With less than two weeks left before the 2020 presidential election, former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove said it would be more “effective” for the Trump campaign to focus on the economy as opposed to the Hunter Biden “scandal.”
Rove made the statement on “America’s Newsroom” on Wednesday shortly after Trump 2020 Campaign National Press Secretary Hogan Gidley appeared on the program and explained the campaign strategy to focus on Hunter Biden and his international business dealings to attack Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“The president isn’t talking about Hunter Biden. What he is talking about is Joe Biden and what these emails now reveal is that Joe Biden is flatout corrupt,” Gidley said referencing the Hunter Biden emails reportedly revealing his foreign business dealings, including contacts in Ukraine and China.
“This was one of the big problems with Hillary Clinton back in 2016,” Gidley continued. “The American people knew about Clinton cash.”
Host Trace Gallagher noted that President Trump “was very effective four years ago in portraying the Clintons as corrupt” and asked Rove on Wednesday is it will “work this time around?”
In response, Rove pointed to a Washington Post op-ed written by former White House chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen in which Thiessen argued that President Trump “needs to stop talking about Hunter Biden” and “start winning over reluctant voters.”
“He argues the focus ought to be on the economy and the big contrast between the policy prescriptions of President Trump and those of Joe Biden and frankly I’m in agreement with him,” Rove, a Fox News contributor, said.
“We knew about Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and all their dealings and all the stinky stuff for years,” he continued. “We don’t have a similar picture about Joe Biden.”
Rove did, however, say, “We do know that Hunter Biden is a bad actor” and allegedly “used his father to make money with [Ukrainian energy firm] Burisma.”
TRUMP CAMPAIGN SAYS WINNING THIS STATE IS VITAL TO CLINCHING ELECTION
“We know about Hunter Biden,” Rove said. “I just don’t think that in the last 13 days it’s as effective to talk about this than it is to talk about how Joe Biden is going to raise your taxes, diminish your savings, slow down the economy, attack our energy independence, raise your utility bill, all the stuff that Trump could spend the time between now and the election talking about.”
Rove then noted that he thought the “the best part” of President Trump’s speech during Tuesday’s campaign stop in Pennsylvania, where he’s currently trailing Biden, was when he pointed to the former vice president’s past comments on fracking, which “is very important to western Pennsylvania.”
Biden has muddied his position on fracking in the past. During a July 2019 debate, CNN’s Dana Bash asked him, “Just to clarify, would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?”
Biden’s response: “No, we would — we would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those, either — any fossil fuel.”
Biden took a different tone when addressing a more targeted audience in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state. In an April interview with Pittsburgh’s KDKA, Biden said he would only ban new fracking on federal property, claiming that this would only impact a small percentage of overall fracking.
On Wednesday Rove stressed that he thinks the economy “matters a lot more than what’s going on with Hunter Biden and yet another scandal involving influence peddling on his father’s name.”
Rove also said that if he was advising President Trump on his debate strategy, he would tell him to “lead with the economy and if the other issue comes up, fine.”
Rove said that the focus needs to be “on the pocketbook because that’s what people are going to be voting on.”
He said that Trump should “make a sharp contrast between his policies and the policies of Joe Biden.”
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The second and final presidential debate before Election Day is scheduled for 9 p.m. on Oct. 22 from Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.
Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.
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