When he was elected, in 2018, he’d had his eye on a newly remodeled condo at the Watergate with glittering views of the Potomac. The place had not been Romney’s first choice for a Washington residence. But most weeks, I drove to a stately brick townhouse with perpetually drawn blinds on a quiet street a mile from the Capitol. Sometimes we talked in his Senate office, after most of his staff had gone home sometimes we went to his little windowless “hideaway” near the Senate chamber. The senator hadn’t told anyone he was talking to a biographer, and we kept our interviews discreet. I began meeting with Romney in the spring of 2021. I hope that sufficient security plans are in place, but I am concerned that the instigator-the President-is the one who commands the reinforcements the DC and Capitol police might require.” There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch to smuggle guns into DC, and to storm the Capitol. Romney sends his text: “In case you have not heard this, I just got a call from Angus King, who said that he had spoken with a senior official at the Pentagon who reports that they are seeing very disturbing social media traffic regarding the protests planned on the 6th. He’ll want to protect his colleagues, and himself. He’ll want to know about this, Romney thinks. He sees the posturing by Republican politicians for what it is. He knows that the election wasn’t stolen, that his guy lost fair and square. McConnell has been indulgent of Trump’s deranged behavior over the past four years, but he’s not crazy. Romney hangs up and immediately begins typing a text to Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. Romney’s name has been popping up in some frightening corners of the internet, which is why King needed to talk to him. There’s talk of gun smuggling, of bombs and arson, of targeting the traitors in Congress who are responsible for this travesty. The president has been telling them the election was stolen now they’re coming to steal it back. Law enforcement has been tracking online chatter among right-wing extremists who appear to be planning something bad on the day of Donald Trump’s upcoming rally in Washington, D.C. Romney calls, and King informs him of a conversation he’s just had with a high-ranking Pentagon official. It begins with a text message from Angus King, the junior senator from Maine: “Could you give me a call when you get a chance? Important.” But when, a few days later, he happened to find himself on the park’s edge and saw a crowd forming, he made a point not to linger.Īll of which is to say there is something familiar about the unnerving sensation that Romney is feeling late on the afternoon of January 2, 2021. He didn’t know how to respond, other than to laugh and put it out of his mind. When she was asked what had so upset her, she confessed that she’d dreamt the night before about a man who looked like him-exactly like him-getting shot and killed at a rally in Hyde Park. Once, years ago, he boarded an airplane for a business trip to London and a flight attendant whom he’d never met saw him, gasped, and rushed from the cabin in horror. He has never really interrogated the cause of this preoccupation, but premonitions of death seem to follow him. “I want to be around to see it.” But some part of him has always doubted that he’ll get anywhere close. “So much is going to happen!” he says when asked about this particular desire. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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