Trump Calls Karl Rove a ‘Stone Cold Loser' Who Is ‘So Bad for the Republican Party’

President Donald Trump criticized Republican strategist Karl Rove on Monday, saying the former George W. Bush adviser has repeatedly been wrong, has backed people and ideas that Trump defeated, and is overall bad for the Republican Party.

“Karl Rove is so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often. He suffers from a major case of Trump Derangement Syndrome primarily because, for almost 10 years, I beat back and won against so many of the people and things that he wanted and espoused. Why does Fox News and the WSJ keep his RINO Voice alive. The guy is a stone cold loser!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump’s latest post follows more than a decade of clashes between the two Republicans, including disputes over Trump’s candidacy, policy positions, and election strategy publicized in Rove’s commentary on Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal.

Trump described Rove as a “proven loser” in July 2015 after Rove said dramatically reducing gun violence would require removing guns from society and repealing the Second Amendment. Trump also accused Rove of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2012 election cycle and called the Second Amendment “a bedrock natural right of the individual to defend self, family, and property,” adding that Rove’s position showed “a lack of respect for all of the freedoms in our Constitution and a complete ignorance of our shared American inheritance.”

Two days later, Trump told Breitbart News, “Karl Rove spent $430 million dollars on various campaigns last cycle. Didn’t win one. Which is pretty hard to do.” Rove responded in a Wall Street Journal column claiming that Crossroads groups spent $103 million in the 2014 cycle and helped win 10 of 12 targeted U.S. Senate seats and 10 of 13 competitive House seats, while also comparing Trump’s potential effect on the GOP to former Rep. Todd Akin’s in 2012.

At a Dallas rally in September 2015, Trump called Rove a “totally incompetent jerk,” saying, “He’s terrible. He’s terrible. He’s terrible,” and added that anyone who gives money to Rove and “the group of losers” is a loser themselves because “they don’t know what they are doing.”

By February 2016, Trump was questioning why Fox News continued featuring Rove, telling Sean Hannity, “You’ve got some bad people at Fox,” adding that the network also had “some great people.” Trump singled out Rove, mocked his 2012 election-night analysis, and said, “He shouldn’t be on the air.”

In April 2016, Rove published a Wall Street Journal column titled, “Vanity Will Be The Donald’s Undoing.” Trump called Rove a “dishonorable guy” who “shouldn’t be allowed to write for the Wall Street Journal,” accusing him of quoting “things I never said” and saying, “He’s literally making up quotes.”

Trump also said he believed Rove was attacking him because Rove would not be anywhere near his administration if he won the election. “Because I want nothing to do with him,” Trump told Breitbart News. “Because I don’t respect him.” Trump called Rove “out of tune” and “out of touch” and accused him of “using language that I never used” and “giving ideas that are not even mine.”

Rove continued criticizing Trump after he became president, saying during the 2017 dispute over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem that Trump would be “walking away from this a loser in the minds of the American people” and lamenting the president could have been an “aspirational figure” rather than a “condemnatory figure.”

In August 2018, Rove called Trump’s use of “enemy of the people” for the press “over the top” and said “calling names is not helpful to our country from any side.” Rove said the phrase “just grates on me,” adding, “I grew up during the time of the Cold War. That is a phrase that was used by Stalin against the enemies of the communist regime” before saying Trump would be “well-advised to tone down the rhetoric.”

Later that month, Rove called it “unwise for any president of any party to look like he is demanding that the Justice Department investigate his political opponents,” adding, “It is just unseemly.” Rove asked how Republicans would have reacted if Hillary Clinton had won and called on her attorney general to investigate Trump before concluding, “This isn’t how we do things or should do things in America. The president I think would be well-advised not to be making these kind of demands.”

After the 2020 election, Rove said, “America likes comebacks, but they don’t like sore losers,” adding that Trump was “on the edge of looking like a sore loser and probably will look like it after January 6.”

Trump returned to his criticism of Rove at CPAC in March 2023 while describing how he believed the Republican Party had changed since his first presidential campaign.

“When we started this journey, a journey like there has never been before, there’s never been anything like this, we had a Republican Party that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open-borders zealots, and fools, but we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove and Jeb Bush,” Trump said.

The feud has continued into Trump’s second administration. In a May 4, 2025 Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “I don’t need Karl Rove telling me what to do,” and described Rove as “a Loser who’s been wrong about almost everything.”

Rove also became an issue in Texas’s 2026 Republican Senate race after records highlighted by Laura Loomer showed he donated $7,000 to the Cornyn Lonestar Victory Fund and $3,500 to Texans for Senator John Cornyn Inc. Loomer accused Rove of backing candidates seeking to “Derail Trump,” while Paxton had previously called Cornyn “a puppet of the Bush and Karl Rove team.” Cornyn narrowly led Paxton in the March primary, forcing a runoff that Paxton ultimately won, making him the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas.