Sen. Mitt Romney on Sunday downplayed remarks by Donald Trump that the former president would not be a dictator “except for Day One,” despite the Utah Republican’s disdain for Mr. Trump.

“When I was a kid, there was something called a gumball machine.You could put a penny in and a gumball would come out. It was automatic, there was no filter,” Mr. Romney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Donald Trump is kind of a human gumball machine, which is a thought or a notion comes in and it out comes out of his mouth. There’s not a lot of filter that goes on.”

Mr. Trump said in a recent town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity that he would not be a dictator “other than Day One,” followed by remarks about the southern border and domestic production of energy.

Mr. Romney, the only Republican senator to twice vote for Mr. Trump’s impeachment conviction, suggested the ex-president was “playing to the crowd.”

“You can look at his record as president, particularly in the last months of his presidency and say this is a dangerous approach. This is an authoritarian approach,” Mr. Romney said, citing the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol .

• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.