Political strategist James Carville has shot back at Donald Trump’s angry broadside, schooling the president on history and challenging him to a debate.
Trump, 79, exploded at Carville, 81, one of his most prominent critics, in an unhinged 340-word Truth Social rant on Tuesday night.
“Wacko James Carville, a so-called Democrat ‘strategist,’ wants the Democrats to make D.C. and Puerto Rico States and, most importantly, pack the Supreme Court, putting 13 Justices on the Court,” Trump wrote. “If they pull off adding these two States, these Country Destroying Sleazebags will dominate politics in America, if we even have a Nation left, for 100 years (TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!).”
Carville, who may have landed on Trump’s radar for calling the president a “fat stupid sack of s--t” and a “motherf---er,” fired back on his Politicon podcast on Wednesday, telling his co-host Al Hunt that he would debate Trump “anytime.”
Describing himself as a “rabbi,” the Democratic strategist declared, “My job is to teach people,” before breaking down the case for granting statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico, and for packing the Supreme Court—ideas that Carville proposed last week and that triggered Trump’s tirade.
“How many people in this country know that in the last nine presidential elections, the Democrats have won seven in the popular vote? Not very many people,” he said, while also pointing to the Senate’s skewed representation, where population giants like California and Texas have as many senators as states with only a fraction of their population.
Granting statehood to the nation’s capital and Puerto Rico would likely give Democrats four more Senate seats.
Carville then cited controversies surrounding conservative Supreme Court justices, like the report that Justice Samuel Alito took a luxury fishing vacation with a billionaire who had cases before the Supreme Court, and that Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a $1.8 million property he co-owned to a law firm executive shortly after he was confirmed as a justice.
“People don’t understand what’s happening to this country,” the strategist behind Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory said. “And this proposal, I think, if it does nothing else, is going to have a great educational purpose.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Ironically, Carville and Trump may find some common ground in their criticism of the conservative justices.
In his Truth Social rant, the president raged at the justices for wanting to be independent.
“The Democrat Justices stick together like glue, totally loyal to the people and the ideology that got them there,” he wrote. “Frankly, I respect that, a lot! Certain Republican Appointees let the Democrats push them around, always wanting to be popular, politically correct, or even worse, wanting to show how ‘independent’ they are, with very little loyalty to the man who appointed them or, more importantly, the ideology from which they came to be Nominated and Confirmed.”
Supreme Court justices, the final arbiters of law in the United States, are supposed to serve as independent, impartial interpreters of the Constitution, unswayed by political or personal biases.
