Exclusive – ‘So Out of Touch’: Utah GOP Senate Candidate Trent Staggs Slams Establishment GOP’s Mitt Romney

U.S. Senate candidate and Riverton, Utah, Mayor Trent Staggs told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that Utah voters are “tired” of Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) “misplaced or misguided passion against” former President Donald Trump and slammed him as “so out of touch” with voters. 

Staggs joined the program following Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyles’s on-camera interview with the 45th president late last month, in which Trump called Romney a “Loser” and said “[t]he right candidate” would unseat him if he runs for reelection.

WATCH: Exclusive — Trump: Romney Is “a Loser,” “The Right Candidate Will Beat Him” in Utah Primary

“I saw the article, saw the story, and I can really understand why President Trump would have those feelings,” Staggs told Boyle. “I mean, look, here’s a guy in Romney that really earnestly sought his approval back in 2012, highlighted that endorsement, really used it from the president, and then in 2016, goes out… at the University of Utah, gives a speech where he calls him a phony and a fraud, and really attacked President Trump. And then, of course, after he won the election, then he went hat in hand again to go seek his approval and kind of tried to make amends, got the endorsement again in ’18. And here he goes, here he goes again, just constantly going after the president.”

Staggs contended that if Romney campaigned with the same type of fervor against then-President Barack Obama in 2012 as he does with Trump, he would have been commander-in-chief.

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“Utahns are sick and tired of this,” he said. “They’re tired of his misplaced or misguided passion against President Trump, and what we’d rather see is action. We’d rather see our senators doing what they said they would do and trying to bring about conservative principles in this country and the change that we need that he had campaigned on.” 

Staggs also criticized Romney’s recent opinion article in the Wall Street Journal, where he called for the clearing of the Republican primary field so a candidate can secure a one-on-one matchup with Trump to try to stop him from securing “pluralities” on the way to the nomination. 

“He’s just so out of touch,” Staggs emphasized to Boyle. “He doesn’t understand why Republican voters have shunned him, and they’ve shunned him here. We can see it in polling data, where he’s maybe in the 30 to 40% range in terms of favorability. A lot of that is in the ‘somewhat favorable’ camp… I was just at an event last night in northern Utah; nobody spoke favorably of Romney, and they were very glad that I was there and offered all of their support.”

“And that Wall Street Journal article, wow. I mean, to spend that type of time and energy on that… we have so much else going on that he should be focused on as a senator,” he added. “I think that was received with a, I say a collective eye roll… from GOP donors, because Romney, he still hasn’t learned that actions actually speak louder than words, and that’s why there’s this stark difference between Trump and Romney,” he added. “And what people want, and especially out here in Utah, I’m seeing, what conservatives want is that action, that bold action, that typified President Trump’s administration.”

He then highlighted accomplishments during the Trump administration that he sees as benefiting Utahns before taking aim at Romney’s record. 

“I look back as a mayor, and I see the results of that really strong leadership that President Trump exhibited. I mean, he used his presidential authority for the first time in history to reduce the size of national monuments here in our state,” Staggs noted. “I saw a direct benefit from his leadership in cutting federal taxes back in 2017. He fought the regulatory state; he appointed conservative justices, which has been a fantastic benefit to all of us. He kept gas prices down by ensuring we were energy independent, and so at every turn, he’s delivered on these on these things, especially with respect to foreign policy and just ensuring that America was viewed favorably and was with strength on the world stage.” 

“And Romney just hasn’t done that,” he continued. “He made several promises to Utahns that he would fight to put us on a path to a balanced budget, he would end illegal immigration, he would stop federal spending and overreach, and he’d appoint conservative justices to the court… and his record clearly doesn’t match up with those promises.”

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.