Rove: I’m not warming to Trump

GOP strategist Karl Rove on Friday said he and his super-PAC are not warming to Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

“The answer is no,” Rove said in response to a question from Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer on Friday.

{mosads}“It was a story in yesterday’s Politico … on a conference call we had with our donors by a reporter who loves sensationalism and doesn’t like to do the hard work of reporting,” he said Friday.

The report from Politico said Rove’s super-PAC American Crossroads was warming to Trump and beginning to see him in a more favorable light. It said the super-PAC planned to advertise against Hillary Clinton in the fall if she is the Democratic nominee.

“We had a conference call in which we briefed our donors … we’re involved in a continuing set of research, focus groups and polls, focused on Hillary Clinton and how to beat her,” Rove said. 

Rove, who served as senior adviser to former President George W. Bush, said the American Crossroads research took Trump, whom national polls say is “the weakest Republican candidate” and tried to find out how Clinton would fare against him in “critical battleground states” and then in “so-called opportunity states” such as Wisconsin and Minnesota.

“And the evidence is that as weak a candidate as she is, he can’t exploit those weaknesses,” Rove said.

Rove concluded by reiterating that his personal view is that Trump cannot beat Clinton in a general election. He says it’s important to keep attacking Clinton and suppressing her popularity in order for the Republicans to succeed in November.