Karl Rove spent decades turning bad polling numbers into political victories through a remarkably innovative strategy of "constant lying." But even this battle-hardened GOP whisperer is having trouble seeing a way out of President Donald Trump's bad poll numbers.
Rove, a regular contributor to Fox News, stopped by the network over the weekend to lay into the Trump administration over their nosediving approval ratings. He said that the president was in "bad shape" thanks to the economic chaos that his tariffs helped create.
"When it comes to the economy, he is in very bad shape," Rove said. "Even if he gets his way on certain things like tariffs, that he’s not good in the long run.... There’s some very deep-seated skepticism among ordinary Americans about the effect of the economy, the president’s economic policies, both in the short run and the long run.”
Rove said that Trump's historically bad approval ratings were the result of voters' expectations crashing against the reality of his second term.
"They voted for him because...they looked at the last four years under Biden-Harris and said, ‘not good.’ And they looked and remembered the four years under President Trump and said those were a lot better," he said. "I think this was a hope. I don’t think it was based upon an explicit understanding of what he was going to do."
Rove blamed general "chaos" and an "inability of the administration to explain what they’re doing" on Trump's cratering support.
"I think that has hurt them very much," he said. "All [Americans] know is there’s tariffs, and there’s talks about taxes, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it doesn’t seem to be making things better when they look at the tangible things of going to the grocery store, filling up their car and looking at the stock market returns."
