‘Romney would have dropped to his knees to get my endorsement in 2012’: Trump’s amazing ‘sexual’ slur after former candidate brands him a conman and a fraud

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump leveled what some saw as a sexually suggestive insult at Mitt Romney on Thursday, just two hours after the former Republican presidential nominees savaged him in a nationally televised address.  

Romney had told a Utah audience that Trump is 'a phony, a fraud' – and 'very very not smart.'

In response, Trump said during a raucous Portland, Maine campaign rally that Mitt is 'a failed candidate' who delivered an 'irrelevant' speech – and would have done anything to secure Trump's endorsement four years ago. 

'I don’t know what happened to him,' Trump said Thursday during his early afternoon rally, recalling how he backed Romney during the last election. 'You can see how loyal he is. He was begging for my endorsement!'

'I could have said, "Mitt, drop to your knees," and he would have dropped to his knees!' Trump said.

Some in the audience had barely finished gasping at the sexual overtones of the boast when The Donald referred to the one-time Massachusetts governor as 'a choke artist.'

'He choked like I’ve never seen anyone choke. Other than Rubio.'

THE CANDIDATE NEEDS KNEEPADS: Donald Trump said Mitt Romney was so desperate for his endorsement in 2012 that he could have ordered the then-Republican candidate to get on his knees and he would have done it

VICIOUS: Mitt Romney tore into Donald Trump Thursday morning in Utah with an air assault that will clear a path for The Donald's rivals to attack him in the evening debate

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Former Barack Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau summed up the controversy after Trump seemed to suggest he could have gotten oral sex in exchange endorsing a desperate Romney

YOU CAN SAY ANYTHING ON CABLE TV: An MSNBC reporter was aghast as he heard a Trump speech attendee wonder aloud, on camera, whether his fellow Christians 'want a candidate who gets up there and says that that a former presidential candidate for their party got down on his knees and offered to b**w him'

Mehdi Hasan, an Al Jazeera presenter, summed up the impromptu outrage in a tweet that mentioned 'b***w job gags.' 

And as MSNBC broadcast crowd reactions live after Trump's speech, journalist Thomas Roberts got more than he bargained for.

An audience member who identified himself only as 'Andrew' said he lived in a region 'dominated by religion,' and his neighbors would 'all have to ask themselves a question: Do they want a candidate who gets up there and says that that a former presidential candidate for their party got down on his knees and offered to b**w him?' 

Trump has frequently hammered Romney on the campaign trail for 'disappearing' in the final weeks of the 2012 presidential campaign, effectively ceding the election to the more media-savvy and less socially awkward Barack Obama.

On Thursday, he continued the criticism.

'That was a race – I have to say folks, that should have been won.' Trump insisted.

'Mitt is a failed candidate,' Trump plunged ahead. 'He failed. He failed horribly.'

Romney's scathing attack on his party's 2016 front-runner came just hours before Thursday's GOP primary debate.

Switching off between scolding, mocking and lecturing, Romney told a friendly audience at the University of Utah that Trump is 'a phony, a fraud' – and 'very very not smart.'

In the one-time Republican golden boy's assessment, The Donald is a boorish know-nothing who will hand the presidency to Hillary Clinton.

FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT OF PEOPLE DISAGREE ... Romney is remembered for losing the 2012 presidential race after telling a fundraising audience that he would write off the 47 per cent of Americans who would never vote for him because they fear being kicked off the government dole

FLASHBACK: Trump endorsed Mitt Romney in February 2012 in Las Vegas as the then-GOP front-runner lavished praise on The Donald

THE NATIVES ARE RESTLESS: Novelist Brad Thor tweeted that he 'can't wait for all the b**w job references in Trump's first State of the Union address. What a class act!'

'His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University,' the former Massachusetts governor said, referring to a controversial real-estate seminar series Trump once ran. 

'He's playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.'

'There's plenty of evidence that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake,' Romney said, acting as a conduit for every complaint about the billionaire that the GOP's establishment wing has been searching for a way to articulate. 

On his way through a 20-minute oration, he carped about 'the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics.'

Donald Trump reminded supporters that Mitt Romney had asked for his endorsement in 2012 when Romney was at the to top of the Republican ballot 

Trump has been riding a near-year-long wave of political discontent with America's leaders – especially the liberal president Barack Obama but also Capitol Hill conservatives who have alienated right-ring Republicans by falling short in government of their broad conservative promises.

