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(Video: Fox News)
Republican Ohio Senate nominee J.D. Vance is no fan of W. Bush administration official turned Fox News contributor Karl Rove.
Speaking on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” late Wednesday, a day after he won Ohio’s GOP primary election, he described Rove as a “slimeball.”
He made the remark during a discussion with host Tucker Carlson about the attack strategies that were used against him in the Ohio primary race.
“What’s so interesting is that the rap against you was that you were a fraud. ‘J.D. Vance was skeptical of Trump, now he’s all-in on Trump’s agenda.’ But if you were a fraud, they would’ve sent you money. My impression was they hated you because they suspected you were sincere,” Carlson noted.
Vance was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. His primary opponent, Josh Mandel, was instead endorsed by the establishment, namely Karl Rove.
“I think that’s exactly right,” Vance replied.
“If you think of some of my biggest enemies in this primary – you know, the slimeball Karl Rove, who shipped a lot of American jobs overseas, got rich in the process, and also sent a lot of Americans to die in stupid conflicts. Karl Rove spent a lot of money. He wrote a lot of op-eds criticizing my candidacy. He was even calling my donors after Trump endorsed me, encouraging them to drop my campaign,” he continued.
In fact, Rove wrote another column immediately after Vance’s victory titled “Vance’s Ohio Senate Victory Isn’t a Big Win for Trump.”
Even left-wing “journalists” have taken to mocking the piece:
Citing a single poll, Karl Rove thinks that a ~10 point Vance jump post-endorsement shows the *limitations* of Trump’s influence. 10 points in the final three weeks when most voters are locked-in is insane. https://t.co/jBM6cc2ZjU
— Adam Kelsey (@adamkelsey) May 5, 2022
What’s not clear, particularly given the tenor of Rove’s writing, is whether his beef is specifically with Vance or rather with Trump. Which is to say there’s a chance he fought so hard against Vance specifically to spite Trump.
Continuing his remarks on Fox News, Vance said, “So in a lot of ways the what this revealed is that you have some very corrupt political consultants in the Republican Party who despise their own voters. It was crazy. A couple days before the primary, after I think we’d already kind of locked it up, we were way ahead in the polls, a Republican donor group put $2 million dollars on TV to attack me, which really didn’t hurt my candidacy against the other Republicans. It actually just hurt me against the Democrats.”
“So actually my candidacy revealed an incredible amount of corruption in our own party. And I think that’s one of the things that I do have to fight against. You know, Tim Ryan, who I’m running against, is a total fraud. But we also have to fight against the corruption in our own party.”
Vance is especially popular among anti-war Republicans like former Trump administration official Steve Cortes because of his calls for restraint vis-a-vis the conflict in Ukraine.
The way our institutions are cheering a war with Russia over Ukraine is downright creepy. From the corporate press to the professional bureaucrats of DC. No, no, no: secure our own border before we worry about anyone else’s.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) December 8, 2021
Worth repeating: our leaders care more about Ukraine’s border than they do our own. https://t.co/gQ3QLIE6Sg
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) January 24, 2022
What’s happening in Ukraine doesn’t threaten our national security, but it does distract our leaders from the things that do actually threaten it, like the wide open southern border & all the fentanyl coming across killing American kids.
Full statement below: pic.twitter.com/RAdytYTiaj
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) February 22, 2022
In the last few weeks the media has devoted 20 stories on Russia-Ukraine for every one story about inflation. We need to focus on problems closer to home, and this inflation crisis is making our people much poorer. https://t.co/FfyeiTwkCO
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) March 30, 2022
Writing for The National Pulse after Vance’s victory this week, Cortes opined that the 37-year-old’s victory “represents a fulcrum moment for the America First movement, because it validates that a populist nationalist approach to foreign policy can prove decisive with 2022 voters.”
“JD stood athwart [the] latest tide of interventionist madness and yelled ‘stop!’ As a Marine veteran who was deployed to Iraq, he knows too well the destruction of war and the massive costs – human and financial – incurred for our homeland. Vance courageously distinguished himself in a crowded and well-funded field in Ohio by declaring his total opposition to escalation in Ukraine, particularly the folly of a NATO no-fly zone,” Cortes wrote.
Perhaps this is why Rove, who’s notoriously pro-war, hates him? Either way, whether he hates Vance or Trump, unless Rove intends to back Vance’s Democrat challenger, his only option going forward will be to get with the program …
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