Trump rips Rove: ‘So bad for the Republican Party’

President Trump blasted Republican strategist Karl Rove on Monday, calling former President George W. Bush’s White House adviser “so bad for the Republican Party.”

Rove received Trump’s ire after he said he will vote for Democrat Jon Rosenthal to serve on the Texas Railroad Commission after GOP candidate Bo French wrote a post about University of Texas at Austin students of South Asian descent, a post students described as “ blatantly racist .”

“Karl Rove is so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often,” Trump wrote on Truth Social . “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.”

The president ended the post asking why Fox News and The Wall Street Journal “keep this Rino [Republican in name only] Voice alive.”

“The guy is a stone cold loser!” he added.

Rove told members at a Headliners Club lunch in Austin on Monday that he would vote for Rosenthal, adding that he last voted for a Democrat in 1994 when he backed former Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock (D), The Texas Tribune reported . Three attendees told the outlet the strategist called French a “bigot.”

French shared a photo taken of the students celebrating after a Texas Longhorns football game and wrote on social platform X that he “heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

He also shared a screenshot of another X user who captioned the photo “Bollywood University.”

UT-Austin students and U.S. citizens Dhairya Gupta and Rahul Kodali, who were in the photo French posted, slammed French over the post in an interview with The Dallas Morning News on Monday.

“Whether or not we are immigrants, that doesn’t change anything,” Kodali told the outlet, with Gupta having immigrated at 5 years old and later obtaining his citizenship. “I’ve been an American my entire life.”

Texas Republicans slammed French and urged him to delete the post. Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) echoed the sentiment, saying the candidate can oppose immigration policies “without demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity –– this post has crossed the line.”

“This is the Republican nominee for statewide office,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote online . “Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized. This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad.”

James Talarico, the Democratic candidate seeking to succeed Cornyn in November, thanked the GOP senator for condemning the post and asked if his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, would condemn “this blatant racism.”

Paxton instead accused Talarico of having “a history of dividing Texans by race.”