In the process, the political neophyte has sold himself as a revolutionary figure who would smash the revolving door between campaign donations and political favors by financing his own White House bid. 

GREATEST HITS: Remembering Romney's 2012 self-implosion  

Mitt Romney lost the 2012 U.S. presidential race to the incumbent Barack Obama following a series of campaign gaffes that set him on his heels:

• 'There are 47% ... who are dependent upon the government, who believe that they are victims",' Romney said of voters during a fundraising dinner. He said he was prepared to write off a giant chunk of potential voters because they 'believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That – that's an entitlement.'
• 'The answer is self deportation!' he once said, arguing that American companies should simply refuse to hire illegal immigrants, and when they 'don't get work here, they're going to self-deport.' 
• 'I like being able to fire people who provide services to me!' an aristocratic-sounding Romney said during a debate about health insurance and doctors. 'If someone doesn't give me the good service I need, I want to say ... I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service for me.' 
• 'Corporations are people, my friend!' was Romney's retort to an Iowa State Fair-goer who complained about corporate money in presidential politics, in a clip that was played ad nauseam.

'I understand the anger Americans feel today,' Romney said Thursday. 'In the past, our presidents have channeled that anger, and forged it into resolve, into endurance and high purpose, and into the will to defeat the enemies of freedom. Our anger was transformed into energy directed for good.

'Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes,' he continued. 'He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants, he calls for the use of torture and for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit first amendment freedom of the press.'

'This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.'

Romney's double-barreled attacks carry the force of a party elder statesman, but also come from the loudest voice in the GOP who can hammer the front-runner without risking his own political future. 

'His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe,' Romney said of Trump.

'He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.

The Republican National Committee had 'zero' impact in writing or planning Thursday's remarks, RNC communications director Sean Spicer told DailyMail.com.

But the speech had the effect of a campaign surrogate speaking for the anti-Trump party apparatus the way a consultant spins talking points for a candidate after a debate.

Trump 'lacks the temperament to be president,' Romney said. 

'After all, this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter's questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity.'

'Donald Trump says he admires Vladimir Putin, while has called George W. Bush a liar. That is a twisted example of evil trumping good.'

Romney also resurrected a nearly nine-month-old campaign moment in which Trump told an Iowa conference that Sen. John McCain was only considered a 'war hero' because he was captured in Vietnam. 

'There is dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War while John McCain, whom he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured,' he said.

That was a reboot of an old interview Trump did with radio shock-jock Howard Stern, in which he expressed gratitude for having survived his swinging bachelor days without contracting a venereal disease.

'I've been so lucky in terms of that whole world,' he said in 1997 in a moment of dark humor. 'It is a dangerous world out there. It's scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era.'

'It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.' 

HE WANTS DONALD TO SELF-DEPORT: Romney savaged Trump as a boorish know-nothing who will hand the presidency to Hillary Clinton

Parts of Mitt Romney's (left) speech were leaked to the media and he's expected to call GOP frontrunner Donald Trump (right) a 'phony' and fraud' 

Donald Trump took to Twitter this morning and started attacking Mitt Romney, who will deliver harsh words about the Republican frontrunner in a speech today in Utah 

Donald Trump reminded audiences this morning that he's brought 'millions and millions' of voters into the Republican party

McCain himself jumped into the anti-Trump scrum Thursday by joining more than 60 leaders in the Republican national security community to blast The Donald's foreign policy acumen.

McCain knocked Trump's 'uninformed and indeed dangerous statements on national security issues.'

He said in a statement that he shares 'the concerns about Donald Trump that my friend and former Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, described in his speech today.'

'I would also echo the many concerns about Mr. Trump's uninformed and indeed dangerous statements on national security issues that have been raised by 65 Republican defense and foreign policy leaders.'

'I want Republican voters to pay close attention to what our party's most respected and knowledgeable leaders and national security experts are saying about Mr. Trump,' McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, added.

Trump said on ABC's 'Good Morning America' that he's right and the foreign-policy old guard is wrong. 

'I'll tell you how good our military is doing under Michael Hayden and people such as this,' Trump said. 'We've been fighting wars in the Middle East for 15 years, 18 years, we were in for four or five trillion dollars, we don't know what we're doing, we don't know who we're fighting, we're arming people that we want on our side, we don't know who they are.'

'When they take over a country they're worse than people they depose,' he continued.

'Give me a break!'

Romney's air assault from 2,000 miles away will give Trump's rivals – Texas sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich – a clear path to wage a ground assault during Thursday night 's debate in Detroit.

