Fox News contributor Karl Rove took out his whiteboard and systematically tore apart Trump’s entire CNN town hall, claiming his performance did not help him with independent voters.
Rove joined America’s Newsroom to discuss the events on CNN last night, and his analysis made co-host Bill Hemmer uncomfortable.
Co-host Dana Perino opened the segment by proclaiming Trump was in his element last night, unplugged and taking no prisoners.
“To the true believers, this was a great evening, they saw their hero,” Rove said. “He got to talk about issues he cared about, but what dominated the evening?”
Rove then transitioned into what Trump focused on throughout the town hall with his little whiteboard and black marker.
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 claimed that he had ordered the National Guard to the Capitol, which has been denied by his Secretary of Defense.
And the issue came up of pardons, which was not helpful for the general election.
He said, I’m going to pardon a lot of those people for January 6th.
So now we’re going to have a continuing question to him as a candidate.
Are you going to pardon the Oath Keepers?
Are you going to pardon the Proud Boys?
Are you going to pardon people who were found guilty or pled guilty to attacking police officers?
There are going to be lots of questions.
And the answers to those are not going to be particularly helpful.
And then there was some discussion of Ukraine, where he said, I’ll settle it.
But he couldn’t bring himself to say that Russia was wrong to attack Ukraine, and that they wanted Ukraine to win.
So the question is going to be last night; this was good for the true believers.
But the election will be decided by independents.
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.
You know, it’s just when you have a quarter of Republicans saying that the indictment by the Manhattan D.A. of him over supposedly falsifying business records, which, you know, every legal expert I’ve talked to says is bogus.
But if a quarter of Republicans say it’s justified, he’s got a problem inside his base.
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.
Bill Hemmer was very antsy after Rove’s monologue he decided to attack CNN.
“All right,” Hemmer said nervously. “OK, you laid that out pretty well.”
“I’ve never seen a network denigrate a product that it produced quite like CNN did once the event was over,” Hemmer complained. “And it went on for hours, too.”
Hemmer wasn’t happy that CNN did the right thing and fact-check Trump’s many lies and conspiracies.
Rove’s analysis is pretty on the money.
While I and many others were highly critical of CNN for putting on the sh*t show, it did expose their viewers to another look at Trump in action. Voters do have short memories.
Trump wasn’t speaking to his usual Steve Bannon, Newsmax, OANN sedition audience.
It was a sh*t show of lies.
He is what he is. Only the true believers enjoyed his performance.
