April 20, 2022

Ari Melber showed James Carville a clip of Mitch McConnell saying Republicans will win back Congress unless they nominate too many extremists.

How could you screw this up? It's actually possible. You can't nominate somebody who is just sort of unacceptable to a broader group of people. And when we had that experience in 2010 and 2012...

"Do you think McConnell is right about the risk? How should Democrats approach it?" Melber asked.

"Mitch is up to his usual tricks. He had quite a few dealings with the Russians, about a third of them are pulling for Russia," Carville said.

"He wants people that will be compliant to his world view, which is tax cuts for the richest people in the world and tax poor people, which isn't a very smart idea. But the problem is, they are a weird political party. They need to be branded as such. These 26 Qanon people, that's not necessarily the extreme. These are people that talk about testicle tanning and go to Hungary for conferences. These are not normal, by and large, a large part of the Republican party is out and out weird.

"When you have Moscow Mitch saying we need more sane people, that means you have a lot of really crazy people. Look at the clip when they were looking at Peter Navarro. That guy was a serious person in the White House. You're telling me he's a normal human being? No. He's not even among the worst.

"The thing that Democrats need to do is start pointing out how weird and strange the Republicans have become and talk more about that and less about what Biden hasn't done for them. That's what I think. It has to be a serious effort to brand these people that they are, really, like odd ducks. You have Trump saying, well, maybe the Russians and Ukraine can sit down. No, somebody illegally invaded a country and is ongoing committing war crimes. That's not good. You don't pull for them. that's a bad deal," Carville said.

"It sounds like you're saying 'it's the weirdos, stupid," Melber said.

"Yes, but they are becoming a majority," Carville pointed out. "You look at their commentators, they are out pulling for Russia. You look at Rick Scott's tax plan. He wants to tax another 75 million people. He wants to tax the hotel maids. They don't pay enough. Their life is too easy. Workers in nursing home facilities, they need to pay taxes more. That's really strange stuff here. We're getting into some version -- when I was a kid, you're too young to remember this, but The Twilight Zone. They are out there in the twilight zone somewhere."

"So that's what you call the weirdo party, from Tucker Carlson's obsession with the tanning for testosterone to rooting for Putin, which we have documented is a big problem. James, you're known for straight talk."

"What about the pedophilia?" Carville said.

"Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, we talked about this before. These are not mainstream people."

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon