breaking news tonight. a source telling cnn president-elect donald trump will meet on saturday with mitt romney, the former presidential nominee, one of donald trump s sharpest critics during the campaign, calling trump unfit for office. cnn has learned that romney is interested in serving potentially as secretary of state, which senior republican sources say is a serious possibility. let s bring in our political reporters and analysts. gloria, how serious is this? i know they spoke on the phone earlier a few days ago, but all of a sudden coming to new jersey to meet with donald trump on saturday. that s a big deal. you know, mark preston first reported this on cnn, and in talking to some top romney former romney advisers, they were very surprised by this meeting.
to a person, they described romney as a patriot. it s no surprise he s not a big fan of donald trump s. so all we know, wolf, is that romney in general has always told people the secretary of state is a job i would be interested in. this is somebody, though, he has criticized roundly and they disagree seriously on some foreign policy issues, like russia, for example. romney was the first person i believe to say to you that russia is an existential threat. so we know they re going to have this meeting. we don t know what donald trump has in mind, and we have no idea what mitt romney has in mind, but they re meeting. it s surprising how this is unfolding. a, that mitt romney obviously wants to meet with donald trump, as some bitter words were exchanged. but donald trump is welcoming
special. he thought one thing that was happening is in nonbattleground states, romney enthusiasm was so strong that they were trying to run up the popular vote, which gives that ad more, on the national level, more impact. can i just say how weird it is, like how many people do you know in america who cast their vote and go home and e-mail a political scientist to ask what to make of their experience at the polls? it just tells you what a freak meacham is. but what s great about that ad, just from a purely democratic standpoint, is just that it says essentially not just your vote counts, which is what it says. but implicitly it says you don t want to go back to bush. it s just the implicit messages, don t let us and that rhymes with what the campaign s message is about, romney in general. so there s a very kind of like it s working on two levels there. and willie, 2000 continues to haunt democrats late into the night in their dreams. if you want to encourage your base to go out
analyst at msnbc. happy holidays. likewise. you just did a wonderful interview with mitt romney. and i want to talk a little bit about him and the issue of the payroll tax cut extension, the pol tiitics of payroll. he said, quote, if you re a candidate for president and not prepared to talk about the hottest issue right now that affects every single american, there s a concept called leadership and people sometimes think i m too aggressive. but at least i lead. can gingrich score points against romney in places like iowa, new hampshire, south carolina by saying, look, mitt romney doesn t want to put his opinion forward at least i can actually perpetuate my opinion. mitt romney is refusing to lead. will that stick? i think it s a matter of pure politics romney did the right thing for himself. it wasn t just a small fracture within the republican party. you had mitch mcconnell siding with the president and the republicans on the house on a different side. romney in general has to p