Bush administration alumnus and GOP operative Karl Rove didn’t hold back any punches Wednesday, blasting president-elect Donald Trump for recklessly using Twitter to disseminate false information about a “major American company.”
In an interview with Fox News’ Bill Hemmer, Rove argued that Trump’s criticisms about Boeing’s price-gouging were not only profoundly inaccurate, but likely had a “negative impact” on the company’s stock prices.
Here’s the tweet that will one day be cataloged in the “post-truth” section of the Library of Congress’ digital archives.
Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
To be clear, “post-truth” is a euphemism for “lie.” As Rove pointed out, Trump’s allegations against Boeing have no basis in reality.
“He said something that was not accurate that had a negative impact on that stock, namely that there was a $4 billion contract,” Rove said of Trump.”There is no contract for $4 billion; there’s a contract for $170 million. There is no $4 billion contract.”
The GOP strategist went on to highlight the fact that Trump’s populist posturing likely had the opposite effect of what was intended. The president-elect likely hurt everyday Americans with his falsehoods.
“The impulse — that we want to save the taxpayers money — that’s admirable. But this was fire, ready, aim, in my opinion,” Rove asserted. “What he did yesterday was he de-stabled the stock of a major American company. That stock is held by millions of Americans.”
Rove continued, giving the president-elect a much-needed economics lesson on the reality of shareholder equity.
“Now, it’s not just a bunch of executives in Chicago or a bunch of management types sitting in Charlotte, N.C., or Seattle, Wash., where they have their management facilities,” Rove said of America’s largest aircraft manufacturer. “[It’s held by] pension funds, by university endowments, by ordinary people who’ve invested in Boeing. There’s one elemental thing a president ought to keep in mind, which is the power of his words, and therefore, the accuracy of his words.”
Unfortunately, Rove is one of a handful of Republicans who have yet to sell their souls to Trumptopheles.
As The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro explains, “the soul-sucking machine has grown stronger… Republicans are now embracing revenge politics, the notion that the president should use the executive branch to punish enemies.”
Shapiro points specifically to the GOP’s relative silence about Trump’s disruption of the natural ebb and flow of the free market, arguing that there’s ample circumstantial evidence to suggest that the president-elect’s tweet about Boeing may have been retribution for “negative comments about his trade policies from Boeing’s CEO.”
Indeed, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s comments about Trump’s protectionist trade policies were published in the Chicago Tribune a little over an hour before the now-infamous tweet, raising questions about Trump’s motivations.