President Donald Trump is leading the Republican Party into a midterm elections disaster with his social media tirades and unconvincing pronouncements about the economy, warned Republican strategist Karl Rove in his latest column for The Wall Street Journal.
“The president’s grotesqueries have to stop,” Rove wrote Wednesday.
Rove, a senior adviser and deputy chief of staff for former President George W. Bush and one of the architects of the Iraq War, has joined a growing chorus of Republicans who believe Trump is courting disaster with his divisive comments and messaging.
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Trump is “making the same mistake” as former President Joe Biden, Rove argued.
“Mr. Biden and his allies looked disconnected from reality when they proclaimed ‘Bidenomics is working’ even as ordinary Americans struggled with inflation,” he wrote in his column. “Telling voters not to believe their own lying checkbooks was politically insane.”
Rove continued, “Mr. Trump is doing the same thing.”
Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty Images
In an address Wednesday, Trump falsely said that prices for “everything” are coming down and that “inflation is stopped.”
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Rove wrote that Trump has not only repeatedly “mocked the affordability issue,” but has begun angering his own base.
“On Monday Mr. Trump grabbed the national spotlight when he decided to make a self-absorbed Truth Social post trashing Rob Reiner after he and his wife were gruesomely murdered,” Rove added, saying his inflammatory remarks about the late filmmaker diminished Trump to his own supporters.
“Every day matters,” Rove wrote. “Presidential postings like that chew up valuable time that should be spent winning over tepid supporters or persuading anyone open to voting Republican. It doesn’t look good for the GOP next year.”
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Rove warned the MAGA leader and his team that they have fewer than 11 months to win back dejected voters, citing a Real Clear Politics approval rating average of 43.6% to argue that Trump “should be focused on building Americans’ trust” in his administration.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham has also predicted midterm trouble for the GOP, as did her former colleague Bill O’Reilly.
Rove concluded, “The White House is on the wrong track. It had better get its messaging right — both its formal attempts at directing the conversation and Mr. Trump’s spontaneous social-media rants. Or else the president won’t like the outcome.”
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