Karl Rove, the political architect of President George W. Bush’s successful 2000 and 2004 White House campaigns, has again been spotted at the White House after reports circulated that he is advising President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.
On Friday, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman posted online that Rove has again been seen at the White House. The report comes a week after Business Insider reported that Rove, who infamously wrongly predicted the 2016 presidential election, was beginning to advise Trump on the campaign trail.
“Spotted at White House again this week: Karl Rove,” Haberman wrote.
In April 2016, Trump called Rove “such a dishonorable guy” in an exclusive Breitbart News interview. Trump’s comments were in response to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Rove where he accused the then-presidential candidate of operating a vanity project rather than a policy-driven campaign.
“[Rove] shouldn’t be allowed to write for the Wall Street Journal,” Trump said.
Rove has consistently been on the opposite side of Trump on the president’s key campaign issues. In 2014, Rove was one of the leading Republican establishment figures pushing for an amnesty for illegal aliens.
Likewise, as Breitbart News has noted, Rove has been consistently publicly opposed to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports and attacked the president for his killing President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal.
One of Rove’s longstanding objections to Trump’s 2016 agenda was his continued support for the Iraq War. In April 2015, Rove told an Iraq War veteran that despite the casualties of nearly 4,500 American service members, removing Saddam Hussein “from power” was “the right to” do.
“The United States government and the United States military was right to do so,” Rove said of the Iraq War. “We should be proud of what we were able to do in Iraq and we should be sorry that we left them alone, because when we left them, things deteriorated.”
Trump has opposed the Iraq War since January 2003.
Rove has also accused Trump, as recently as August 2018, of using the language of Soviet Union communist dictator Joseph Stalin when talking about the establishment media.
“I think calling names is not helpful to our country from any side,” Rove said. “Calling [the media] the enemy of the people that just grates on me. I grew up during the time of the Cold War. That is a phrase that was used by Stalin against the enemies of the communist regime. I think the president would be well advised to tone down the rhetoric.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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