Mitt Romney reckons with life and legacy in new biography

What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States. And in light of today's sad circumstances, I ask my colleague, do we weigh our own political fortunes more heavily than we weigh the strength of our republic, the strength of our democracy, and the cause of freedom? What's the weight of personal acclaim compared to the weight of conscience? On January 6th, 2021, Utah Senator Mitt Romney delivered those words hours after the mob had been cleared from the United States Capitol. That speech marked another moment of dissolution with the party he had once led as its presidential nominee. Romney once felt the most important speech of his life could be when he defended his Mormon faith while running for president in late 2007. Four and a half years later, he told the Republican National Convention it was time to, quote, restore the promise of America. Four years after that, he urged his own party to reject the, quote, con man, Donald Trump. In a new biography, Romney, A Reckoning, published by Scribner, part of CBS parent company Paramount Global, author McKay Coppins challenges the senator to look back and examine his own role in the transformation of the Republican Party. And McKay Coppins joins me now. McKay, congratulations on this extraordinary book, which is extraordinary because you sat down with Mitt Romney over 45 times. Tell me the difference between interview number one and the last one for this book and how that relationship changed. Well, it's interesting. When I first started interviewing him, it was not that long after January 6th. And I could tell that he was in a sort of reflective, introspective mood, not just about himself and his own career, but about what had become of his party, right? He actually told me in one of those first interviews that after January 6th, he realized that a very large portion of his party doesn't really believe in the Constitution. These are his words. And so, I think that it was a jarring moment for him, but what it led him to do with me over the next two years was really go back and take stock of what he had seen inside the party, what role he had played in as a leader of the party, and ask himself difficult questions, one of which was, was this authoritarian element in the party always there kind of beneath the surface, or was it something new? And what did he conclude? You know, I think that he still grapples with it, honestly. I mean, he said that when he was running for president, the Tea Party had become a major force in American politics, and he thought for a long time that it was about fiscal policy. You know, he took them at their word. He wanted to talk about deficit reduction and low taxes, and he didn't realize until later that a lot of those voters didn't really care about those issues. They wanted to be angry, and they wanted a champion who was going to burn everything down. And with Donald Trump and his rise in the party, he finally realized that he had miscalculated what the far-right element of his party wanted. You had also, in addition to your interviews, you had as close to what reporters have to a lie detector as possible, which is to say his journals. Yes, yep. And there were oftentimes, and this is what makes it a fascinating human portrait, leaving aside politics and all the rest, which is Senator Romney's recollections, and then you had the real deal, and there were sometimes big gaps between what he thought now and what he was writing at the time. And I think we all do this, right? But it was fascinating. Like, you know, he wrote, for example, or he talked about losing the presidential election. He told me, you know, I remember taking it with a stiff upper lip, and, you know, my life isn't defined by wins and losses in politics. And I think that's true, but his journals and his papers show that he actually was quite anguished about losing that election and spent days and weeks trying to pore over data and write down the mistakes that he had made. It was a really difficult period for him. What do you think he hopes to achieve with all of this? This is the kind of candor we never see in politics, and again, even in just human behavior, to be this self-searching, this public. What do you think he's hoping to achieve by having these conversations with you? I think he sees this book as a warning in some respects. You know, he described for me some of the things that he's seen inside the Senate over the last few years as just a level of kind of hypocrisy and cynicism among some of his colleagues who quietly agree with the things that he says in public, but refuse to say it out loud. And he believes that that hypocrisy and cynicism has led America to this fraught moment. And I think he's worried about the state of American democracy, and he wants to put this story out there. But doesn't that require the kind of conscience that he says he sees no evidence of? Well, I think this is the problem, right? I mean, it's interesting, though. He says he actually believes that most of his colleagues don't want to believe that they're bad guys, right? They see themselves as good guys, but they rationalize things that are in their self-interest. And Romney has done the same thing. And a lot of the book is him kind of grappling with that. And that's amazing, him recognizing his own biases as he's wrestling with this. McKay Coppins, it's a fascinating book and an amazing act of reporting. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. The book is Romney, A Reckoning.