims that during one of his early encounters with Donald Trump, when they both attended a New England Patriots game as guests of owner Robert Kraft, the mogul bragged about what would happen when he dumped then-girlfriend Melania Knauss.
“Trump sidled up to Romney’s son Josh and pointed at a leggy brunette across the room. ‘Have you seen my girlfriend, Melania?’ he asked, smirking. ‘When I drop her, the phone is gonna ring off the hook. Every guy in New York wants to go out with her,’” Coppins writes.
At this point Romney and Trump had socialized on a handful of occasions, beginning in the mid-1990s. The Washington Post previously described their football-centric relationship:
In the 1990s, Romney began cultivating influential people who might become key supporters of a political campaign. Two months after his failed 1994 campaign for the Senate seat held by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Romney accepted an invitation to fly on Trump’s plane to Palm Beach to attend the Super Bowl, which was held in Miami in January 1995.
… The two sat together at the Super Bowl and later went to National Football League games in New Jersey and Massachusetts. By the time they saw the New England Patriots play in the early 2000s, Trump had divorced Maples and brought along Melania Knauss, whom he would later marry.
While the Rolling Stone piece doesn’t say exactly when Trump discussed Melania with Romney, it seems likely that the conversation occurred at the playoff game between the Patriots and the Tennessee Titans; Romney and Trump were photographed together at the January 10, 2004 game. Trump proposed to Melania four months later, and they were married in January 2005 at Mar-a-Lago.
Romney wasn’t among the many celebrities invited to the nuptials, but he did visit Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida estate in 1995. Romney told Coppins that his initial impression of Trump was that he “wasn’t really a ‘businessman’ at all,” but he agreed to meet with him because he was “not above gawking at famous people,” and was interested in a “memorable, low-stakes, and deeply weird,” experience. Trump obliged, according to Rolling Stone:
Trump [greeted Romney] with a “surreal scene” upon arrival, as the entirety of the Mar-a-Lago staff “lined up outside in a white linen uniform, as if posed for a royal reception.” Romney remembers Trump as a “cartoon character” who strutted around the estate “like an English lord.” He found Trump both enamored of his gilded Florida residence and apparently mistaken about its true value. In one scene, the Utah senator recalls Trump leading him on a tour of the club and showing off a drawer full of “gold-colored silverware.”
Trump reportedly gloated that the Post family, which sold the club to him in 1985, “didn’t know this was here when they sold me the place” and that the “silverware is worth more than I paid for the house.”
According to Trump’s team, these unflattering recollections from “Mittens” are totally false.
“Mittens is a loser who is ‘retiring’ because he knows he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving another campaign,” a Trump spokesperson told Rolling Stone. “He should stop lying and creating fake stories in order to stay relevant. The fact is that he dropped the ball when he ran against Barack Obama and is partially responsible for the mess America is in.”
Trump should probably save some vitriol for next Tuesday, when Mitt’s burn book will finally be released.
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