President-elect Donald Trump is “leaning toward” naming Mitt Romney to serve as secretary of state in his new administration, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Citing people familiar with the deliberations, the newspaper said Trump’s decision is being delayed by “an internal tug of war” between supporters of Romney and those backing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the key post.
The newspaper said Trump views Romney — one of his harshest critics during the presidential campaign — “as the prototypical choice to be nation’s top diplomat,” and that two people described the president-elect as “inclined to select” Romney.
Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee who endeared himself to Utahns as the leader of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, labeled Trump a “phony” and a “fraud” in a speech last March at the University of Utah.
But he met with Trump on Saturday for what he told reporters was “a far-reaching conversation with regard to the various theaters in the world where there are interests of the United States of real significance.”
That conversation was widely reported as being about the position of secretary of state. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who, along with Trump, greeted Romney before the meeting, called it “a very substantive meeting.”
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