“I’m better,” said the Utah Republican on Capitol Hill, telling reporters he “fell” while visiting his grandchildren in Boston. He was not kept in the hospital overnight.
Romney did not say what he was doing when he fell, but joked about the Conservative Political Action Conference, where former President Donald Trump chose him – despite his absence – to criticize him. “Oh my God. I went to CPAC. That was a problem,” said the senator.
Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, was scorned by much of the Republican base in light of his votes to condemn Trump during the two Senate impeachment trials. The senator condemned the Republican Party’s attempts to subvert voters’ will in the presidential election, criticizing the former president for encouraging his supporters to interrupt the peaceful transition of power in “an unprecedented attack on our democracy”.
During his CPAC statements on Sunday, Trump called Romney and other Republican lawmakers who voted against him in the House and condemned him in the Senate for his incitement to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, saying “the Democrats will have presenters like Mitt Romney “and others.
Former Utah Republican MP Jason Chaffetz also dinged Romney, as well as the senator’s old secret Twitter account under the name of Pierre Delecto in CPAC.
“My name is Jason Chaffetz, I’m from Utah and I’m not Mitt Romney,” said Chaffetz. “If you’re looking for Pierre Delecto, you need to go down the hall, go left, and then keep going left until – well, just keep going left. That’s where you’ll find him.”
Last year, CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp announced that Romney was not invited to the event, after saying that “he would be afraid for (Romney’s) physical security, people are very angry with him”.