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Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Romney likens Trump's false election claims to 'delusion' gambling - Business Insider

  • Sen. Mitt Romney called Donald Trump's false election claims "a classic example of denial."
  • He likened it to the "delusion that leads people to feed money into slot machines."
  • Romney said leadership is the cure for "wishful thinking," but he's not looking to Trump or giving Biden high marks.

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Sen. Mitt Romney says a "classic example of denial" comes from former President Donald Trump's false claims that he won the 2020 election, defeating President Joe Biden in a landslide victory.

"Perhaps this is a branch of the same delusion that leads people to feed money into slot machines: Because I really want to win, I believe that I will win," Romney, a former GOP presidential nominee who represents Utah in the Senate, wrote in a July 4 essay in The Atlantic.

The essay takes aim at "wishful thinking" across the political spectrum and the nation's "blithe dismissal of potentially cataclysmic threats."

"More and more, we are a nation in denial," he wrote. "I have witnessed time and again—in myself and in others—a powerful impulse to believe what we hope to be the case."

He cited other examples of denial: drought as part of a reversible cycle, the debt taking care of itself with economic growth and the January 6 insurrection being a "false-flag operation."

"When entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesn't end well," he warned. "During the past half century, we Americans have lived in a very forgiving...



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