TIME’s Joe Klein: Romney mistrustful of outside world because of Mormon faith

• Tweet
• 
• 

• Tweet

TIME magazine political columnist Joe Klein said Tuesday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith leads him to be “mistrustful of the outside world”

“I think there is something very close to the core of his being, on a very personal level — and this is just speculation on my part — that leads him to mistrust the rest of the world,” he said during a discussion with BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith about Romney.

Many conservative Christians — a major base of the Republican Party — see Mormonism as a heretical offshoot of their religion, which has lead some to question whether Republican voters could support a Mormon president.

According to a Pew Research Center survey from 2011, 53 percent of white evangelical Protestants said Mormonism was not a Christian faith. However, those same voters overwhelmingly support Romney in a hypothetical match up against President Barack Obama.

“He is worried about it,” Klein added. “Because of all the oppression that Mormon’s have suffered over the last 150 years, there is a culture within the church of withholding information. I think he is imbued with that.”

Watch video, courtesy of Fora.TV, below: