Like two children...

Trump punches back at ‘choke artist’ Romney

By ELIZA COLLINS

Donald Trump responded to Mitt Romney’s takedown speech in Utah with withering scorn.

"I backed Mitt Romney. He was begging for my endorsement," Trump said at a rally in Portland, Maine Thursday. "I could have said 'Mitt, drop to your knees.' He would have dropped to his knees."

“Mitt is a failed candidate, he failed, he failed horribly,” Trump said. “He failed badly. That was a race that should have been won.”

"Mitt was looking at zoning for 9-car garages in California," he went on, accusing the 2012 Republican nominee of failing to go after President Barack Obama aggressively enough in that campaign's final weeks.

"He let us down. He let us down," Trump continued. "He was horrible in the third debate. Something happened."

Trump said he had held fundraisers for Romney and even sacrificed some furnishings for the former Massachusetts governor's failed presidential bid.

So many people came in for one fundraiser with wet shoes from the rain, Trump said, that “I ruined my carpet, that’s why I ruined it. And nobody thanked me."

"You help somebody and then he turns," Trump said, before allowing that perhaps Romney had his motives. “He probably had a right to turn because nobody could have been nastier than me in getting him not to run."

But he gave Jeb Bush a backhanded compliment, saying his former adversary did a good job in convincing Romney to bow out of the race last year.

"And Jeb convinced him not to run. Can you imagine? Jeb. Jeb! See, now that he’s out, I’ll say it: He’s a high-energy salesman," Trump said, with unconcealed glee.

The real reason Romney decided not to run in 2016, according to Trump, was actually not Bush’s “shock and awe” fundraising prowess: "I will tell you the real reason Mitt chickened out — it was me."

"Mitt Romney should not run," Trump said. "He’s a choke artist. ... "He doesn’t have what it takes to be president, that I can tell you."

“Isn’t he a huge business success, and doesn’t he know what he’s talking about? No he isn’t, and no he doesn’t," Romney said in his speech. "A business genius, he is not."

Trump responded by listing a series of ventures he said were successful.

And he swatted down Romney's call for him to release his taxes, insisting that you can't learn much from taxes and his financial statements are very strong.

“I made so much more money than Mitt," Trump said. "I have a store that’s worth more money."