Michael V said:

AussieDJ said:

dv said:

Vance has made good and sure that “insiders” are getting the word out that he opposed this Iran adventure.

HEY OOMPA LOOMPA! THE FEAR IS GONE AND YOU’RE FUCKING SCREWED
When your staff, your Pentagon, your State Department and your own Vice President are all leaking at once, you’re not running a government anymore. You’re running a crime scene.

I FUCKING LOVE AUSTRALIA
APR 12

TRUST NO ONE: James Carville Just Told Trump He’s Finished

There is a version of political commentary that is polished, measured and carefully worded so as not to offend anyone.

James Carville does not do that version.

What Carville does is pour himself a bourbon at 9 in the morning, climb up on a table, and scream the truth so loud that the paint peels off the walls. And this week he pointed the whole thing directly at Donald Trump and absolutely let the bastard have it.

Now. Carville frames the whole rant as a direct address to Trump, and he opens and closes it with an extended bit about how Trump keeps smelling his own farts. And that, Carville says, is Lindsey Graham’s job. Graham exists in this bit purely to have his nose inserted into Trump’s backside on demand. Carville even proposes a dedicated fart ringtone so Graham knows when to sprint to the White House.

If you don’t know why that’s funny, here’s the backstory in one sentence. In 2016 Lindsey Graham called Trump a race baiter, a xenophobe and a con artist, and then spent the next 8 years with his nose so far up Trump’s arse he could tell you what the man had for breakfast.

So when Carville assigns him the role of official White House fart sniffer, he’s not just being crude. He’s summarising the entire Republican establishment’s relationship with Donald Trump in one revolting image.

It’s a bit. But it’s a bit with a biography attached.

The fart jokes are not the story though.

The fart jokes are just the delivery mechanism.

The story is this: Trump’s own people are ratting him out faster than a Boa constrictor with an eating disorder. Staff leaking. Pentagon leaking. State Department leaking. Every single person in that building with access to a phone and a journalist’s number is apparently queuing up to unload everything they know about the most powerful man on earth, and what they know is not flattering.

This is not a leak. This is Niagara Falls wearing a suit.

Carville’s referencing a New York Times story that reads like a guided tour through the West Wing’s collective contempt for the man running it. These aren’t anonymous sources with a grudge. These are the people who sit in meetings with him. The people who hand him his briefing notes and watch him ignore them. The people who stand there with a straight face while he explains how he could’ve been a general if he hadn’t had that thing with his foot.

Those people. Talking. Constantly.

That is not the behaviour of people who fear their boss.

That is the behaviour of people who have already quietly packed their desk drawers and are just waiting for the right moment to walk.

Then there’s JD Vance.

Oh, JD.

Carville puts it plainly. Vance is already out there on the record saying he had reservations about certain decisions but went along with them anyway. Read that sentence again. The Vice President of the United States is publicly building an alibi while the President is still in office. That is not loyalty. That is a man standing at a burning building pointing at someone else and saying I told him not to store the kerosene next to the stove but what can you do.

Vance was not chosen for loyalty. He was chosen for MAGA credibility. He’s a human shield with good cheekbones and a story about Appalachian poverty that got him a book deal and eventually the second highest office in the land. The moment Trump becomes a bigger liability than an asset, Vance will not be standing on the deck of that ship. He will be in a lifeboat rowing hard and pretending he never knew anyone named Donald.

Carville calls him a snivelling little bastard who will turn on anybody.

That is accurate.

And then there’s the book.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. June. Carville calls them the pizza man. Because they’re going to deliver.

Every leaked conversation. Every panicked staffer confession. Every moment where the people closest to the most powerful man on earth looked at each other across a conference table and thought Jesus Christ we are so completely fucked. All of it. Bound. Published. On shelves in June.

The structural collapse of the whole operation is what Carville is pointing at underneath all the profanity. MAGA loyalty looks airtight until it doesn’t. Then it goes like a tradie’s knees on a cold morning. Fast and all at once. He’s watching the Indiana state Senate Republican primary as an early indicator. Republican voters. In Trump’s own party. Peeling away.

Once they start going, he says, they go quickly.

But here is the line that should make every person in that White House genuinely sweat through their shirt. Not the rant. Not the Lindsey Graham jokes. This:

No one fears you anymore.

Fear was the whole mechanism. Fear was how you keep the senators in line. Fear was how you keep the cabinet quiet. Fear was how you stop people from walking into a journalist’s office and spending 3 hours on background explaining exactly how badly the whole thing is being run.

And it’s gone.

Draining out of the building the same way the stories are.

Carville’s flat prediction: Trump will not be president a year from now. Too weak. Too exposed. Too hated by the people closest to him. And when Democrats get back in January they go straight for the corruption and they claw every dodgy dollar back.

Now. Is he right?

Look. Anyone who tells you they know exactly how American politics ends is trying to sell you something, and given recent form, it’s probably made of aluminium siding.

But here’s what we do know.

The leaks are real. Vance sharpening his knife is real. The book is real. The polling is real. The fact that the most feared political operator in living memory is now being openly mocked by his own Pentagon is very, very real.

The aluminium siding salesman told you he had the best deal you’d ever seen. He told you it would last forever. He told you the neighbours would be jealous.

The siding is now falling off the house. The neighbours are filming it on their phones. And the salesman is inside screaming at the walls about how none of this is his fault and everyone around him is a traitor and a loser and frankly he never liked the house anyway.

Carville’s just the bloke next door who walked over, knocked on the door, took one look at the whole disaster, and said:

Mate. You’re done.

I hope. We hope.

Totally hoping with you Mr V.

Everyone needs a break from this ongoing level of anxiety and stress.

Carville was very entertaining in this article.

I don’t like Carville. He is establishment and neoliberalist Dems. That didn’t win the last election.

But goddam it! I hope he is right.

MTG and Tucker are trying to position themselves for a run at the White House. Or America could end up with a more openly Nazi than Trump. I am scared.