PARK CITY, Utah -- At a meeting of several hundred top Republican donors and strategists Saturday, former presidential nominee Mitt Romney said the party must look beyond this presidential election and beyond Donald Trump, who he said is setting a dangerous example for the U.S.

Romney, blinking back tears, told the attendees at his annual ideas meeting -- about 300 of his longtime donors and friends -- that many have asked him to get off his "high horse" and back Trump against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.

"Either choice is destructive," said Romney, the 2012 nominee. "I love this country. I love the founders. I love what this country is built upon, and its values. And seeing this is breaking my heart."

A day earlier on CNN, Romney said that presidents "have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny, all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America."

Trump, campaigning Saturday in an airport hangar outside Pittsburgh, struck back.

"Mitt Romney is a sad case. He choked," Trump said. "You know what a choke artist is? You know a guy who missed a kick, you get rid of him, right? He choked like a dog."

And at a rally in Tampa, Fla., on Saturday, Trump said Romney should have gone "off into the sunset" after his 2012 loss.

"You don't sit there jealous and sick to your stomach," he said.

At the Utah meeting, Romney said he would not spend time campaigning for or against Trump, and he predicted that 90 percent of Republicans would vote for Trump.

GOP strategists Stuart Stevens, Ana Navarro and Kristen Soltis Anderson told attendees to brace for a Clinton White House because Trump doesn't appeal to growing voter blocs, including Hispanics.

"It's very difficult to envision" how Trump can win, Anderson said.

Ryan questioned

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Romney's running mate in 2012, told the crowd in Utah that he supported Trump because his leadership position in the House means he must convey the will of Republican representatives, not just his own.

But Hewlett-Packard President Meg Whitman asked Ryan how he could endorse someone who she said had based his campaign on personal attacks and division. According to two people present, Whitman compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Ryan said many Republicans in Congress pressured him to back Trump, especially representatives of districts where Republican voters strongly support the New York businessman.

Whitman, according to one of the people present, warned that if Republicans compromise on their principles to win an important election, then it will haunt them.

"What happens next time?" she asked, implying it could lead to more compromises and more candidates like Trump.

In an emailed statement, Trump dismissed the comments from Whitman, who spent $144 million of her own money on her unsuccessful 2010 bid for California governor.

"I never met Meg Whitman, but the job she is doing at Hewlett-Packard is not a very good one," Trump said. "Based on the disastrous campaign she ran in California, and the tens of millions of dollars she wasted, I have learned a lot from her. I do not want her support."

Even Ryan was not immune to criticism from the Trump camp. Dan Scavino, the social media director and senior adviser on the Trump campaign, on Saturday linked to an article on a conservative website that accuses the speaker of harming his own party, complete with the headline "Paul Ryan is the reason the GOP is losing America."

Attendees at the Utah event were more upbeat on Ryan. The two largest applause lines, said one of the people present, were statements from other speakers that "Mitt Romney should have been president" and that "Paul Ryan should run for president."

One attendee stood up to ask Ryan to run for president in 2020 -- a request that assumes Trump is not the incumbent getting ready to run for re-election.

Lanhee Chen, Romney's former policy director, was among those who said he believes that Trump can't win in November.

"The last two weeks have given me serious doubts as to whether he could beat Hillary Clinton," said Chen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University. He said he is particularly bothered by Trump's personal attacks on Romney but that he also sees red flags in Trump's seeming unwillingness to build out his campaign infrastructure.

But there were also those who are firmly supporting Trump. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told attendees that Trump can be an effective president and that he's going to win with or without their help.

Anthony Scaramucci, a New York investor, and Andy Puzder, a California fast-food chain executive, urged donations for their candidate. "This is not a rabidly anti-Trump crowd," Scaramucci said. "If anything, people are trying to find ways to diplomatically support the candidate."

Puzder said potential donors left him feeling encouraged. His pitch on Trump was to stay positive. He told attendees that Trump has great children, which Puzder said spoke well to the candidate's character.

Trump urges unity

Trump on Saturday noted the opposition from members of his own party.

"I'd like to see Republican leadership be very strong, very smart, and you got to be cool," he said in a hangar in Moon Township, Pa. "If not, I'm gonna win, but a lot of other people are not. We are going to win either way."

Trump said Republicans risked losing seats in the House and Senate if they didn't get behind him.

"The Republicans have to be tough because we have the better ideas," he said. "And my ideas are better than any of them."

One of those ideas is turning the Second Amendment into a campaign issue. Trump told supporters in Pennsylvania that Clinton wants to repeal the right to keep and bear arms.

"On that issue alone, I think we win the election. I really do," Trump said.

Clinton has said she supports the Second Amendment but that safety measures are needed to keep firearms out of the wrong hands.

Earlier Saturday in Tampa, Trump targeted both Democrats and Republicans. Noting that he was in Florida, where Jeb Bush had served as governor, Trump revisited his primary-season attacks on his former opponent.

"I was at center stage at every debate," said Trump, while Bush was "falling off the ends" of the stage.

"I don't think he's going to endorse me," Trump said in Tampa. "Who the hell cares?"

As for Clinton, Trump said, a "war" is on the horizon.

"We have a war to win against a very crooked politician named Hillary Clinton, OK?" he said. "The Republican Party really should get their act together, they have to come together. We've got to win."

Trump called Clinton "Crooked Hillary" and a "maniac." He also again went after one of his most vocal critics -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. -- calling her "Pocahontas," a reference to her claims of American Indian ancestry.

"I said yes, I will apologize -- to Pocahontas," he said in Tampa. "To Pocahontas I will apologize, because Pocahontas is insulted."

Trump has faced backlash from both Democrats and Republicans for his comments directed at a Hispanic judge overseeing fraud litigation against the defunct Trump University. Trump has contended that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, is biased because of the candidate's hard line against illegal immigration, and that the judge should be disqualified from the case.

Several Republicans, including Ryan, condemned the comments as racially discriminatory, and some even withdrew endorsements.

But on Saturday in Tampa, Trump reiterated his statement that he is "the least racist person that you have ever met," and he said he is expanding his campaign slogan to be "Make America great again for everyone."

He also hugged an American flag to demonstrate his love for his country. It wasn't the only display of affection at the rally.

Toward the end of his speech, supporters broke into a chorus of "Happy Birthday." Trump turns 70 on Tuesday.

As his supporters began singing, Trump laughed and said, "I don't want to hear about it."

He said he's "very torn" about the birthday, but added: "I feel like I'm 35. That's the good news."

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Bykowicz, Jonathan Lemire and Sergio Bustos of The Associated Press; by Kevin Cirilli of Bloomberg News; by Laura Vozzella, Fenit Nirappil, Philip Rucker and Dan Balz of The Washington Post; by Kurtis Lee of the Los Angeles Times; and by Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.

A Section on 06/12/2016