Karl Rove Gets 'Mic Checked' By Occupy Baltimore At Otherwise Dull-Sounding Symposium

On Monday night, Karl Rove got into a wee bit of awkwardness. During his planned remarks at the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium at Johns Hopkins University, members of the local Occupy Baltimore demonstration interrupted him by calling for a "mic check." Here's Zaid Jelani, at ThinkProgress, describing the encounter:

"Karl Rove is the architect of Occupy Iraq, the architect of Occupy Afghanistan!" yelled the demonstrators. Occupy Baltimore had infiltrated the crowd and began chanting against Rove. "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" asked Rove to the protesters, apparently unaware of the Bill of Rights. As they repeated their slogan, "We are the 99 percent!" Rove petulantly responded, "No you're not!" He snidely added, "You wanna keep jumping up and yelling that you're the 99 percent? How presumptuous and arrogant can you think are!"

Here's the video, which makes it seem like Rove might have just bored everyone to death had Occupy Baltimore not intervened to enliven the proceedings.

The interruption didn't go over well with the rest of the members of the audience, who applauded when Rove chastised them to wait until the question-and-answer session to ask about his role in shaping the unsuccessful, debt-driving foreign entanglements that helped mortgage everyone's future. Still, it's sort of strange to see the normally self-possessed Rove basically flip his wig like that, isn't it? I guess knowing you have to spend the next year of your life raising money to sell Mitt Romney to conservatives will do things to your temperament.

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Comments

[Al Jolson]

10:48 AM on 11/23/2011

"Who gave you the right to occupy America?" asked Rove to the protesters, apparently unaware of the Bill of Rights. - Karl Rove

How brutally clear this slimy creature makes the position of the 1%: the people don't matter!
The people were never considered when Rove and Bush decided to go to war with two countries, and then put off the payment till later.

[LeftySansPancho]

07:13 PM on 11/22/2011

Even better than Rove's remark "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" is when he says "If you believe in freedom of speech, the way you show it is by shutting up."

[timthedem]

09:06 PM on 11/22/2011

who gave me the right to occupy america? Thomas jefferson, George Washington, ben Franklin men far greater than you or any member of the modern day republican party.

[Al Jolson]

01:47 PM on 11/23/2011

The modern day republikin party now rejects all of the nobel ideas of Abraham Lincoln, and accepts all the infamous, and demeaning ideas of the Old Democrats (Dixie-crats) of the Deep South during the 30's to 1964!

[chris1arch]

12:55 PM on 11/21/2011

This video just proves what we all knew before: The vast majority of OWS protestors give themselves the "right" to be obnoxious and boring rather than engage in an intelligent Q&A session befitting real and productive political discourse. Do they EVER say anything new? Z-z-z-z-z-z.

[threeclicksout]

12:43 PM on 11/23/2011

Who Gave You the Right Karl?

This little dialogue is representative of all dialogues between the powerless 99% and the powerful 1%. The little guy is treated with disdain. The big shots make the decisions for everybody else. What gall the 1%-ers have. "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" All Americans have the right to occupy America, not only the 1%. All Americans deserve a voice in their government, not just the 1%. All Americans should be served by their government, not only the 1%.

Karl Rove "how presumptuous and arrogant" you are. Karl Rove and his fellow 1%-ers who are presumptuous and arrogant. They act as though nobody exists but them. They favor a reduced government, by which they mean that the part of government that helps the 99% must be reduced, while the part of government that helps the 1% must be strengthened. Hooray for the 1% "job creators."

Pure selfishness. 1%-ers are not satisfied with a billion dollars; they want more, more, more. They are not satisfied with destroying private sector unions; they want to destroy public sector unions too. They are not satisfied with reducing worker wages; they want to turn workers into pawns.

The 1%-ers want to completely control the government. The only thing stopping them are the 99%-ers. Root for the 99%-ers if you want to keep our democracy

[Al Jolson]

01:53 PM on 11/23/2011

Thank you, 3 Klicks!

They believe that God created the rest of us to provide for their every want, need, and desire and then go away until we are needed further. They want this but don't want to pay us anything for doing so!

That game-plan has been scraped by OCW!!

[MarkOates]

06:12 AM on 11/21/2011

"How dare you?!" is never the right way to respond to activism. It's immature, showing no insight, understanding, or compassion to the reasons for the activism. It not the appropriate reaction for a public servant. Just a cranky rebuttal.

Strangely enough, Michelle Bachman's response was very good.

Meanwhile, he's wasting all his hot air using Obama as a dirty word. I'm sure that polls well in focus groups, but it helps no one except Carl Rove. That's what OWS is fighting against.

