Karl Rove destroys Trump: the most partisan State of the Union address in living memory
President Donald Trump on Tuesday squandered any potential goodwill he might have gained with his State of the Union guests when he criticized Democrats as “crazy” and “sick people” during Tuesday’s speech, Republican strategist Karl Rove wrote Wednesday in his latest column for The Wall Street Journal.
“In what may have been the first time, Mr. Trump attacked his predecessor by name multiple times,” Rove said. “He repeatedly condemned congressional Democrats, tried to force them to stand up and applaud him, and lacerated them when they didn’t. He was itching to fight.”
He continued: “Many presidents have used the occasion to pressure the opposition on key issues. None have done so as directly and brutally as Mr. Trump did on Tuesday. He attacked Democrats calling them ‘sick people’ and ‘crazy,’ claiming that ‘they are destroying our country.'”
Read the full op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
Trump broke records by delivering the longest State of the Union address ever given, but he spent much of the time insulting his opponents and outright lying about his supposed accomplishments. Rove argued that Trump initially seemed quite magnanimous.
“The President electrified the House of Representatives by bringing out the United States men’s Olympic hockey team and awarding goaltender Connor Hellebuyck the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” he wrote. “Even Democrats stood up and joined in the chants of ‘USA! USA!'”
Rove added: “Throughout his record number of guest appearances, the president was empathetic and affable. His remarks, delivered as written, were often moving, patriotic and unifying.”
But, he continued, “this was also the most partisan State of the Union in living memory.”
The Republican strategist has been an outspoken critic of Trump. Rove, a senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, recently warned that Trump and his “grotesques” could lead Republicans to disaster in the upcoming midterm elections.
Rove argued in his column that Trump further damaged his party’s chances in November by insulting Democrats.
While noting that this “encouraged Republicans,” Rove added, “But did it help Mr. Trump with the key voters the GOP must sway in the midterm elections? Almost everything the president said energized his MAGA hard core. But they are not enough to avoid a blowout this fall.”
Rove noted that the president’s current atrocious approval rating represents people who are “pessimistic” about the economy, for whom Tuesday’s speech “almost certainly did not sound grounded in reality,” as Trump claimed in his speech that the economy was “roaring.”
Kenny Holston/The New York Times/News
“The Joint Economic Committee of Congress says the United States lost 108,000 manufacturing jobs last year,” Rove wrote. “And all of this took place amid growing public concern about the effect of artificial intelligence on jobs, utility bills, children and the future.”
He continued: “Yet the president claimed that ‘prices are plummeting’. Generally they are not. His tariffs, he opined, “will substantially replace the…income tax,” and ending fraud in federal spending will produce “a balanced budget overnight.” They won’t.”
Rove, who is certainly not the only one expressing concern about Republicans’ chances in the upcoming midterm elections, warned in his column that any hope of success in those elections can only come if they offer much more “substance,” empathy and responses to clear concerns about the economy.
“You better get to work,” he wrote. “Time is a waste.”