CNBC
Rick Santelli
On CNBC on Thursday, Santelli - whom Glenn Beck credited with catalyzing the Tea Party movement back in 2009 - said, "I haven't seen this Mitt Romney," when talking about how Romney went after Republican frontrunner Donald Trump earlier on Thursday.
"The only word I can think of is irony," the CNBC contributor remarked.
And it all came back to Benghazi.
Santelli referenced the October 2012 presidential debate between then-Republican nominee Romney and President Barack Obama in which the candidates traded barbs about whether Obama had called the attacks in Benghazi an "act of terror."
The point - excluding a whole lot of assumed background knowledge - that Santelli made is that if Romney had been as hard on Obama then as he's being on Trump now, Romney would be in the White House today.
As for what Romney said about Trump on Thursday, Santelli said:
Well, let me phrase it this way: I think a lot of the things [Romney] said are grounded in truth. But, I also think in his argument against Trump, and in the positives of other Republicans, my comment would be: "What have they done that should make voters think that Mr. Trump is going to not do something?" [The other candidates] have been in power.
He brought up John McCain. Did he win? Did [Romney] win? I think that he is missing this. It's not necessarily what Trump says, it's what people think he's going to do after he gets elected, things that are actionable. ... I'm just saying the political landscape that Mitt Romney is painting is in a strange, surreal sort of way exactly why he was rejected and moderates were rejected. Because they talk a good game with high character, and high morals, and they deliver zero.
Oof.
And while this may not have been a classic Santelli explosion, consider him less-than-impressed at Romney's biggest effort yet to steer the election back towards an establishment candidate.