Rove blasts publishing industry 'blacklist' push: 'Have we come to this as a country?'

Former Trump administration officials deserve gratitude for their service to America, not a campaign to hound them from public life, former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove told "Your World" Friday.

Rove, now a Fox News contributor, was reacting to the circulation of a letter signed by hundreds of authors and publishing professionals that called on publishing houses to consider "participation in the administration of Donald Trump ... a uniquely mitigating criterion ... when considering book deals."

KARL ROVE: It's way too far, and particularly when we owe, to some of those people, we owe them thanks for going into the administration and taking on a tough job and keeping bad things from happening.

That's one of the things that just, you know, have we come to this as a country, that we're going to blacklist people? I thought we agreed even when people were Communists, even when they were conspiring with an international force that wanted to pull down the United States, there was angst on the left against blacklisting people in Hollywood who had joined the Communist Party and joined in its plan to bring down the West.

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But now we've got Americans who disagree with them about an election outcome, [so] we've got to blacklist them. We've got to put up a website so that they can't take care of their families or advance professionally. We've got to publicly shame them.

Have we come to that as a country? You know, it's just a sad, sad commentary that people would think that that's a reasonable thing to do and that that our society could justify accepting it.