As Newsweek tells it, the tune “Walk It Back” from The National’s excellent new LP Sleep Well Beast quotes a passage from a 2004 New York Times piece credited to former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove by author Ron Suskind. 

Rove denies ever saying it (and Suskind attributed it to “an unnamed “senior adviser to Bush”–although that person has long been thought to be Rove), but that hasn’t done much to disassociate him from the passage which has become infamous since 2004 and carries a certain amount of relevancy with the political climate today. 

Anyway, Newsweek reached out to Rove for his thoughts on appearing in the new National album. “Not familiar with the band and the quote is fictitious,” he responded. Rove also offered up his (off the record) review of the song itself: “Starts with a Euro Tech Pop thing and transition into a more peppy tune that’s easier to dance to and has a sound track that on YouTube is impossible to heard. Suspect it won’t make Casey Kasem’s Top 40.”

The National responded on Twitter and, no, it doesn’t seem like there will be any bread broken in the near future between the two. 

Fuck you, Karl https://t.co/3gXr8DYryw
— The National (@TheNational) September 9, 2017