The dire remarks from one of the Republican Party’s most revered political minds — who POLITICO reported last week is now advising the Trump campaign — come amid escalating concerns within the GOP regarding the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and widespread racial unrest.
Trump’s erratic handling of those twin crises and increasingly incendiary rhetoric have exacerbated anxieties about his electoral prospects among congressional Republicans and other senior party figures.
The president did nothing to reassure allies during a town hall event Thursday night, when he offered a meandering answer to Sean Hannity after the Fox News host asked him about his priorities for a potential second term.
“I didn’t know very many people in Washington” at the time of his inauguration, Trump said amid remarks that were widely panned as incoherent. “Now I know everybody.”
On Friday, Rove assessed that putting forth a comprehensible agenda for the next four years is the “most important” step Trump should take to regain his footing over Biden in the White House race.
“What does he want to do next? No president gets reelected by simply saying, ‘I’ve done a good job’,” Rove said, warning that Trump “needs to get a better answer” to the question posed by Hannity.
“You can’t win unless you’ve got a disciplined, focused campaign strategy,” he added. “And these polls point to the president and his team needing to reexamine what they’re doing and come up with a better game plan.”
