President Donald Trump on Monday unleashed fresh criticism at longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove, calling him a “stone cold loser” in a Truth Social post that reopened a rivalry stretching back more than a decade.
“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.
The post is the latest chapter in a feud that dates to July 2015, when Trump called Rove a “proven loser” after Rove suggested reducing gun violence would require repealing the Second Amendment. Trump defended the Second Amendment as “a bedrock natural right of the individual to defend self, family, and property” and accused Rove of “a lack of respect for all of the freedoms in our Constitution.”
Days later, Trump told Breitbart News that Rove “spent $430 million dollars on various campaigns last cycle. Didn’t win one.” Rove fired back in the Wall Street Journal, arguing Crossroads groups spent $103 million in the 2014 cycle and helped win 10 of 12 targeted Senate races, while comparing Trump’s potential impact on the GOP to that of former Rep. Todd Akin.
At a Dallas rally that September, Trump called Rove a “totally incompetent jerk” and said anyone who donates to him is “a loser themselves.” By 2016, Trump was pressing Fox News on why it kept booking Rove, telling Sean Hannity the network had “some bad people” alongside “some great people,” and said of Rove specifically, “He shouldn’t be on the air.”
That April, after Rove published a Wall Street Journal column titled “Vanity Will Be The Donald’s Undoing,” Trump accused him of fabricating quotes, saying, “He’s literally making up quotes,” and called him a “dishonorable guy” who “shouldn’t be allowed to write for the Wall Street Journal.”
The Feud Continues Into the Presidency
Rove kept up his criticism after Trump took office. During the 2017 NFL anthem controversy, he warned Trump would end up “a loser in the minds of the American people.” In 2018, Rove called Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric toward the press “over the top,” noting the phrase’s use “by Stalin against the enemies of the communist regime,” and separately said it was “unwise for any president of any party to look like he is demanding that the Justice Department investigate his political opponents.”
After the 2020 election, Rove said Trump was “on the edge of looking like a sore loser and probably will look like it after January 6.”
Trump revisited the rivalry at CPAC in March 2023, declaring the GOP would never return to “the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove and Jeb Bush.” And in a May 4, 2025 Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “I don’t need Karl Rove telling me what to do,” calling him “a Loser who’s been wrong about almost everything.”
A Texas Flashpoint
The dispute has taken on new relevance in Texas, where Rove donated $7,000 to the Cornyn Lonestar Victory Fund and $3,500 to Texans for Senator John Cornyn Inc., according to records highlighted by activist Laura Loomer. Loomer accused Rove of backing candidates trying to “Derail Trump,” echoing earlier attacks from Ken Paxton, who had called Cornyn “a puppet of the Bush and Karl Rove team.”
Cornyn narrowly led Paxton in the March primary, forcing a runoff that Paxton went on to win, making him the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas.
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