James Carville Laughs at ‘Massively Ignorant’ Trump
Israel and Iran’s escalating conflict could be the thing that rips MAGA apart, James Carville tells The Daily Beast Podcast.
Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
If President Donald Trump plunges the United States into a war with Iran—after vowing to end “forever wars” as a “peacemaker” president—the escalation could spell the end of global stability and MAGA as we know it, said Democratic strategist James Carville.
Carville commented on The Daily Beast Podcast that Israel’s June 12 attack on Iran has created a very public rift among MAGA’s top generals—with Trump, Fox News host Mark Levin, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on the side of U.S. intervention, and right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard wanting the U.S. to stay out of it.
On March 25, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate Intelligence Committee that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Yet according to Carville, “this rift has always existed below the surface” in MAGA land.
“Trump has no idea of what he’s doing,” Carville told host Joanna Coles. “I guarantee you that Tucker Carlson or Steve Bannon or any of these people believe that if you pointed to a globe and you said, ‘Point to the Middle East,’ Trump would have no idea what it is.”
Carville wagered, in comparison to most of Trump’s policy decisions, the Republican president has “never given an iota of thought to this.” He adds, “He knows not one piece of history about the region, about the adversaries, he’s just massively ignorant.”
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However, that hasn’t stopped Trump from playing war hawk for the cameras. After Gabbard testified and told a Senate Intelligence Committee on March 25 that there was no intelligence to suggest Iran was building nuclear weapons, Trump torpedoed her intelligence with an off-the-cuff assessment told to reporters on Air Force One.
“I don’t care what she said” Trump said, adding, “I think they were very close to having them.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to The White House for comment.
Donald Trump suggested appointing himself head of the Federal Reserve.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The rift has pushed die-hard MAGA players to choose sides while the rest of the world waits, scared to see what might come next. Carville quipped, “And you know what I say? You’re not near scared enough.”
He added, “If you knew more, you would even be more scared than you are.”
The Washington Post reported that Trump is weighing an option to meet with Iranian officials in Washington, which would break precedent when the U.S. has not recognized Iran diplomatically since the Iranian revolution in 1978.
“I may do that,” Trump said on Wednesday before saying that he was going into the White House Situation Room to explore more of his options.
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