Continuing the onslaught on Donald Trump and his potential presidential run, Republican strategist Karl Rove says the billionaire real-estate mogul is the “the flavor of the week,” and the reason he is leading the pack in several 2012 polls is because he says “outrageous things.”
“It’s because he's jumped out there — he gets on television and he says outrageous things,” Rove Wednesday told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “He goes everywhere on television that will accept him — and right now, he’s the flavor of the week. But I don’t think he’s going to be as durable as some might expect him to be."
Rove and Trump recently have engaged in a televised war of words, with the potential presidential candidate criticizing President George W. Bush’s key adviser — and the president himself — of moribund actions that led to Obama’s election. Rove has called Trump a “joke candidate.”
“You’ll notice he said 75 percent of Republicans agree with him that [President Barack] Obama was not born in the United States — that’s simply not true — there’s not a single poll that shows that 75 percent of Republicans agree with Donald Trump that Barack Obama was born someplace outside the United States of America,” Rove said.
“So you know, it’s one thing to say . . . you know, the president ought to put forth his birth certificate and I don’t understand why he isn’t,” he continued. “But it’s another thing to go out there and do what Trump has done — which is to feed this paranoia that President Obama was somehow not born in the United States of America.”
Van Susteren asked whether, as some have suggested, the media are baiting Trump on the birth certificate issue.
“I think it’s everybody. I mean . . . he’s good television,” Rove replied. “And he likes doing these things. So you know, he’s out there carrying around a bag of grenades and reaching into it and pulling a pin and throwing them — and the media love that.
“And you know, they may — they may look at him a little skeptically, but [ABC News'] George Stephanopoulos loved having him on and asking, ‘Well, what did your investigators do when you sent them to Hawaii?’” he continued. “I mean, and Trump loved having that question asked.”
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