Trump comes full circle, leaving no sign he was ever president. In 2016 we mistakenly thought he wanted to help the country by defeating the vicious GOP Establishment and Karl Rove. In 2020 Trump's campaign accepted $2.5 million from Karl Rove's PAC

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Is Donald Trump planning to return the $2,529,979 his 2020 re-election campaign accepted from Karl Rove’s American Crossroads?

On March 4, 2021, Trump said: “If the Republican Party is going to be successful, they’re going to have to stop dealing with the likes of Karl Rove and just let him float away, or retire.”…”Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America,” donaldjtrump.com

Below, screen shot, American Crossroads, “Targeted Candidates, 2020 Cycle," opensecrets.org:

“Donald Trump, President, $2,529,969, Lost”

This doesn’t even get into the question of why Trump would accept one penny from Karl Rove since Trump’s 2016 defeat of Karl Rove was the most astounding and meaningful political accomplishment in history. Andrew Breitbart actually worked himself to death trying to do it. As if it were a kleenex, Trump simply discarded the earth shattering results of his 2016 election and put Karl Rove back in power: 11/10/2012, “Celebrity real estate developer Donald Trump taunted on Twitter: “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.”...The single miraculous gift Trump gave the country in 2016--which was not defeating a democrat--was defeating the cancerous GOP Establishment led by Karl Rove. But Trump overturned his own election and reinstated Rove. Today it’s as if Trump never existed. Rove is back in charge preventing the country from having an opposition party to open borders, thus gagging Republican voters. Open borders will never be on the ballot so Republican voters are disenfranchised. Trump obviously wasn’t the answer either. Candidate Trump turned out to be the exact opposite of Pres. Trump. Which explains why Karl Rove is back in charge. Trump’s years of published complaints about Rove are obviously a waste of time.

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Added: 11/10/2012, “At the center of the wreckage stands Karl Rove, the GOP strategist and supposed dark genius….Celebrity real estate developer Donald Trump taunted on Twitter: “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.”…11/10/2012

Nov. 10, 2012, "Karl Rove and his super PAC vow to press on," Washington Post, Karen Tumulty

“In the post-mortems of the 2012 election campaigns, it is already being written that the much-feared super PACs — those ostensibly independent, billionaire-funded outside organizations and their hundreds of millions in negative ads — turned out to be a bust. At the center of the wreckage stands Karl Rove, the GOP strategist and supposed dark genius who for more than a decade has figured in the mythos of both parties.

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With more than a little glee, Democrats and even some Republicans say the electoral defeat of so many candidates backed by his brainchild, a behemoth super PAC called American Crossroads, is proof that politics has finally passed Rove by….[10/2/2012, “The Karl Rove-backed political committee, American Crossroads, is out with a new $2 million ad buy in Florida” in support of Connie Mack IV for US Senate.…Connie Mack IV lost to the Democrat by 13 points.

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10/31/2012, “Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (L) hugs Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) during a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at Tampa International Airport on October 31, 2012 in Tampa, Florida….(Oct. 30, 2012 – Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)]

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As Rove sees it, the campaign proved that American Crossroads and its more secretive issue-advocacy arm, Crossroads GPS — which allows donors to remain anonymous — are here to stay.Rove is pondering new missions for Crossroads to address weaknesses laid bare by the GOP’s back-to-back failures to win the White House and the fact that the party fell short when expected to win back the Senate….Crossroads also is likely to invest more deeply in organizations such as the Republican State Leadership Committee, which has [allegedly] been trying to build a more appealing GOP farm team by, among other things, recruiting Hispanic candidates to run for state-level office….For Crossroads, 2012 was a $300 million learning experience….The failure of Crossroads to live up to expectations is not the only thing that has put Rove back into the news and revived the intrigue that surrounds a man whose seen and unseen hand works in so many places in politics….Rove’s is the most famous name associated with Crossroads, but he said he receives no money from it, not even travel expenses, for his work as a strategist and fundraiser. Its day-to-day operations are run by its president, Steven Law.

Outside their circle, many of the performance reviews have been scathing.

The Sunlight Foundation, which tracks money in politics, calculated that only 6 percent of Crossroads money went to winners; by comparison, the Service Employees International Union, an old war horse of Democratic politics, had a 70 percent victory rate.

Celebrity real estate developer Donald Trump taunted on Twitter: “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.”…

The idea for Crossroads was born shortly after the 2008 election, when Rove wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal lamenting the fact that the Republicans had no equivalent to the alliance of organized labor and liberal interest groups that had spent $194 million on independent advertising for Democrats during the previous two years.

The next day, Rove recalled, he heard from former Republican chairman Ed Gillespie, who said, “Great idea. What are we going to do about it?”

As they talked to potential donors, Rove said, they realized “there was just a generalized sense that too much of this kind of activity was basically of, by and for the consultants. Donors said, ‘Consultants set these things up, pay a commission to fundraisers, hire themselves to do the work and pay themselves too much.’ ”

“Major donors said, ‘We write checks to these groups, but we’re not enthusiastic, given how they are going about their business,’ ” Rove said.

He and Gillespie also began sounding out the Senate Republican leadership, which recommended Law, a former aide to Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), to run it. The two talked him into the job, though it meant that Law had to leave a far more lucrative post as general counsel at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce….

Rove boasts that Crossroads remains an efficient operation….

And his wealthy donors? “They all went into this eyes wide open,” Rove said, “and their attitude is, beat them next time.””

 

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