Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) criticized President Biden for taking “cheap shots” against Republicans during his State of the Union address Thursday night.
Romney praised the bits of Biden’s speech that covered foreign policy, when the president spoke about the importance of helping Ukraine and getting humanitarian aid into Gaza.
But the Utah senator was not a fan of the way the president addressed domestic policy and his criticism of GOP lawmakers.
Romney pointed to “promises” that Biden will not be able to deliver on since he won’t have Republican backing in Congress, and accused the commander in chief of falsely claiming that members of the Republican conference are talking about gutting entitlement programs.
“When he got into domestic policy, I’m afraid it was the same old liberal playbook, at least that’s the way I saw it,” Romney said in a video posted following the speech on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“I mean, there was some new chapters, but the same idea, which is, ‘Here’s some things I’m gonna give you, here’s some more things I’m gonna give you, here’s why I’m gonna crack down on big companies and rich people,’ and I think people have gotten tired of that. They know he can’t deliver all those promises, because any promise he makes has to get Republican votes, and he’s not gonna get Republican votes for those things.”
Romney said some of Biden’s criticism toward Republican lawmakers misfired since no GOP member in either chamber has discussed touching Social Security.
“And I think they also know that the cheap shots on Republicans are probably missing the mark,” Romney said in the video. “You know, he once again claimed Republicans are going to cut Social Security. That’s just simply wrong. And everybody knows that there’s not a Republican in the House or the Senate that is talking about cutting Social Security or is in favor of cutting Social Security. That’s just, you know, off the mark.”
In the senator’s view, Biden’s biggest mishap of the night was not addressing the debt, which surpassed $34 trillion for the first time early this year.
“I think the greatest mistake was that he really never talked about how we’re gonna deal with the deficit and the debt,” Romney said. “But then again, Democrats don’t like to do that.”