Fox News to Keep Paying Karl Rove While He Leads Georgia GOP Fundraising
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Fox News contributor Karl Rove officially announced on Wednesday night that he is overseeing Senate Republicans’ fundraising efforts for the two runoff races in Georgia. The network, however, will continue to retain Rove in his paid role, even while he serves in a campaign role—a potential conflict of interest previously avoided by the network.
Politico reported earlier this week that Rove had been tapped to serve as the national finance chair for the Georgia Battleground Fund, a joint fundraising effort to benefit Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
During a Wednesday evening appearance on Hannity, in which host Sean Hannity introduced the veteran political consultant as a Fox News contributor, Rove revealed he was “deeply involved” in the elections while formally announcing his role.
“I’ve read that you might be involved in some fund-raising efforts there,” Hannity, a close confidant of the president, said while welcoming Rove on. “If you are, good, you’re good at that. You’re good at a lot of things.”
“Well, I am involved,” the former Bush administration architect confirmed. “I’m the national chairman of the joint fund committee between the Purdue campaign and the Kelly Loeffler campaign and the Republican senatorial committee.”
Most news networks generally do not allow on-air personalities to run for office or officially work for a partisan political campaign while appearing on-air in a paid capacity. MSNBC and CNN, for instance, recently shed several paid contributors after they joined President-elect Joe Biden’s transition efforts. Back in 2016, Fox News suspended its paid contributorship deal with Newt Gingrich while he was under consideration as a potential running mate for Donald Trump; and around the 2012 election, the network did the same with then-contributors Gingrich and Rick Santorum when they ran for president.
When asked for comment, a network spokesperson pointed The Daily Beast to the Hannity disclosure as well as a previous on-air mention of Rove’s Georgia role from last week but declined to comment further.
However, during a Thursday afternoon appearance, Fox News failed to disclose Rove’s new role.
Despite discussing whether Team Trump’s unhinged voter-fraud conspiracies hurt Republicans in the Georgia Senate runoffs, neither host Dana Perino nor Rove mentioned his job as a key fundraiser in those races.
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