It’s not surprising that President Trump would choose to travel to Utah Monday alongside Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican who’s represented the state in the Senate for the last 40 years.
But Trump has broader intentions than just taking Hatch for a ride aboard Air Force One and championing one of the senator’s causes: shrinking the national monuments of Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase Escalante.
The president wants to keep former GOP nominee Mitt Romney out of the U.S. Senate.
President Trump stopped to speak to reporters as he left the White House Monday for Utah. He’s taking Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch with him on board Air Force One, signaling he’d rather see Hatch seek re-election than Mitt Romney run for Hatch’s seat
Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney (left) is mulling a Senate run if Sen. Orrin Hatch (right) retires. However, it looks like President Trump is trying to keep Hatch in the upper chamber so he doesn’t have a nemesis Republican in that seat
Romney, a Mormon with roots in the state who previously served as the governor of Massachusetts, has been mulling a run for Hatch’s seat, if Hatch indeed announces his retirement.
However, Hatch hasn’t committed either way, a move that is angering Romney’s people, according to Politico.
They believe it’s Trump’s doing – and they may be right, as Trump has told friends he wasn’t into the idea of a Sen. Romney, the publication reported.
If Hatch stays in the Senate, he’ll likely continue to be a strong ally for the president.
Even though Romney is a Republican, he’s probably act more like Sen. Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who is leaving the Senate after next year, and has sworn to spend his remaining time in the upper chamber calling a certain president of the United States out.
Romney displayed that kind of behavior during last year’s presidential campaign.
Mitt Romney (right) famously got dinner at Jean Georges restaurant in New York with President-elect Donald Trump (left) as Trump was considering Romney to be his secretary of state
On March 3, 2016, the ex-GOP nominee appeared at the University of Utah and labeled then-candidate Trump a ‘fraud.’
‘He’s playing the American public for suckers: he gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat,’ Romney said.
The former nominee didn’t endorse one of the remaining GOP candidates – Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. John Kasich – but suggested to Republican voters that they vote in their state for who would do the most damage to thwart Trump’s march to the nomination.
It didn’t work.
Fast-forward to the aftermath of Trump’s electoral win and the Romney-Trump relationship was back in the news as the president-elect seemed to be courting him to be secretary of state.
The question was whether Trump’s overtures were serious or if the president-elect was making Romney dance to simply, eventually embarrass him.
After highly-publicized meetings at Bedminster and then in New York, Trump called Romney to tell him he’d decided to go with ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson instead.
Since then, Romney has contemplated ways to get back in the political game, including testing the waters for this Senate seat.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has been threatening to take out incumbent Republican senators in an effort, he says, to get the body to better cooperate with the president’s agenda.
While previously eyeing Hatch as a senator who needed to be replaced, according to the Washington Examiner, Bannon is now contemplating endorsing Hatch so that Romney stays out.
‘If Steve had a choice between Orrin Hatch and Mitt Romney, he would pick Hatch 10 times out of 10,’ a Bannon insider told the Examiner’s David Drucker.
Trump is seemingly following suit by taking Hatch to Utah Monday.
The president has invited the Utah senator to take Air Force One to and from Salt Lake City.
The two men will disembark from Air Force One side-by-side and then travel to the Utah state capitol where the president will sign the executive order shrinking Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase Escalante.
‘It will be one of the great, really, events in this country in a long time. So important for states’ rights and so important for the people of Utah,’ Trump pledged as he left the White House Monday.