Mitt Romney isn’t a big fan of this Donald Trump character, and he really wants you to know it. The former Republican presidential candidate and Utah’s newest senator wrote a Washington Post op-ed on Wednesday in which he said the president has not “risen to the mantle of the office.” This is an understatement, to say the least. Trump is crass and belligerent, thoughtless and undisciplined, racist and sexist. Reaching this conclusion is like announcing that January is the first month of the year.

Such critiques nonetheless comprise a well-trod genre for a small minority of Republican lawmakers. The authors are typically elder statesmen who could withstand any electoral blowback, like the late John McCain, or retiring senators like Bob Corker who no longer needed to worry about it. Jeff Flake, Arizona’s departing senator, carved out a national reputation over the last two years by begging the president to be a nicer person, all while doing little to obstruct his policy agenda in any meaningful way.

Romney’s latest writing is a declaration of sorts that he, too, will join the ranks of the Op-Ed Republicans when he takes his seat later this week. Trump himself noted the similarities on Wednesday morning, asking on Twitter if the new senator would turn out to be “a Flake.”

Here we go with Mitt Romney, but so fast! Question will be, is he a Flake? I hope not. Would much prefer that Mitt focus on Border Security and so many other things where he can be helpful. I won big, and he didn’t. He should be happy for all Republicans. Be a TEAM player & WIN! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2019

This is a relatively mild rebuke by Trump’s standards, which suggests he sees Romney as minor a threat as Flake was. “He agrees with many of the things we’ve done, and many of the things we have in mind, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.

That’s a fair reading of Romney’s op-ed. “It is not that all of the president’s policies have been misguided,” he wrote. “He was right to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges. These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years. But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency.”