US presidential candidate and former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks to veterans and members of the public at a town hall event at the American Legion Post 98 in Merrimack, New Hampshire on February 6, 2020. (AFP photo)
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has condemned US President Donald Trump’s "disgraceful" remarks against Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the sole Republican to vote to convict Trump in his Senate impeachment trial.
Trump tweeted his displeasure with Romney on Thursday, while mocking him for losing in the 2012 US presidential election against former President Barack Obama.
"Had failed presidential candidate @MittRomney devoted the same energy and anger to defeating a faltering Barack Obama as he sanctimoniously does to me, he could have won the election. Read the Transcripts!" Trump wrote.
During a speech at the White House earlier on Thursday, Trump denounced Romney as a "failed presidential candidate.
Former mayor of South Bend, Ind., Buttigieg on Thursday night called Trump’s remarks "disgraceful."
"It was disgraceful, especially to hear the way he attacked Sen. Romney for clearly following his own conscience and being more concerned about, as Sen. Romney clearly was, more concerned about the judgment of history and perhaps about his relationship with God, than about party loyalty," Buttigieg told CNN at a town hall.
On Wednesday, the Senate acquitted Trump on impeachment charges stemming from his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, the former vice president seeking the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the upcoming US presidential election.
Romney issued a scathing criticism of Trump as he broke with his party and voted to convict the US president for abuse of power in his impeachment trial, saying "the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust" and "a flagrant assault on our electoral rights."
Romney made history by becoming the first senator to vote to remove a sitting president of his own party.
However, he did not vote to convict the president on the second charge of impeachment, obstruction of Congress.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also defended Romney in the face of Trump’s assault at the CNN town hall on Thursday.
"I think that Mitt Romney showed a great deal of courage and I wish there were other Republicans that shared the same sense of decency," Sanders said.
Romney was previously the governor of Massachusetts and the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. He was elected to represent the state of Utah in the Senate in 2018.
SOURCE: PRESS TV
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/13721
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