In 2012, Biden was on the Democratic ticket that successfully defeated Romney, then the Republican nominee for president. But six years later, in early November 2018, Romney offered Biden some surprising political advice, Mediate noted.

Romney, whom then-President-elected Donald Trump passed over for secretary of state, spoke on the phone to Biden after Romney won his Utah Senat race and reportedly pressed him to run for president in 2020 to get Trump out of the White House.

“You have to run,” New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti quoted Romney as saying to Biden, an exchange that is contained in Debenedetti’s upcoming book, “The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama.” …

In a note on sourcing, Debenedetti says his book is “primarily the product of hundreds of interviews” with “colleagues, aides, rivals, confidants, allies and eyewitnesses from every stage” of Obama and Biden’s careers since 2003.

“When someone’s words are rendered in italics, that indicates an approximation based on the memories of sources who did not recall exact wordings,” Pengelly adds, noting that the quote attributed to Romney — “You have to run” — is in italics.