So, the bad reviews for Donald Trump’s debate performance keep rolling in. Not only have we had the GOP’s master of memes Frank Luntz saying explicitly that Trump lost not only the debate but the election on Tuesday night, but a host of other GOP stalwarts have chimed in on his less-than-stellar outing on the debate stage. Now, Luntz’s other half, the GOP’s master of electoral maneuvers and architect of the Bush II administration, the Turd Blossom himself, Karl Rove has written a review for the Wall Street Journal that is hardly less pessimistic of Trump’s chances after what it describes as a complete failure by Trump to rise to meet the challenge of Harris’s candidacy.
Rove’s article starts out about as bluntly as Luntz’s does, mincing no words over how bad Trump was:
Tuesday’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.
That’s not even damning him with faint praise, that’s just outright declaring him a failure. Rove doesn’t get any more complimentary from there. The vast majority of the article is spent excoriating Trump for failing to take what Rove sees as obvious openings and lines of attack against Harris that he feels could have made the debate more even. Meanwhile, he has solid praise for Harris’s performance, pointing out again and again how she achieved what she set out to do and did it well. In particular, he notes her mastery of the split screen, how she used this to undermine everything that came out of Trump’s mouth without even having to say a word. There is a solid litany of Trump’s failures vs. Harris’s successful execution of her debate strategy, probably because Rove has a certain respect for good strategy properly executed. He also avoids the pitfall of too many GOP commentators and actually praises the ABC moderators and finds their fact checking appropriate.
Make no mistake, Rove is clearly unhappy that Trump and the GOP took the hit in this debate. All the rehashing of what Trump should have done makes it pretty clear what he had hoped Trump would do and his disappointment that he missed the mark. But this is the retired version of Karl Rove, who now feels that he can tell the truth about politics now that he no longer has skin in the game. And the truth he tells about Trump and his debate performance is brutal, especially in his conclusion about the overall effects of the debate:
Will this debate have an effect? Yes, though perhaps not as much as Team Harris hopes or as much as Team Trump might fear. But there’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Mr. Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as “dumb as a rock.” Which raises the question: What does that make him?
We all know the answer to that, including Rove, and it’s not one that Trump will ever want to hear.
