The Daily Beast Podcast - Carville’s Shock Prediction Will Terrify Trump

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

James Carville tells Daily Beast Political Reporter Sarah Ewall-Wice that Trump is in much bigger trouble than even the terrible polls are predicting. He says the Democrats are on track for sweeping midterm victories—pointing to double-digit overperformance in special elections, even in Donald Trump’s own backyard, and predicting a potential 55-seat Senate majority. Carville also warns that Trump could trigger chaos if he realizes the election is slipping away by undermining election legitimacy or escalating the Iran conflict. He dismantles Republican strategy, questions Trump’s grip on his own party, and argues that fear, defiance, and voter mobilization will define the months ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even Trump in his own primitive way knows the Republic will get slaughtered in November. So he's trying to lay the groundwork to have something like this, because what they do know, what scares me is they can't have a free and fair election. That is a other disaster for them. It's a lot on every level. They know that. They're going to do everything they can to stop it. It's just literally, that's where we are.

And expect the worst. Expect the worse. I'm Sarah Ewell Weiss with the Daily Beast podcast, filling in for Joanna Coles. Today, our guest is James Carville, the legendary political strategist and consultant. He is going to make some bold predictions about the midterms, dig into Trump's record low approval, and tell us who comes out on top as Americans see these never-ending airport lines. But before we dig into the show, please take a moment to share this podcast with your friends, invite them to subscribe to the Daily Beast YouTube channel. We've thankfully reached 500,000 followers and we're gutting for one million with your help.

So here's our show with James Carville. So just going to jump right in here. I mean, Democrats this week flipped Trump's Mar-a-Lago district by double-digit. It was a state special election. But what does this say to you about where we're headed with the midterms? No, this is interesting. This has happened ever since Trump has been elected in November of 2024. It's consistent 12 to 14 point over the fall.

And it's irrespective of geography. It doesn't matter if it's Florida. It doesn't matter if it's Pennsylvania. It doesn't matter if it's California. It doesn't matter if it's Mississippi. The other thing is there was a state Senate seat that flipped, which is, actually more important because the vacancy was when the governor

picked the then-state Senate to be lieutenant governor. Now, you've been around politics long enough to know if they're only going to pick somebody from a safe seat because they don't want to lose a seat in the state Senate. Well, they lost it, which was a giant blow

internally to Ron DeSantis. He's not going to be governor after this year anyway. So what we're seeing is double-digit oval performance everywhere. And Moralago is no different in any other place. It just happened to be with the votes. But it's not, that's consistent with any other place.

I mean, we're talking about usually saying a competitive race is a two to three point race. Are you expecting that places where there was a double digit win by a Republican in 2024, those are now considered competitive looking at November? Well, I think the best way to look at November is this. if you just take election returns and you take the polling and the aggregate, I mean, you know,

everybody has their favorite poll aggregator, but they're also about the same. The question is, is the over under for Democratic Senate seats, I think, is 55. I mean, I really believe that. If you took, if you're running 10, 11 points consistently

ahead of 2024 performance, you're looking at, A lot. I mean, once you start going north or five, things start to fall. And every piece of evidence we have thus far indicates that that's what's happening. Now, can you come back and say, well, you said this in late March, and here we are in October, and they're saying something different. Yeah, because when the facts change, I've changed their mind. But right now, I'm over 100% seats is 55. I would be semi-disappointed if it was 53 Democratic sheets. So your prediction right now is Democrats will take both the House and the Senate at this stage.

Not just take, I mean, I'm talking about eight Senate seats or something like that. But if you look at it where we are at this moment, I don't know how a person could honestly draw another conclusion. The conclusion would be, well, once people's partisanship starts to kick in and Trump people see what's at stake, that's fine and dandy. But right now, all of the evidence would have point to 55 of more sentences or Democrats. I'm curious when it comes to Trump, he did endorse in these state special elections, his candidate specifically in his own district lost. When it comes to the Trump endorsement, is that a good thing for Republicans when we look ahead to the general election? He has a lot of power in the primary, but what does that mean to you in the general?

