Romney: Hillary's Too Wealthy to Sell 'Populist Message'

Hillary Clinton touched all the points she needed to in her Saturday campaign speech to keep her voting base intact, former GOP nominee Mitt Romney said Monday, but he also thinks her speech will leave people wondering if they can really trust her.

"Somehow, when you see her on a stage or when she comes into a room full of people, she is smiling with her mouth, but her eyes are saying 'Where's my latte?'" Romney said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "It doesn't suggest she believes everything she's saying."

Clinton was also trying to sell a "populist message," Romney said, but she "makes in one hour a multiple of what the average American will make in a year. ... I think making populism the centerpiece of her campaign makes her particularly vulnerable to this kind of response."

Romney last week hosted six Republican presidential candidates and hopefuls at a three-day summit in Salt Lake City, to mingle with around 250 wealthy donors and to vie for his endorsement. The former Massachusetts governor, who reiterated to "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough that he will not reconsider his decision to stay out of the 2016 race, remains a powerful party force and is being widely regarded as a GOP "kingmaker."

Romney also told Scarborough that the party's best shot is to "have someone who represents a new face," whether it's "Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, on and on, we have a lot of good people looking at this race."

But Romney would not name a major standout yet in the race, but called Bush's pre-campaign work and money-raising skills impressive.

"The truth is, to raise a money these days, you have to have the funds to get you from state to state and run advertising and get your message out," he said. "He's done that better than anybody else."

But Romney said he agrees with former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod that the Republican Party needs to do a better job at reaching out to minority voters.

"We have to make sure when we're talking about business and helping business, that we are able to communicate that this is not because we're so concerned about the business leaders or owners," said Romney. "We understand that starting new businesses is the only way that people are going to get better jobs and rising incomes.

"Hillary Clinton famously said that businesses don't create jobs. I mean, if they don't create jobs, who the heck does?"

One major agenda item candidates will face is how to combat the growth of the Islamic State (ISIS), but Romney said that first, a strategy has to be devised to isolate ISIS, and then to defeat and destroy it.

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