Karl Rove:The Freedom Caucus Will Vote With Nancy Pelosi On Tax Reform If They Don’t Like The Republican Plan

Karl Rove, Former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush joined Brian Kilmeade at KLBJ in Austin TX to discuss the ramifications of President Trump making a deal with democrats and the ramifications for the Republican Party. Rove said it is important to be above partisanship and people shouldn’t kid themselves that this is going to lead to increased support for the President from democrats, especially after the 2018 midterm elections. Rove added that while the deal with democrats may turn out to be a good one, the President should not have surprised his own party because the worst thing he can do is surprise his allies. On tax reform, Rove agrees with the approach of the House Freedom Caucus on tax reform but warns that if they don’t get what they want they would vote with Nancy Pelosi.

Listen here:

Karl Rove on the House Freedom Caucus voting with Nancy Pelosi if they don’t feel the GOP tax reform plan is perfect enough

(Rove) The Freedom Caucus has been saying let’s do everything in regular order which I agree with have the committees do their work don’t have this stuff sort of drop down from the top but they have been talking in the last couple of days about it coming up with their own tax reform plan but we’ve had the Ways and Means committee spend the last year and a half under Brady with Freedom Caucus members on the Ways & Means committee working out the plan that’s the way it ought to do it. Here at the end, the Freedom Caucus pops up and says well we’ve got a better idea and you do it our way or it’s the highway because these guys would rather vote with Nancy Pelosi if they think that the republican plan isn’t perfect enough, by god they’re capable of voting with the Nancy Pelosi and vote which they’ve done several times thus far and threatened to do even more.

Karl Rove on President Trump’s deal with democrats

(Rove) I got to tell you, this was a deal that the democrats wanted because it gives them more leverage over both the budget and over the debt ceiling . Count on it, they’re going to be coming at the end of the year with a huge immigration bill it’s not going to be just DACA, it’s going to be a whole bunch of other things and on spending at the end of the year when we come back to another continuing resolution they’re going to say well you know what, we want to plus up some things we don’t want you to have that more defense spending and we want more social spending and will give you another deal like we just gave you. So let’s not get ourselves, yesterday could be the beginning of something good but it’s going to require the president to be focused and look, no more surprises, the worst thing the president could do is surprise your allies. It’s one thing to say look we’re going to do something, I want to do something that you don’t like and we did that we would say to the republicans we want to do something you don’t like we want to get the issue of campaign finance reform off the books we don’t like the bill but we got to get it done don’t but we’re not going to surprise you yesterday they got surprised and there are lots of people running around today in the halls of congress and god dang it why were we surprised.

(Kilmeade) Right and they’re mad at their leadership too

(Rove) Oh yeah and they’re going to blame Ryan for what Trump did to them, which is one of the great ironies.