Of course it doesn't happen in a general at all. Of course, you want to run against Trump in Texas. Remember, Trump is 12 points underwarned, Texas. Okay? But him in Dawson, now he's scared to endorse in primaries. And, you know, if I talk to a Republican senator, Congress said, look, I've got to get through the primary. If I get through that, I'll worry about the general. But, I mean, the idea is to fight to live another day. But I think increasingly you're starting to see, you start to see Nancy Mace, who's in a tight primary for government,

saying, I'm not for troops on the ground, walk out of this. And you're starting to see Mike Rogers, who's a Republican from Alabama, saying he's a big deal committed chance. If we're not getting answers on, why are we there? And you see Roger Wicker, who's a Republican senator of Mississippi, said, well, I don't see anything that Congressman Rogers says that I disagree with. I mean, what's these things start to break? They continue to break, and they get longer, and break gets longer,

and the break gets wide. And I see every indication of that happening. And just given a general political climate, I would expect that to happen. I do want to talk about the war in Iran shortly. But before I go there, I do want to just say Democrats, they would want Trump on the campaign trail at this stage. That's a good thing for them, you think? Oh, yes. I mean, in a place where he could actually help the Republicans, but you don't go win that anyway.

Maybe you can still help in West Virginia, Tennessee. and maybe I'm not even, I think it's a lot closer probably people think, probably Arkansas and Idaho, Wyoming, but once you get past those, you're in thin territory. If you look at all the states where he's underwaters, it's very few that he's, the proof of is high and his discipline. And I probably get worse. Yeah, it's interesting because he promised he would endorse in that Texas Senate race you brought up. But he has since not endorsed.

He said he would do it soon. Obviously, Ken Paxson was hedging and wasn't saying he would drop out if he endorsed Senator Cornyn. But do you expect these to be ongoing challenges? I mean, that runoff isn't until May. But it's looking uglier and uglier for Republicans just to get through this primary cycle. Well, Ken Paxson made one brilliant political moves. He said, if the Senate passes the Save Act, I'll drop out.

So now Trump can't. I mean, that was like, I don't know, the chess player, but that was a brilliant move. It was a British player as a double finesse. He said, okay, I'll get out if you pay. And of course, Doom, who's put $77 billion in Collins' campaign, he has more to do it because they don't want to get rid of a filmbuster because he knows that 55 Democratic sentences are coming, so he's trying to, and his caucus knows that. I mean, these people have, they think beyond the next minute, and they're not going to

break your fill busting for him and then Paxon can tell Trump, Corning couldn't get it done for you. I would. It's literally that simple. Curious about what your thoughts are on President Trump this week. He voted in the special election in Florida by mail. He's doing it while he is attacking vote by mail. Part of the Save America Act that you mentioned is this whole thing about the elections being rigged, his ongoing spiel.

Literally just this week, he called it cheating. and then he went and used it himself in the special election. What do you make of that? It's what we've known about Donald Trump since he's burst on the scene. He's a massive and blatant hypocrite. And the fact that he's engaged in hypocrisy is the ultimate dog bites man's story. If you ever did something that was not hypocritical,

you would say, wow, this is something different. But he does it every election. It's the same thing over and over. And, of course, you and I know, is there's very little voter fraud in the United States. You can't say there's none, but it's almost, almost, it's hard to find it. You've got to live really hard to go up with it.

And he is trying to do everything he can to shape people's confidence in the election so he can say, I'm not going to pay attention to it, but he's going to try something to mess with the election. What it is, I don't know what we need to be prepared at all cost. I am curious about that. I mean, how do you think Democrats should combat the threats of the president to undermine the upcoming election when he talks about cheating and the election being rigged? What should they be doing at this stage to combat some of that come November? Well, one of the things that I think is that you have all of these voter suppression laws in past. He doesn't want you to have the election. In other words, if I were Democrats, I'd say, that's all the more. reason for you to go out and vote. They're trying to make it hard for you. They think you

won't vote if we make the line five minutes long. You show them. You're going to vote. I would turn this into some level of positive energy on the part of Democrats. He doesn't think you're capable of showing up and catching your vote. And the people in your county or your power issue, your township or the administration of the election, you know they can count and show them and go up and vote. I would make it as voting, if you will, an act of defiance. That always rallies people. That could be a point where they push back,

if you will, the rallying cry. Right. If I tell the thing that will make you want to do something more than anything else, if I tell you, you can't do that. What am I, who are you, not the boss of me? That's going to make me want to do it more. So if somebody says, don't read this book because it's a dirty book, then you're going to go out and buy the book and read it.

the book because they're telling you not to read it. So all of human nature is people, particularly Americans, rebel against being told what to do. Now, the Democrats, we're traditionally like, no, each of peace, government is good for you. We're really trying to help. And this is the one instance where we have a chance to flip the script. We can be the roads. We can be the outsiders. We can be the power, the establishment, the giant corporations, the tech companies, that, that, that, the grifters, the Bitcoin people, they don't want you to go. But you know about it. You have the power in your hands not to be told what to do about a giant conglomerate of people who want to take advantage of you.