[MalleusMaleficarum]

06:58 AM on 11/20/2011

Who gave Rove the right to repeal the First Amendment?

[Firststater]

11:02 PM on 11/18/2011

Karl Rove is lucky to be walking the streets today since he clearly broke the law and lied to the Grand Jury relative to the Valarie Plame CIA scandal, as did Scooter Libby. Rove initially testified he learned of Plame's CIA affiliation from journalists and not from government officials.

But Karl Rove had the good sense to run back to the prosecutor in time to change some of his story once he was able to "recall" his involvement when email surfaced which he thought had been deleted confirming his real Plame/Wilson leaks to Matt Cooper. (Hell, leaks is much of what the Bush administration did, that’s another story.)

He got off the hook after his subsequent trips to the prosecutor and after multiple "recalls". Unfortunately, the prosecutor let him off the hook early for some reason even though Rove only told half the story. Rove initially testified that Robert Novak called him in July 2003 to discuss a story unrelated to Plame or Wilson. Eventually, according to Rove, Novak told him he planned to report in a column that Plame worked for the CIA. That was the lie that went unpublished for years since Novak refused to divulge his sources while not correcting the Rove public statements.

It wasn’t until July 2005 when Dan Froomkin of the Post revealed that Novak was in fact the Rove source. Libby went down protecting his boss, Dick Cheney, who also repeatedly lied to the public until his hand notes were published.

[tpk]

03:57 PM on 11/18/2011

It's so wonderful that Karl has the courage to stand up and lie, lie, lie.

[KFMac001]

02:21 PM on 11/18/2011

Occupy Jacksonville mic checked Newt Gingrich at a town hall meeting: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/gingrich-lectures-protesters-no-such-thing-9#comments

[contrail]

03:38 PM on 11/18/2011

Do you know who hooted Jax occupy down? Would have liked to hear some rationale on why there is no 99%

[KFMac001]

02:47 AM on 11/19/2011

First Coast Tea Party hosted the event, but it was members of the crowd who hooted Occupy Jax down. Newt basically said there is no 99%, but we are all the 100%. His statement reminds me of Animal Farm - all animals are created equal, just some are more equal than others. I wish I could have heard more, but I was politely being escorted out. :)

[good4you]

02:13 PM on 11/18/2011

SIN..."strength in numbers" ...it's actually heartwarming to see the younger folks waking up and realizing what these old washed up clinging to power Republican icons are the problem. They offer nothing to the future of America ! They do not believe in equality...they do not want change...but we are going to show them the exit door one way or another ! They're all blowhards and running scared hiding behind their gated and guarded communities of like kind ! VOE OUT ALL GOP/TP and America will be great once again !

[mataylor16]

11:32 AM on 11/18/2011

Rove is actually giving voice, quite conspicuously, to an enduring conservative frustration, namely, the difficulty of implementing a plutocratic governance over a democratic electoral platform. To this point the 'republic' construct has been the means by which it occurs, but Rove, being slightly more perceptive than many of his cohorts, can see how its become threadbare and strained. Not the least bit due to his own actions.

[pollclaire]

11:40 PM on 11/17/2011

These protesers are the Bush legacy, and it doesn't much look like Rove is enjoying it. Unfinished wars and financial collapse aren't exactly great letters of recommendation for the right-wing agenda.

What's more interesting than the protest are the outright misrepresentations that Rove is spinning. If you listen to his remarks, he's citing a 1% GDP deficit under Bush. Never happened. The 2001 budget was as close as it got, but that budget was written in Clinton's final year, and Bush had nothing to do with it. The Bush deficits ran more than three times that rate until we get to the $1.4 trillion whopper in 2009, which was more like 10%.

If you dissect his remarks, virtually all of them contain an element of misrepresentation. Imagine that.

[Estevan Benson]

04:02 PM on 11/17/2011

It's arrogant to think you're the 99%? And it's arrogant to think you're the 1% probably? I'm confused by this.

[Coffee4Me]

02:08 PM on 11/17/2011

Whenever I see his picture, I think of Colbert's Ham Rove and smile.

[ashley22]

08:11 AM on 11/18/2011

or rump roast

[ThePelton]

02:45 PM on 11/18/2011

Karl Rove, to me, looks like a bowling pin with glasses.

[Nick Lahanas]

01:11 PM on 11/17/2011

I guess knowing you have to spend the next year of your life raising money to sell Mitt Romney to conservatives will do things to your temperament.

Ah, Jason, keep up the good work.

[VA Jill]

11:24 AM on 11/17/2011

Rove doesn't need to be mic checked, he needs to be FACT checked.

[Coffee4Me]

02:03 PM on 11/17/2011

And cavity checked before changing into his prison jumper.