Republican strategist Karl Rove suggested former President Donald Trump damaged his re-election chances with his performance at Wednesday’s CNN town hall.
During a Thursday appearance on Fox News, Rove argued that Trump’s town hall appearance turned off independents. The Republican strategist displayed a whiteboard with his talking points.
“To the true believers, this was a great evening. They saw their hero,” Rove said. “But what dominated the evening? There were basically four issues. There was a big consternation over was the 2020 election stolen, and he continued to assert that it was. There was a lot of talk about January 6th.”
“He said, I’m going to pardon a lot of those people for January 6th,” he continued. “So now we’re going to have continuing questions to him as a candidate. Are you going to pardon the Oath Keepers? Are you going to pardon the Proud Boys?”
Rove predicted that the answers to who Trump would pardon “are not going to be particularly helpful.”
“So the question is going to be, last night, this was good for the true believers, but the election will be decided by independents,” Rove noted. “Donald Trump got 7 million fewer votes in 2020 than Joe Biden did. And the question is, are any of these issues going to add to his numbers? And my sense is, no, they aren’t.”
The Republican strategist said Trump also had a problem because a large portion of his base believed the criminal charges against him in New York City were legitimate.
“But if a quarter of Republicans say it’s justified, he’s got a problem inside his base,” Rove observed. “And nothing that he said last night, in my mind, does much to get him people who voted against him or didn’t vote at all in 2020.”
