Trump Fires Back at Karl Rove Over Warning on Midterm Rally Blitz

President Trump on Friday dismissed a warning from longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove that his packed midterm rally schedule could backfire on the GOP, telling reporters at the White House that Rove “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Asked about Rove’s latest Wall Street Journal column as he left the White House for a rally in Fort Myers, Florida, Trump did not hold back. “Look, you have Karl Rove. He’s a loser. He’s proven he’s been a loser all his life,” the president said, according to video of the exchange posted on X by the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account and reporting by Mediaite.

.@POTUS: "You have Karl Rove — he's a loser. He's been a loser all his life. Karl Rove doesn't know what he's talking about." pic.twitter.com/OkiXIjsguY

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 23, 2026

What Rove wrote

Rove, who served as senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush and helped run his two winning campaigns, published the column Wednesday under the headline “Trump Takes His 2026 Midterm Show on the Road.” In it, Rove wrote that Trump is “leaving it all on the field,” but warned that his “omnipresence” on the trail is a gamble.

“It’s too soon to know if this bet will pay off, but it carries real risks,” Rove wrote in the Journal. “The rallies keep him in the headlines, but as a partisan figure in a midterm election in which voters render their verdict on him. His biggest fans would probably vote anyway. Less enthusiastic supporters are the ones whose votes Republicans need.”

Rove’s column laid out the pace of the president’s schedule, noting rallies in Ohio, Alaska, Arizona, Montana, Georgia and Kentucky in a single week, along with two televised town halls, according to the Journal.

Trump points to the crowds

Trump argued the evidence is in the turnout. “Every single place I’ve gone to, every single place, whether people were losing, that were expected to win. When I’m leaving, look at Ohio, how much better he’s doing,” he said, according to Mediaite’s transcript of the gaggle.

He also pointed to Iowa, where he campaigned Thursday night, and to the Florida stop that was next on his schedule. “Every place I’m going to, every place is full, loaded with people, lines outside trying to get in. I’m going to Fort Myers right now. They say there’s a line of people that’s five miles long,” Trump said, according to Mediaite.

The president acknowledged the toll of the schedule. “Every place I’ve gone to, I’ve helped, and every, every place wants me. The one problem is I’m one person. This is a lot of work,” he said, per Mediaite.

A long-running feud

This is not the first clash between the two men. HuffPost reported that Trump previously called Rove a “stone cold loser” on social media after Rove announced he would vote for a Democrat in a Texas Railroad Commission race, only the second time in his life he had done so, according to that report.

The polling picture in the states Trump cited is mixed. HuffPost noted that a recent Fox News survey of likely Ohio voters showed Trump-endorsed Sen. Jon Husted trailing former Sen. Sherrod Brown by five points, and that a Marist poll released Tuesday showed Democrat Amy Acton leading Trump-backed Vivek Ramaswamy 50% to 43% in the governor’s race among registered voters.

The Fort Myers rally went ahead as planned Friday, with Trump campaigning for Republican candidates in Florida less than two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections.

The back-and-forth captures the debate inside the Republican Party heading into the final stretch: whether the president’s rallies drive the turnout the GOP needs, or whether, as Rove argues, they make the midterms a referendum on Trump himself. For now, the president has made his answer clear.

Sources

• Rapid Response 47 on X (video of Trump’s remarks, Oct. 23)
• Mediaite, Oct. 23
• HuffPost, Oct. 23
• Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 21

Reporting by Daily Beltway.