Former Deputy Chief of Staff for George W. Bush Karl Rove said Wednesday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that “everything is at stake” in the 2020 election was “over the top."
Pelosi, D-Calif., told CNN Tuesday, “Everything is at stake in this election. The Constitution of the United States, with the president who is trying to usurp the power of the legislative branch of government, the environment in which we live.”
“A little bit over the top. Almost semi-hysterical,” Rove, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff for George W. Bush from 2005 until 2007, said on “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday in response to Pelosi’s remarks the day before. “You know, The Constitution is at stake, the role of Congress is at stake, our very environment is at stake and it (looks) a little bit sort of unhinged.”
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He added, “On the other hand, it plays into the environment (in) which we find ourselves. Democrats do have a little bit of leeway in saying things are really, really bad even if they sound a little over the top.”
Rove then cited statistics saying, “If you take a look at the Real Clear Politics average of all recent polls, 37.7 percent think the country is going in the right direction and 56.1 (percent) think the country is seriously off on the wrong track.”
He added, “That’s sort of the same dynamic that people had in 2016 when they wanted change and the Democrats are trying to position themselves as the party of change for the 2020 presidential election.”
On “America’s Newsroom,” Rove, a Fox News contributor, also weighed in on Thursday’s release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's much-anticipated Russia report.
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Last month, Mueller submitted his almost 400-page report to the Justice Department for review by the attorney general and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In a letter to Congress, Attorney General Bill Barr relayed some of the primary findings of the report, stating the special counsel found no evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians during the 2016 presidential election.
Barr said he identified four areas of the report that he believed should be redacted, including grand jury material and information the intelligence community believes would reveal intelligence sources and methods.
“We don't know how much is going to be redacted but let's be clear, no matter how little the redaction is, short of no redactions at all, this is going to be the opening of the next chapter in which the Democrats on the Hill are going to say ‘you know what? We're not going to agree that there’s no collusion and we’re certainly not going to agree there is no obstruction unless you totally give us an unredacted version of the Mueller report,” Rove said.
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“So this is merely the beginning of act two. We had act one. It lasted two years. Donald Trump was guilty of collusion with the Russians. That got blown up. Now we’re going to be turning to the obstruction issue and unless and until they (Democrats) have what they want, which is (a) totally unredacted version, you can count on the Democrats continuing to raise questions about it.”
He added, “I think the American people are getting tired of all of this and this isn't a constructive way for the Democrats to move.”
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