Rove: ‘Undisciplined’ Trump ‘stepping on’ his own message

Republican strategist Karl Rove criticized former President Trump for being “undisciplined,” with the election less than two weeks away — though he also praised the presidential candidate’s campaign.

“This is the most disciplined campaign his staff has run,” Rove told Fox News’s Bill Hemmer on Thursday in an interview highlighted by Mediaite. “But he remains undisciplined.”

Rove, who served as deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush, also knocked Trump for actions of this that have drawn criticism recently, such as remarks about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia and a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month in which the GOP presidential nominee swayed to “39 minutes of dance music.”

Hemmer, setting up a question about the importance of closing messages, played Rove a clip from a recent Trump rally in Georgia.

“We’re going to close the borders first day, first hour, first minute. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to take the criminals immediately. We will deport the criminals, we’re going to get them out fast,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re going to get them out fast. We’re going to drill, baby, drill. We’re going to get our energy prices down. We’re going to get our country back in order.”

“And I think we’re going to have — I think we’re going to have the four greatest years in the history of our country,” he added.

Rove responded, saying closing arguments are “very important” and “obviously the emphasis on being optimistic is important.”

The strategist, noting former president keeps “stepping” on his own message, then seemingly offered Trump some advice.

“In the next 12 days, you need to have him saying that kind of thing with a little bit more depth and substance to it and less on the sort of the riffing that has caused people to, you know — if he says something sort of wild, the media is going to cover the wild thing rather than the substantive thing, and the substantive thing is what’s going to sell the voters,” Rove said.

In response to a request for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “Nobody cares what Karl has to say. He’s as irrelevant as a wet paper bag.”

— Updated at 3:08 p.m.