Speaking French, securing his dog to the roof of the family station wagon, and owning a horse that performed in the Olympics are some of the more contentious issues surrounding Mitt Romney. You might think that his upcoming autobiography wouldn’t truly be that shocking.
Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins has early extracts in which the Utah senator criticizes some Republican colleagues for their duplicity and even admits that Oprah Winfrey wanted to run with him for president in 2020.
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.”