That's my, you have to turn it around. You follow what I'm saying? Tell people, they're telling you you can't do this. You show them that you can't. I'm curious, James. I mean, what for you is the most concerning? What keeps you up at night about the November midterm election? That he's going to try to seize ballots.

He's already doing that. He's going to try to put federal forces on the ground. And that real trouble erupts. And the trouble becomes contagious in his friends. Because he just literally playing with more than dynamite here. He's playing with napalm. And what really keeps me up at night is that he will, that he tries this. And then there's some flashpoint, there's some incident.

And the next thing you know, and of course, that's exactly what he wants. So then he can claim, well, it's too violent after the hour of the plan, harsh or law, myself, president. Well, so that, yes, that's what keeps me up, is that we have an overreaction to what he's almost certainly going to do. I'm curious because Steve Bannon this week, the MAGA architect behind Trump's first campaign, he was talking about the ICE agents being sent into airports. And he was saying how that is basically a test ground for November's election. They're not running the screenings, but they can check IDs. Is that something you could see happening under the Trump administration?

Of course I can. But the idea having ICE agents in airports is horrifically unpopular. But understand it's bad. is odious as he is a person. I'm sure he's smarter than any of them on that side

to call it. And yes, what he's trying to do, Bannon knows, and even Trump in his own primitive where he knows the Republican

that will get slaughtered in November. So he's trying to lay the groundwork to have something like just because what they do know, what scares me,

is they can't have a free and fair election. That is the other a disaster for them. Again, that's 57 seats, 248 house seats. I don't know or can't translate it, but it's a lot on every level. They know that. They're going to do everything they can't stop it. It's just literally that's where we are. And expect the worse. Expect the worse. In terms of the president, you mentioned him getting slaughtered, he has record low approval right now. I think to this week it hit 36% approval.

Is there any way you see him being able to dig out of that trench between now and November? You know, I don't, and I ask other people. All right, give me the scenario where he comes back and gets to 43.25, which would probably cost him the house, but not to sit. Well, it'd have to be, you know, a real spur of economic growth. By the way, the OEDC, a big international economic forecast says we're facing 4.2% inflation. Somehow another, they're all idiots and they're wrong, but we have 1.2% inflation. That the Iranian government decides to establish a parliament and Tehran and hold free and fair elections

and allow our U.S. bases on Iranian soil. If you ask me to find a size high to turn around, I guess that would be one of the ways that a combination of those things happening. Now, how likely they are, I'll lead that to anybody else's mind that that's what happens. The question is, what is more likely he's at 30, let's just say 38%. Let's just give it an even number of consensus. on October to 15th, is that number more likely to be 35 or 41? Or just stay at 38. And my predictive abilities are no better than anybody else's.

But I kind of bet on 35. Fair enough. Do you think Republicans, in terms of the midterms, before I move on to some other subjects, do you think they're going to come to regret their whole push to redistrict based on the president's polling, what we've seen with all? all these shifts in districts, these special elections, they're still pushing, including in Florida, for redistricting in some of these cases. Do you think that's going to come back to haunt them? I saw a presentation about a month ago from David Washington, I think most people would agree,

is they're kind of resident expert on redistricting and House seats. And he said as a result of all this, the Democrats have netted a half of House seat. At the end of the day, when you add up Texas and California and Virginia and Indiana, and the public does not much like this. I think it's a referendum right in Virginia. I've been kind of curious. And I mean, it's definitely if presidential like you have Virginia today, Democrats have been about 12 points.

I'm curious to see how it turns out. The public is fairly uneasy with this. She thought it had manifested itself even in Indiana State Senate. Yeah. I watched that one. very closely and that was a rare case where we saw Republicans at the state level really pushing that. And Kansas, the same thing happened. It didn't get the same amount of publicity, but the Republicans said, no, we're not going to do that. Because they know. This is crazy. People, it's crazy

to everybody says, they take the country. The country is, first of all, we're not evenly divided. We're an overwhelmingly anti-Trump country. And all but part, poor, mega people in this country, retain the sense of fan and said, hey, let's have a fair election, everybody voted, whoever wins, we've got to accept it, and we've only lived with the consequences. That's clearly not what that Trump is, but I think that's where the country is, and it's going to be a hard slog between 9 November to get there. We just, because it shows like yours, we've got to be vigilant, we've got to warn people. We've got to be prepared for anything.

