GOP political maven Karl Rove — the quintessential, hard-nosed political realist — calls Trump a “joke” candidate. Rove also thinks Rep. Paul Ryan truly bugs Obama.
He notes that Trump had promise and embracing the birther issue makes him “a joke.” “The American people are not going to be hiring him and the Republicans are not going to hire him..Weird conspiracy theories..One of my White House deputies was a classmate of Barack Obama’s…He’s now embraced the nuttieness. I’m sorry to see it happened.”
Watch it in full.
I disagree with Rove. I don’t think Ryan concerns Obama. It’s clear Obama and the Democrats feel Ryan could be a great foil and they’re going to try to make him and his plan the face of the Republican party. And not in a complimentary way. Rove is a good commentator when he does it seriously, such as here, stripped away of all the partisan polemics. But Obama quaking in terror at Paul Ryan? If you believe that then I have this to sell to you for $25.50.
UPDATE: It turns out that conservative talker Mark Levin is not a Trump fan, either..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.