Donald Trump might have burned bridges in his attacking presidential campaign— and even before— including former President George W. Bush, as Republican strategist Karl Rove told Fox News.
Despite some GOP calls for Trump support from Bush, it was never going to happen, said Rove, who advised the Republican presidential candidate and his surrogates: "This is a loser for you."
"I met with [Trump] at the end of May," Rove recalled Tuesday night. "He brought this up to me personally. I said to him, in essence, 'Do you really want to pursue this issue?'
"'You called for the impeachment of George W. Bush. You voted for John Kerry in 2004. You said that George W. Bush deliberately lied about the presence of [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq in order to provoke a war. You said he had advanced knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and allowed 3,000 Americans to die deliberately. And do you really want to— do you really expect him to— say nice things to you?'
"The implicit thing was: Do you want to have these issues litigated?"
Rove said he even steered Trump's surrogates to drop the call for Bush support.
"When one of his surrogates stepped forward and said in an article, 'I think Bushes ought to come out and endorse him,' I called that surrogate and said, 'I had this conversation with your principle,'" Rove continued.
". . . Imagine what would happen somebody would say, 'President Bush, what do you have to say about [Trump] believing that you should have been impeached? Donald Trump, do you think he still should have been impeached? Do you think your vote for John Kerry was justified?'
"'This is a loser for you. Most Republicans are unaware that you said these things, let it lie.' And he did."
Rove praised President George W. Bush for handling it in "the appropriate way by simply staying on the sidelines."