Romney accepts Biden walk-back: ‘I do trust the president’

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) in a Sunday interview said he accepted President Biden’s walk-back of Friday comments in which the commander-in-chief said he would only sign a bipartisan infrastructure deal Romney and other GOP senators had signed on to if a larger package backed only by Democrats also reached his desk.

Biden walked back those comments in a statement released Saturday after the remarks provoked outrage among Republicans and threatened the bipartisan infrastructure deal.

“I do trust the president, and he made very clear in the much larger statement that came out over the weekend … carefully crafted and thought through piece by piece, as that if the infrastructure bill reaches his desk, and it comes alone, he will sign it,” Romney said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 

“I do trust the president,” added Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee. 

Biden had said on Thursday that he would not pass a bipartisan deal on infrastructure unless a larger reconciliation bill that would include Democrat priorities was passed in tandem. On Saturday, Biden issued a statement saying that he did intend to sign the bipartisan deal if it came to his desk, and that he did not intend to imply that he would not.

Romney acknowledged that Biden and Democrats would still pursue a much larger reconciliation bill, which he said Republicans would not support.

“At the same time I recognize that he and his Democrat colleagues want more than that, they want other legislation as well. And we Republicans are saying absolutely no we will not support a bill which is to be passed with a massive tax increase. And at the same time trillions of dollars in a new spending, that is not something we will support,” Romney continued.