 5 years ago 
 
 (CNN) - Richard Grenell, who joined Mitt Romney's team as a foreign policy adviser less than two weeks ago, has left the campaign, a spokesman for the likely Republican presidential nominee confirmed Tuesday.  In a statement fed through the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, Mitt Romney's foreign policy spokesman -- last seen furiously deleting tweets about Callista Gingrich and other subjects -- announces he won't be joining the campaign after all: 
 
 I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. "While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama's foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign," Grenell said in the statement. He added: "I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team." According to sources familiar with the situation, Grenell decided to resign after being kept under wraps during a time when national security issues, including the president’s ad concerning Osama bin Laden, had emerged front and center in the campaign. Rubin's headline ("Richard Grenell hounded from Romney campaign by anti-gay conservatives") pins the blame on a handful of Christian conservatives who criticized the appointment because of Grenell's sexual orientation. UPDATE (3:10 p.m.): The Romney camp has now responded via campaign manager Matt Rhoades: “We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons. We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.” 
 
 That is a perhaps too subtle retort to those calling for Grenell’s head, that he was not hired to advise on gay issues but on foreign policy matters.
– Richard Grenell's job as Mitt Romney's foreign policy spokesman lasted all of about two weeks. Grenell had been a source of controversy on two fronts: He was openly gay, which rankled some conservative commenters, and he had issued a long trail of tweets before taking the job that mocked not only Callista Gingrich but prominent Democratic women, including Rachel Maddow and Hillary Clinton. The Right Turn blog at the Washington Post broke the news and says Grenell was "hounded" from the job "by anti-gay conservatives." (It cites this National Review column as an example.) But Politico says Grenell's "off-color and massively off-message tweets" also played a role, as does CNN. Grenell statement: "... my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign." But he made a point to thank Romney for his "clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team." Romney camp: “We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons. We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.”