Peggy Noonan: Romney needs to cut ties with Trump 'freak show'

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan is calling on presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney to disassociate himself with Donald Trump's "freak show."

CBS host Charlie Rose on Tuesday asked Noonan why Romney was attending a fundraiser later that day with Trump even after the billionaire continued to insist that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

"My view is that the Romney campaign made a mistake," the conservative columnist explained. "There was a certain freak show atmosphere to the Republican primaries in the past six months or so. Now that's kind of over, the show is over. Mr. Romney wins the nomination tonight. Texas will put him over the top. This is a good time to differentiate himself with the stranger aspects of the Republican race."

"One way you don't do it, I think, is do a fundraiser with Donald Trump," she continued. "He was part of the freak show aspect."

Last week, Trump told The Daily Beast that Obama’s former literary agent had erroneously said the president was born in Kenya because it was the “truth.”

“He didn’t know he was running for president, so he told the truth,” the billionaire mogul insisted. “He said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia… Now they’re saying it was a mistake. Just like his Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya, and she pointed down the road to the hospital, and after people started screaming at her she said, ‘Oh, I mean Hawaii.’ Give me a break.”

Trump has also speculated that if Obama has a U.S. birth certificate then “maybe it says he is a Muslim.”

On Monday, Romney refused to repudiate Trump, calling him "good people."

“You know, I don’t agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in,” the candidate remarked.

“But I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.”

Watch this video from CBS's This Morning, broadcast May 29, 2012.