You mentioned the MAGA Republicans not being a majority. I found it kind of comical we were talking about the Iran War, and a lot of folks out of the White House, the comms team, were touting the strong support for the Iran War among MAGA Republicans as their base in terms of there is support behind. It was their argument. Of course, they also were going to what they would call fake news polls to show the support that they say is out there. But you're saying MAGA Republicans are in the major. and the minority at this point. So what do you make of those White House comms where they're really just pushing all this stuff that's just very pro-Trump, but not based in reality? Well, first of all,

Magus is maybe two-thirds in a Republican Party. I'm just, I have a definitive number. I'm sure people can mine that data to come up with a... But it's not 92% of it. I can tell you that. And if you look at his Republican approval, his disapproval is now 13, 14, 15. That's a lot. It's best for people to understand to see, well, among Republicans, he's 85, 13.

Among Democrats, he's 97, you know, 397. Well, that's a big differential way out. And, you know, there's a lot of, if you look at more involved, I mean, even, you know, with Marjorie Taylor Green. You start to see some of the even, you know, really MAGA people like, or talk a Joe Kent. You know, we really believe this anti-interventionist stuff, man. We really did.

I mean, some people are just any inventionist today called core, and a lot of them, you know, a sizable number of them in MAGA. The rest of them say Trump said it. I believe that that settles it. Okay. Those people probably not going to change very soon. But they're not, the only two-thirds of 40 percent. Then I'm nearly 51 percent of the country.

You talk about that 13 percent Republicans. I mean, that's a huge amount when it comes to margins. It's more likely to continue to grow. That's a number that everybody says he's still solid with Republicans. And if you look at it, you go, well, maybe he's got to be more solid than he is now. I bring that up also because, I mean, where you talk to people and you start to see some of the decline, I mean, we have the Iran war, which I'll get to. But we also have this chaos going on in Washington. And I want to talk about the chaos going on on Capitol Hill. I mean, the president demanded that DHS funding be attached to his Save America Act, which is about voting.

And then he really immediately had to back off of that because Republicans rushed over to the White House and essentially talked him down on this ultimate. made them for Democrats. But I want to get your thoughts on who is really in control right now when it comes to Republicans. They have the White House. They have the House. They have the Senate. But there appears to be some chaos. And it just continually bruised as we're in the shutdown that's going on. I mean, we're approaching the longest shutdown in history for DHS. Well, the one person that we know that is not in charge that has no influence is my Johnson. I mean, literally, the guy, I guess you could say he's there. He's got to be the most ineffective and compliant speed of the House that's ever been.

On the Senate side, remember this TSA thing. Let me point out that Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana and Center Cruz worked out something to keep it open. And Trump said he'd veto it, so they pulled it back. That's Senator Kennedy. I would tell you that. We worked out of there. We could, all the Republican votes, we could open this. And he told us not to.

Well, it's just going to come a time that something. It's probably going to be after the election. Unfortunately, there's somebody going to say, well, wait, wait a minute. We're the first branch of government. I think the Congress has established in Article 1 of the Constitution. I don't know what it means to be an Article 1, but apparently the founders thought it was a pretty important institution that followed and the checks and purposes no longer exists. So one of the things that will probably happen after November will now go back to having, well, can you say Supreme Court is the separate branch of government, but at least we could have one and a half branches of government, maybe, versus one and a half.

You think there's going to be some kind of wake-up call among Republicans after the midterms, or are you think because Democrats are going to take back the majority? You know, it's one thing to like anticipate what getting hit in the mouth by Mike Tyson to feel like. is another thing to actually get hit in the mouth by Mike Tyson. Okay, I got hit in the mouth by Mike Tyson in 1994. You have no idea. And it's just, I can't. Unless you've seen it, you can't describe it. And what's going to happen is everything,

every narrative is going to change, every table key, jocke that there's an alignment and the Democrats have lost under 30 and Hispanics and suburban women and AAP and all of that is just going, who sucked right out of the door. And they're going to be faced with a highly energized Democratic Party. And for the moment, about as united as a Ken did. And they're going to be facing to spare.

