Karl Rove isn’t wavering in his disappointment over President Donald Trump, who he’s called “graceless and divisive” and “a complete idiot.” And he isn’t making excuses or amends. The Republican political strategist and history buff is simply suggesting that Trump is not the worst this country has seen.

“We have been in places where the American people soured on what was going on before,” he said Thursday. “We’ve been in places before where it seemed like the government didn’t work.”

Speaking at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics, where he studied for two years, Rove provided a glimpse into the country’s past, where the partisanship has been bitter — like that time in 1798 when one representative attacked another on the U.S. House floor with a pair of tongs.

His examples pointed to other times of deadlock that Rove suggested were more “brutal, nasty and ugly” than what Trump has tweeted recently.

The Salt Lake Tribune will update this story.

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