Trump softened the earth beneath Romney's feet, however, with appearances on morning television talk shows, calling Mitt 'a stiff' and a 'catastrophe' as the GOP's last presidential hope. 

'That was an election that should have been won by Republicans. He was a catastrophe,' Trump said on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe.'

THRONGS: Trump is riding a wave of anti-establishment discontent, and old-guard Republicans are scrambling for ways to take him down

And responding to the long-shot chance that Romney could still jump into the 2016 race to derail him, Trump let out a near-guffaw.

'Mitt Romney is a stiff,' he said on NBC's 'Today' show. 'Mitt Romney will not get elected, Mitt Romney failed twice and really failed last time.'

Trump also tweeted to millions that Romney is part of the political 'establishment' that he's trying to upend – and reminded supporters that the Utahan had sought his endorsement four years ago.

'Failed candidate Mitt Romney, who ran one of the worst races in presidential history,is working with the establishment to bury a big "R" win!' Trump wrote. 

'Why did Mitt Romney BEG me for my endorsement four years ago?'

Trump announced in February 2016 that he was backing Romney in a Las Vegas press event while former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, then-Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were still in the running.

'Being in Donald Trump's magnificent hotel and having his endorsement is a delight!' the ever-awkward-sounding Romney said at the time.

He went on to win the Nevada caucuses with 50 percent of the vote.

'He's a man who begged me – and I mean begged me – for my endorsement four years ago,' Trump reminded Morning Joe's hosts on Thursday.

Mitt Romney rolled his eyes at Donald Trump's excuse for not releasing his tax returns. Trump, on Thursday night, said he was being audited by the IRS and would release the returns afterward 

Mitt Romney sent out a barrage of tweets slamming frontrunner Donald Trump in recent days after making initial comments that suggested there were 'bombshells' hiding in The Donald's tax returns 

Romney, who has yet to endorse a GOP candidate, started in on The Donald several weeks ago, suggesting that there's a 'bombshell' waiting in the billionaire's tax returns, which is why Trump has yet to release them.

He pledged to release them once the Internal Revenue Service was done with a series of audits.

Romney returned to Twitter to tell voters that he wasn't buying Trump's excuse.

'No legit reason [Donald Trump] can't release returns while being audited, but if scared, release earlier returns no longer under audit,' Romney wrote. 

'[Donald Trump's] taxes for the last 4+ years are still being audited,' Romney continued. 'There are more #bombshells or he would release them.'  

Romney also inserted himself into the debate over Trump's comments about white supremacist leader David Duke.

Duke praised Trump last week, and the billionaire gave CNN's Jake Tapper a less-than-robust disavowal on Sunday – although he forcefully condemned Duke earlier and on subsequent occasions.

The resulting CNN sound bite is expected to feature in endless campaign-ad loops this fall, and Romney warned it could damage a nominated Trump enough to allow Hillary Clinton to claim the White House.

'The audio and video of the infamous Tapper-Trump exchange on the Ku Klux Klan will play a hundred thousand times on cable and who knows how many million times on social media,' he said.

'A person so untrustworthy and dishonest as Hillary Clinton must not become president. But a Trump nomination enables her victory.' 

After Donald Trump didn't forcefully push back an endorsement from the KKK's David Duke, Mitt Romney lashed out again 

Mitt Romney attacked Donald Trump yet again, suggesting that he release the transcript of his off-the-record comments said to the New York Times' editorial board

'A disqualifying & disgusting response by [Donald Trump] to the KKK,' Romney chimed in on Twitter. 'His coddling of repugnant bigotry is not in the character of America.'

Romney also called on The Donald to release the transcript of his off-the-record meeting with the New York Times editorial board, which is rumored to include comments from Trump that show the businessman wavering on immigration.

The former GOP nominee was rumored to be throwing his support behind Rubio, who many other establishment Republicans have endorsed, but that report was quickly discredited. 

It was Rubio himself who appeared on the Sunday shows a week ago and denied that Romney was coming on board.  

'That report is false,' Rubio said. 'I have no reason to believe he's anywhere near endorsing ... We'd love to have his endorsement, but there's nothing forthcoming.'

Romney made no nods in any specific direction on Thursday, hinting only at a state-by-state strategy that backs the most popular non-Trump opponent wherever a primary election occurs.

'If the other candidates can find common ground, I believe we can nominate a person who can win the general election and who will represent the values and policies of conservatism' he said.

'Given the current delegate selection process, this means that I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio, and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state.'