Karl Rove acolyte Michael Dubke has worked his way into President Donald Trump’s White House according to reports surfacing late Thursday.
Dubke, who CNN’s Jim Acosta reported on Thursday night would be the new White House communications director, has a storied history of working with Karl Rove—the former George W. Bush White House aide and anti-Trump Republican whom the president made clear over the course of the 2016 campaign he does not like.
GOP operative and Crossroads Media founder Mike Dubke expected to be named new WH comms director, I'm told.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 17, 2017
Dubke will work along with Sean Spicer who remains press secretary according to two administration officials. https://t.co/MjG64U1JxH
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 17, 2017
Breitbart News has independently confirmed that Dubke is set to be named communications director, though an announcement has not yet been made. He was spotted at the White House on Thursday.
Am told Mike Dubke will be comms director, which @Acosta just reported. Here he is hiding in plain sight at Trump presser 2 over from Spicer pic.twitter.com/Mc7Bfd67kw
— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) February 17, 2017
The decision to bring in Dubke is puzzling, as he is not just any Rove confidante. In 2001, he actually founded one of Rove’s main firms, Crossroads Media, LLC—a media firm that provides services to Rove’s American Crossroads. He is still listed on the Rove firm’s website as a founder of the outfit.
President Trump is very suspicious of Rove and his acolytes and has made that point clear for years now. In an interview with Breitbart News back in April 2016, the now-President of the United States said that Rove is a “is such a dishonorable guy” that he “shouldn’t be allowed to write for the Wall Street Journal.”
In that interview, Trump was responding to a Rove column in the Wall Street Journal that was headlined “Vanity Will Be The Donald’s Undoing.”
“Karl Rove writes articles and he quotes me with things I never said,” Trump said in the phone interview with Breitbart News back then. “He actually makes up quotes, and it is so disgraceful that he’s allowed to do it, and he writes in the Wall Street Journal, which is a newspaper that totally misrepresents so much. Karl Rove—I’m just reading this—and he’s quoting me on things I’ve never said. He’s literally making up quotes.”
Of course, Rove’s piece ended up being completely untrue. Trump went on to win the Republican nomination for president just a few weeks later, and would go on to beat Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in the general election on Nov. 8.
Trump has also called Rove a “totally incompetent jerk,” a “proven loser,” and said that if he were now former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes he would have pulled him off the air.
CNN’s Acosta correctly noted that Trump allies are bewildered as to why, after all of that, a Rove ally would find his way into the White House.
Dubke's work with Crossroads Media is rankling some longtime Trump loyalists who would rather see a veteran from campaign in Comms job. https://t.co/2aZq0132ZC
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 17, 2017
“Another guy who didn’t support President Trump in his race now gets rewarded with a job in the White House,” one friend of Trump’s—who is concerned about his administration working— old Breitbart News on Thursday night. “How does this help President Trump?”
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