his daughter ivanka trump also echoing the point tweeting out this morning we must all come together as americans and be one country united. hashtag charlottesville. joining me right now is karl rove, former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to president george w. bush and a fox news contributor. always a pleasure. thank you very much for joining in the conversation here. you bet. your reaction to the president s response to charlottesville. i know the mainstream media is going nuts all morning saying he should be slammed. what did you think? well, i don t say slammed but i m frankly a little disappointed. it was a mised opportunity. i thought his opening statement was pretty darn good up to a point. he said we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred bigotry and violence and i thought that was a great beginning. then he cleared off, not reading from his script, on many sides, on many sides, it s been going on for a long time in our country,
calling for unity. his daughter ivanka trump also echoing the point tweeting out this morning we must all come together as americans and be one country united. hashtag charlottesville. joining me right now is karl rove, former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to president george w. bush and a fox news contributor. always a pleasure. thank you very much for joining in the conversation here. you bet. your reaction to the president s response to charlottesville. i know the mainstream media is going nuts all morning saying he should be slammed. what did you think? well, i don t say slammed but i m frankly a little disappointed. it was a mised opportunity. i thought his opening statement was pretty darn good up to a point. he said we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred bigotry and violence and i thought that was a great beginning. then he cleared off, not reading from his script, on many sides, on many sides, it s been going on for a long t
made some remarks there. now his nominee for attorney general. where do we begin. this sounded like a campaign speech. he has the bully pulpit. the world is listening. not one mention of russia or china. he goes after the media. at one point he mocks hillary clinton campaign basically saying they bought fireworks to celebrate and we offered to buy them from them in gist. was it a mised opportunity. it s mindset and the themes he s likely to stress when he takes office particularly on the domestic side. on the mindset you see the grievance he was still underestimated and i won, i won, kellyann increasing by one the states he won to 31, he won 30. more important you saw the core themes that he s going carry to the white house and the core promises i m going bring back
fiscally conservative, socially moderate. what you heard about virginians described similarly, for instance. and yet the president didn t want to emphasize any of the contrasts at all. didn t hear the words 47% bain c. it seemed like he was very focused on playing it safe. like david said. i think there was a mised opportunity on the in the president s camp. i think it s why you didn t see any obama one of the reasons you didn t see any surrogates right away. they were the last ones to leave. usually the people that leave last are the ones that had the harder job to do. let s be realistic. right. senator, i want to go back to something on the governing side. were you surprised that governor romney thrdrew such a line in t sand saying i m going to take one avenue away completely, taxes. mistake? it s understandable from the republican experience in the past three decades.
he certainly isn t going to look presidential. what should he have said? i don t care what he does in israel and poland. this is the thing people will remember. i want to ask joe the same question. here s the problem, this is not what you want to spend july talking about when getting ready for september. do i think this is going to have a big effect on the place no. it is a major mised opportunity. he went abroad, didn t look presidential. could have moved the meeter in a different direction. and he looks as you said chunky. what should he have said, joe? joe? did we lose? oh. we lost his shot. has he ever been invited into someone s home? who? joe? no. mitt romney. you go into someone s home for dinner and there s a yellow couch you re looking at. yeah. and you say, geez what, a beautiful couch. you re in someone else s country. i mean come on. the guy is first of all the guy can t remember or doesn t okay. wow.