Veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove declared that Republicans need to remain focused on their messaging ahead the midterms, bashing President Donald Trump and the White House for wasting time on “extraneous stuff.”
“I mean, we need to stay focused. And this starts at the White House and it starts with the president’s political operation,” Rove said on Wednesday’s episode of Fox News Brian Kilmeade’s radio show. “ And they’ve got plenty of good material.”
Rove’s criticism comes after he received right-wing hate for saying that he is voting for a Democratic candidate against Republican Bo French, who stirred up controversy over an apparent racist post.
He called French “bigoted” and warned other Republicans that their party has been “infiltrated” with “conspiracy nuts,” but his words were met with “credible threats” and even sparked a negative response from Trump, who called the GOP icon a “stone cold loser” and a “RINO,” or “Republican In Name Only.”
His remarks also come at a time where Trump’s sinking approval ratings are heavily impacting Republican campaigns this year as many Americans grow sour over his handling of the economy and the unpopular Iran war.
Rove told Kilmeade on Wednesday he’s concerned about “the messaging of the Republican effort” as the party has “not had a good set of messages that say, here’s what we’re for, here’s what we want to do, and here’s what the other side had done. And we continued to do it, we did it all month.”
He added that Republicans “wasted a lot of time on unessential things.”
“What has the last month been? We started off with the Trump dividend. We had the son getting the party paid for by the Russians. We got the president saying the Iranians were ready for a deal. And six days later, he says, ‘I’m going to maybe annihilate them.’”
The longtime Republican advised that “Team Trump needs to have a message of the day that it pushes every day and stops as much of this extraneous stuff.”
“We don’t need to hear about the president saying, ‘I’m going to tear down the Kennedy Center if I don’t get recognition!’” Rove said fuming. “We don’t want to hear about the, ‘I got the great Triumphal Arch and I’ve agreed that we’re going to have drones and snipers and a whole bunch of sniper ammunition,’ but who are those snipers going to shoot? People driving down the parkway?”