Rove: Trump wanted to send message we won't tolerate violence with church photo
Trump criticized over church appearance; Fox News contributor Karl Rove reacts.
Joe Biden’s speech reacting to the violence that has overtaken the country following the death of George Floyd was nothing more than "campaign claptrap," former deputy White House chief of staff and Fox News contributor Karl Rove said Tuesday.
"The speech has moments of eloquence in it, but it was a campaign speech," Rove told "Bill Hemmer Reports." "That was the problem. About four minutes into the speech, he starts going after President Trump by name.
"What America wanted to hear was a voice of unity. They didn’t want to hear campaign claptrap -- and it was," Rove explained.
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Biden called the protests sparked by Floyd’s death “a wake-up call for our nation” and vowed to reverse the nation’s “systemic racism with long-overdue concrete changes.”
In a 20-minute speech, the former vice president slammed President Trump as being “more interested in serving the passions of his base than the needs of the people in his care” and charged that the president “is part of the problem and accelerates it.”
Rove told Hemmer that while Biden accused Trump of "wanting to quiet our voice," the president is focused on quieting "the violence that is being done to America’s small businesses, to America’s communities and in many instances to the most vulnerable parts of our communities."
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Referencing an article published by Politico headlined "While America Struggles for its Soul, Biden Struggles for Relevance," Rove said it would have been wiser for the presumptive Democratic nominee to strike a tone of unity instead of "diving into politics."
"I thought he had a chance to become, as Politico said, more relevant," concluded Rove, "but he would become more relevant by taking this away from politics, not diving into politics."
Fox News' Paul Steinhauser and Madeleine Rivera contributed to this report.
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