KARL ROVE: I think he did something of a good job. We have two narratives here. One narrative emerging from the black community that the police killed a young black man who was approaching with his arms up, saying don’t shoot. We have a second narrative which is we have a young – a violent young black man who assaulted a police officer and the police officer felt threatened. We won’t know until the justice system works its way through which narrative is correct. I think Holder did a good thing by going to the community and saying, as a chief law enforcement officer in the country, I understand where you’re coming from because I have felt racial prejudice in my own life, even when I was a prosecutor.

If I was going to be critical, though, I would say this. I was worried about some of the words that he used. He said we can’t have a conversation about what happened on August 9, and sometime in December nothing has happened. And the world is watching because there were issues raised by the shooting of Michael Brown predate this incident. He would have been better off had he said, I understand where you’re coming from because I’ve suffered this myself, and I’m going to make certain that justice is done and we’ll get to the bottom of this. Instead, it sounded like he was putting his thumb on the scale saying, this young black man did not deserve to die, and we’re going to get this cop.