“I would put my heart and soul into trying to help him do that. You bet I’d support him for that," Elizabeth Warren said. | Getty Elizabeth Warren throws support behind Scott Brown for VA secretary

Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, whose name has been floated as a possible pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs for President-elect Donald Trump, can count on the support of his former rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday in an interview on Boston public radio station WGBH that she would endorse Brown, the man whom she unseated from the Senate in 2012 after a nasty campaign, if Trump were to pick him to lead the VA.


“If Scott Brown is the nominee for Veterans Affairs, I have no doubt that he would put his heart and soul into trying to help veterans,” Warren said in her interview, which was reported by The Boston Globe. “And I would put my heart and soul into trying to help him do that. You bet I’d support him for that.”

Brown, who served in the National Guard for more than 30 years, confirmed last week that Trump was considering him to lead Veterans Affairs. After meeting with Trump, Brown told reporters that he had expressed interest in the job because serving veterans and veterans’ issues is a “passion” for him. He added that “the toughest job in the Cabinet is to lead the VA, because while it has so many angels working there, it has so many great problems as well.”

Warren also had kind words for another former Massachusetts politician, Mitt Romney, who is believed to be one of four finalists to be Trump’s secretary of state. While she was less effusive in her praise of Romney than she was of Brown, the liberal firebrand appeared open to the idea of the 2012 GOP presidential nominee leading the State Department.

“I’d like to hear more, but I think Mitt Romney is a smart man, and I think he’s got a pretty level-headed view of the world,” Warren said.

While the potential nominations of Brown and, to a lesser extent, Romney were received warmly by Warren, she has been harshly critical of other picks by the president-elect. A regular opponent of the financial industry, Warren said the selection of former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin to be treasury secretary "should send shivers down the spine of every American who got hit hard by the financial crisis.”