FILE - Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, talks to reporters during votes, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022. Romney will not run for reelection in 2024. The former presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor announced his intentions in a video statement Wednesday.

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) revealed to biographer McKay Coppins that the specter of bodily violence effectively kept many elected Republicans from vote casting to question or convict President Donald Trump, even though they wished to.

Coppins is doing the media rounds to promote his new biography Reckoning and chatted with Brian Stelter for a thoughtful interview, which Vanity Fair printed on Thursday.

NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen flagged one particular passage on social media, writing: “Read this paragraph and inform me that the 2024 election may also be responsibly suggested the usage of the same instruments and terms in use for each national election.”

The passage in question finds that many Republican individuals of Congress wished to vote to impeach or convict the former president but that the specter of political violence by way of Trump supporters successfully saved them from doing what they concept was once right. Stelter writes:

“Some of the greatest revelations to me in my conversations with Romney was just how important the threat of political violence was to the psychology of elected Republicans nowadays,” mentioned Coppins, who recalled Romney telling him “story after story about Republican contributors of Congress, Republican senators, who at more than a few factors wanted to vote for impeachment—vote to convict Trump or vote to question Trump—and made up our minds to not, now not as a result of they thought he was harmless, however because they had been afraid for his or her family’s security. They were terrified of what Trump supporters may do to them or to their families.” That “raises a truly uncomfortable query,” Coppins mentioned, which is “how long can the American undertaking last if elected officers from one of the vital major events are making their political decisions in response to fear of physical violence from their components?”

Rosen’s query is intensely pertinent as we’re closing in on being a yr far from the 2024 general election, and the former president continues to ratchet up his unhealthy rousing of rabble that creates the threat of violence that has been so effective for feckless participants of Congress.

The put up Mitt Romney Unearths Most Republicans Didn’t Impeach Trump As a result of They Feared Violent Assaults from His Supporters first regarded on Mediaite.