Democratic strategist and frequent media talking head James Carville went on multiple emotionally unhinged and factually challenged rants on Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO and the Overtime segment broadcast on CNN’s Laura Coates Live. Carville took Speaker Mike Johnson wildly out of context to portray him as worse than Al-Qaeda while earlier claiming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “right-wing bullshit” is why Israel finds itself at war.
Maher finds Johnson particularly threatening, having himself compared Johnson to Osama bin Laden and having guests on who will indulge those feelings. Carville was just the latest example, “This is a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda to this country. Let me tell you something, the Speaker of the House, they got probably -- at least two Supreme Court justices, maybe more, right, don't kid yourself and people in the press have no idea who this guy is, how he was formed, what the threat is, and this is a fundamental threat to the United States.”
Carville accused Johnson and his fellow travelers of not believing “in the Constitution and will tell you that. Mike Johnson himself says what is democracy but two wolves and a lamb having lunch. That's what they really, really believe and to say, oh, come on, man, that's some crazy -- no, no, they believe that and they're coming and they've been doing it forever. They're funded.”
The quote about wolves, lambs, and lunch is an old one attributed to Benjamin Franklin about the dangers of unchecked majoritarianism and Johnson correctly noted that the Constitution does not establish such a system. Yet, Carville made it sound like Johnson wants to eat all the proverbial lambs.
Earlier on HBO, Carville took offense at YouTube and Rumble commentator Dave Rubin’s accusation that the “inmates are running the asylum” on President Biden’s Israel policy “First of all, they're decidedly not running the asylum. Biden is the single friend that Israel has-- How in the hell am I still looking at Bibi Netanyahu's stupid, crooked, ignorant, negligent face? Alright. This guy’s still in power after the most, greatest intelligence failure since 9/11?”
Eventually, the segment would touch on reports that Israel had knowledge of Hamas’s plans for over a year, but dismissed them as beyond Hamas’s capabilities. Carville must not have read past the headline, however, as the New York Times wrote, “It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.”
After Rubin interrupted to ask, “what do you want them to do, step down in the middle of a war?”
Carville then ranted, “The reason they are in a war is because they kept getting intelligence saying shit's going on and he was trying to take over the judiciary with all your right-wing bullshit you’re trying to pull over there and they got their pockets picked.”
Even the Israeli opposition has taken a “we’ll talk about this later” approach to the question of just how responsible is Netanyahu for the failures of October 7. There is also precedent to support Rubin’s position as Golda Meir did not resign as prime minister until after the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War which began with the surprise Egyptian-Syrian attack of October 1973. And while it appears that Israel suffered from a failure of imagination, that is a very, very different accusation from the partisan nonsense of blaming judiciary reform.
Here are transcripts of the December 1 shows:
HBO Real Time with Bill Maher
12/1/2023
10:45 PM ET
DAVE RUBIN: If you had five staffers standing outside saying “Bill Maher’s the devil,” what are you going to do? You're going to fire them, right? Of course you're going to fire them, it’s as simple as that, you fire these people, but the inmates are running the asylum.
BILL MAHER: I'm not--
JAMES CARVILLE: First of all, they're decidedly not running the asylum. Biden is the single friend that Israel has-- How in the hell am I still looking at Bibi Netanyahu's stupid, crooked, ignorant, negligent face? Alright.
This guy’s still in power after the most, greatest intelligence failure since 9/11?
[crosstalk]
RUBIN: They're in a war, I mean, what do you want them to do, step down in the middle of a war?
CARVILLE: The reason they are in a war is because--
MAHER: Yes.
RUBIN: -- they kept getting intelligence saying shit's going on and he was trying to take over the judiciary with all your right-wing bullshit you’re trying to pull over there and they got their pockets picked.
…
CNN Laura Coates Live
12/1/2023
11:36 PM ET
CARVILLE: Absolutely. This is a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda to this country. Let me tell you something, the Speaker of the House, they got probably -- at least two Supreme Court justices, maybe more, right, don't kid yourself and people in the press have no idea who this guy is, how he was formed, what the threat is, and this is a fundamental threat to the United States. It is a fundamental -- they don't believe in the Constitution and will tell you that. Mike Johnson himself says what is democracy but two wolves and a lamb having lunch. That's what they really, really believe and to say, oh, come on, man, that's some crazy -- no, no, they believe that and they're coming and they've been doing it forever. They're funded.
