Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has weighed in on Donald Trump’s fixation with deploying the National Guard across the country—and he doesn’t have a sunny outlook.
Rove, who was dubbed “The Architect” by George W. Bush, appeared on the Journal Editorial Report Saturday. The Wall Street Journal columnist and Fox contributor said that the president was playing with fire with his current strategy.
Alongside forecasting tanking popularity for Trump, the GOP multi-hyphenate also admitted that he was struggling to see evidence that certain cities were as “war-torn” as Trump describes.
Opening with a clip of Trump enthusing how people in Memphis “are so happy” about the presence of the National Guard, Fox News host Paul Gigot countered that new polling does not suggest such broad support.
The polls from CBS News-You Gov and Reuters-Ipsos showed that 58% of adult Americans opposed the deployment of troops in US cities. The latter poll also reported Democrat respondents at 72% opposed and Republicans at 51%.
“Well, I think you touched on an important point,” Rove said in light of the polls, later adding more information from the data focused on whether Trump should send troops even if governors objected.
Explaining that Independents tended to side with Democrats in being more firmly opposed, Rove suggested it showed how “partisan” the issue was—and not in a way that looked good for Trump.
“This ultimately I think will tend to be a loser if the question is ‘Should the president do this?’ or ‘Should he have done it?’” he said.
“On the other hand it might get him a slight improvement among the people saying—who are concerned about crime, by saying ‘Well, at least he’s taking action.’”
Rove concluded: “But overall I think this is going to end up being a loser for the president.”
Gigot then countered with Trump’s justification that “National Guard troops are there to protect federal buildings and to protect ICE agents as they’re doing their jobs.”
The Pulitzer prize winning host said that both Illinois governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson stated that they have no wish to cooperate with ICE.
“So, I mean, there’s a kind of logic to what he’s doing to try to protect these agents, is there not?” he asked.
“Yeah, well, look, he has authority to deploy the National Guard to protect federal facilities,” Rove said.
However, Rove added that public opinion was vital—and strongly suggested that there wasn’t enough evidence of violence or attacks to make the deployment of troops necessary.
“I think the public, though, is going to look at this and make a decision whether… are they seeing what they saw during the summer of 2020, and riots in Portland, nightly attacks on the federal courthouse? Or is this going to be, you know, protesters outside a facility in suburban Chicago?” he said.
“I mean, how this plays out is going to depend upon how the locals take this in stride. If it heats up, yes, the president’s going to look better. If it doesn’t heat up, if it really is just sort of meeting the needs of protecting the federal facilities, I’m not certain it’s going work to his advantage.”
Using Portland as an example, Rove hinted that Trump may have been using poetic license in his descriptions of supposedly lawless cities.
Rove quipped: “We saw this a little bit in Portland where the president was asked about it and he said, ‘Well, you know, I am hearing that there are fires, and riots, and lots of violence every night.’”
“I don’t know where he was getting that because that’s not what they’re seeing on Portland TV,” Rove concluded.
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