During a speech that former President Barack Obama delivered in recent days that was broadcast as part of a ceremony honoring the graduates whose in-person ceremonies have been cancelled, he condemned the incompetence that has been on display from the Trump team amidst the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Those on the president’s side haven’t exactly taken kindly to the former president’s remarks, although with their increasingly belligerent rants, they have essentially proven Obama’s implied point about the Trump team’s pettiness. During an appearance on Fox this week, former Bush adviser Karl Rove ludicrously insisted that Obama’s comments amounted to a “political drive-by shooting.”
I guess Karl Rove missed the dozens of times Trump accused President Obama of an undefined fictional crime last week https://t.co/vVX69YSOIJ
— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) May 18, 2020
Besides the outrageous implication that Trump should be immune from the criticism of past presidents and is himself some kind of shining example of taking the high road, Rove’s comments sound racist in that he’s automatically suggesting that a black American leader is guilty of some kind of crime just because he spoke out.
Karl Rove absolutely chose these words on purpose. Fox News will never cover the actual gun violence epidemic in this country. Instead they'll book sad old hacks like Rove to stoke racial resentment and tone police Obama while Trump tweets like a lunatic. https://t.co/mJzrsD7wJW
— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) May 18, 2020
Rove ranted:
‘It is so unseemly for a former president to take the virtual commencement ceremony for a series of historically black colleges and universities and turn it into a political drive-by shooting.’
Watch below:
Reacting to Obama's commencement speech, Fox contributor Karl Rove accuses the former president of committing "a political drive-by shooting" pic.twitter.com/xCBAj7YBQd
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) May 18, 2020
It is just mind-boggling that Rove expects to be taken seriously while implying that Trump himself does anything other than mindlessly berate anyone who even remotely resembles a political opponent. Obama speaks out on one occasion and he gets wide conservative condemnation, but Trump spends every day whining about his opponents, and he gets a pass.
Rove continued:
‘This is a moment where these young graduates that could be inspired to a life of service, to recognize that life is going to bring challenges and how we handle the challenges, it’s going to demonstrate our character. There are lots of positive messages that the former president could have delivered, but the news that we have out of this speech, out of this appearance is he says, ‘The pandemic has finally fully torn back the curtain that so many of the folks in charge don’t know what they’re doing, lots of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.’ I mean, think about that. He has slandered, you know, not just the president who’s his political target, and he made it clear a week ago he was going to go after him, but he’s taking a slap at the vice president who has been an extraordinarily effective job as the head of the coronavirus task force, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, Secretary Azar, Director Collins.’
Yeah, it’s pretty clear that Obama didn’t mean for his comments about supposed leaders who have no idea what they’re doing to be directed at Dr. Anthony Fauci or his colleagues like Dr. Deborah Birx. It’s just willful ignorance to suggest otherwise.
Does Rove want observers to seriously believe that the U.S. has done a good job with responding to the pandemic, anyway? Tens of thousands of Americans have died and tens of thousands more may die in coming weeks and months. The U.S. has suffered from abject failures of leadership.
