Mitt Romney is “enemy No. 1” in the Trump administration according to Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.
“He is loathed in the White House,” says Baker during an interview on the “Utah Politics” podcast. “With [President] Trump, everything is about loyalty, and you’re not allowed to stray from the fold.”
“In the Senate, I think Republicans there respect him. They defended him when Trump went after him. They see him as a principled actor,” he added.
“He’s a party of one,” added Susan Glasser, a staff writer for the New Yorker, and author of the weekly “Letter from Trump’s Washington” column.
Glasser and Baker are the husband and wife reporting team behind the new biography, “The Man who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III.”
Baker, the former Secretary of State and White House chief of staff during the Reagan administration, was at the center of several major historical events, including German reunification and the 2000 Bush v. Gore election dispute.
Glasser says Romney is a throwback to a previous era of politics, and his willingness to stand up to Trump is reminiscent of Sen. Margaret Chase Smith.
“She, of course, was the famous senator who was the lone Republican to stand up to Joseph McCarthy, and it was two years before the Army-McCarthy hearings. She was a party of one for a very long time,” says Glasser.
Baker and Glasser also discuss Baker’s legacy in Washington, and whether his brand of compromise and political dealmaking will ever be possible again.
Listen to the full interview below. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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