President Donald Trump is nursing a seriously bruised ego, tearing into a former rock star of the Republican Party because he refused to acknowledge Trump’s “tremendous success” in leading the GOP.
Trump threw a tantrum on his platform Truth Social, lashing out at former White House official and Republican strategist Karl Rove, who suggested in a Fox News interview Wednesday that Trump only won the 2024 election because voters didn’t like the Harris-Walz ticket.
Rove, appearing on “Fox and Friends,” was asked what advice he had for the GOP as Democrats attend their national summer meeting this week.
Rove said the party needed to look beyond the “hard-core base of the party” and focus on independent voters, ticket splitters and “people who might be suspect of the Republicans but need to be wooed to win elections,” according to reporting by the Daily Beast.
“They got wooed in 2024 because the idea of four more years of the Biden-Harris administration was anathema to them,” he continued. “They voted for Republicans because they didn’t want to vote for Democrats.”
Trump won the election by just over 2 million votes, and he did win the popular vote but by less than 50 percent with almost 3 million voters picking neither candidate.
“Now Republicans need to find a way to say, ‘Vote for us because of positive feelings about what it is that we’re doing, and what it is that we’re offering for future of the country,’” the former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush concluded.
Rove never mentioned Trump’s impact on the party and that set the President off on a frenzied tirade calling the strategist a “Republican in name only.”
“RINO Karl Rove, when asked on Fox & Friends this morning how to explain the tremendous success of the Republican Party, with millions of people joining it, and the Dems losing millions, was unable to give an answer,” Trump pouted.
“He just couldn’t utter the words, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP! But that’s OK, the PEOPLE get it, and always have!!!” the petulant Trump posted.
Trump’s MAGA base came to his defense and went after Rove.
“Piece of garbage,” this X user stated about Rove.
“Yep. I was watching Fox this morning, and he hates President Trump and can never say anything positive about our great president or the republican party … He is awful and shame on him,” X user Debbie Ricucci ranted.
Still another X user piled on, “He’s a Bush man. RINO.”
And these harsh words from this X user, “Karl is an enemy.”
Trump and Rove have been locked in a nasty battle for years.
This is far from the first time Rove has criticized Trump. During a Fox interview in May, Rove denounced the President’s handling of the economy and tariffs, among other issues.
Trump lashed out at Rove after that interview, too, calling him “a total loser.”
Rove was back at it in July, writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Trump would have “hell to pay” for mismanaging the scandal that erupted over the Epstein files when his administration decided to close the case into Trump’s former friend and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Last year he called Trump a pig in a scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Karl Rove: “There’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Mr. Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as ‘dumb as a rock.’ Which raises the question: What does that make him?”
That article spurred numerous reactions from readers shocked at Rove’s sting against Trump.
“Coming from Karl Rove, that’s a gun punch. Republicans, take note” said one Threads user Lasooze.
Another added, “Omg… brutal.”
View on Threads
But it’s impossible to empathize with Rove.
Threads user DGuyton sums it up nicely, “Karl Rove. Republican strategist. Synonymous with the traditional war hawk Republican brand. Is now a RINO. Sigh. Of course, he pretty much laid the groundwork for this administration, so it’s his own fault, really. Reap what you sow and all that. But still… this is laughable and yet… not that funny, really.”