Now, what do they do? I don't know. They might say we just double down on where we are or how we extricate ourselves from this. And what they can all wake up and find out is trying to. didn't care about them. You know, they all want to win re-election. They like having staff members and people go to the laundry and find first class and get picked up at the Air Force.

A lot of them are going to go by the wayside. And they're going to get angry at him. I really do. I think the residual anger that's coming is very pretty knowledgeable. You think it's going to be a lot more Marjorie Taylor Greens in the mix. Yeah, I think I'm going to say Marjorie Taylor Green is kind of independent-minded woman. And she's walked away. I'm not, I'm not, I don't exist for him.

I have my own in, in Diamond, you start to see that more and more. In Waterloo Republic, I said, look, I kind of agree with Jay's, but I can't do anything. I could kill back home. You're going to just get home anyway. It don't matter. You're dead. Understand that. You've got no hope that you're going to lose 45 seats.

And you can't do anything to stop it. And he's not going to do it. And he puts you in this position. And he's not going to do one thing, but to help. And the only advantage they have is the money advantage, which just is more corruption than you can imagine. Then you can imagine. And you just, they can't raise enough special interest money to overcome the anger that people have that.

You can't, there's not that much money in the world. At the same time, I mean, it doesn't feel like Democrats are like also seeing that kind of, money race and it doesn't really work the same way it used to. I mean, we've seen races where there's been floods of money that they've, it's done nothing. And in this case, you talk about it being just corruption and blatant corruption. I mean, that feels like that could be something that rallies Democrats more than Republicans. Well, I think it should. And the reason is, I'm not saying Democrats are perfect, but we have no power. So political money tends to follow political power. Now,

It also follows the anticipation of political problems. There's a lot of PACs. There's a lot of bundlers out there and maybe listening to the show and says, look, between now and November, you're smart lining up with the Republicans, but you better get straight here because come January the 3rd of 27, you're going to be faced with a whole different world. And as that reality sets into that community, I think you're going to see a pickup in high-end Democratic fundraise.

And I think Logan Democratic fundraising is fine for right now. I mean, in terms of then where we're at on the Hill, they're failing to reach a deal to M as partial shut down. I mean, we're seeing airport lines. I don't know about where you are, but talking about BWI chaos here in Baltimore's local airport is having insane lines. We've seen crazy lines in Houston. Is this something that Democrats should fear? they could get blamed over at any point in this? Not really.

Get it too worried about. Because the Republicans are in total charge of the government. There was actually a Republican solution that Trump feet up. This is a Trump. Understand, in the coming election, there's one issue and one issue of it. Trump. Nothing else matters. Okay?

If you like it, vote Republican. If you don't vote Democratic. I can't make it any simpler than that. You talk about the TSA. you can argue, well, we put this, we wanted to separate that out the bill, we wanted to stand the loan, wanted to border Reagan's it.

The Republicans ate government. They love shutting the down. They love shutting TSA down. They even came to the point where they tried to add a credible plan to reopen it. And, of course, Trump is the reason that is close. This is a Trump.

You cannot say the word Trump too much in a sentence. And if you say Republicans, it's excuse me, I meant Trump. Practice it to mirror saying, I will not say 10 words where I'd mention in Trump's name. So I'll father, Lord, heaven, I'll be the thing. Trump. I don't know if the Lord's Prayer and Trump really belong together there, sir. I'm using an exaggerated point to say you can't bring him enough into the freight. I understand where you're going with that.

I do want to ask you about what we're on the Trump. I was watching him this week. I mean, you could have been watching him since February 28th where he's been going back and forth over Iran and whether the U.S. is winning this war or whether he'll even call it a war while calling it a war minutes earlier in some cases this week. But he said the U.S. has won the war. At the same time, though, we are sending thousands of U.S. troops to the region. It's not clear really where this is headed. Republicans on Capitol Hill this week when I was up there are frustrated about not getting answers. What does this all suggest to you? The reality of Trump giving mixed messaging, but declaring a victory through it all. Well, it goes back to the origin,

the reason of the origin of the war. Never forget that. The reason this war started is because Trump, quote, felt it in his bones, unquote. Now, his most famous bone is his bone, alleged, made up bone spur that got him to stay out of V.M.A. But he said, the only reason we did this is because of his bones. Well, his bones are as stupid as his brain. And I think Republicans increasingly know that. They're like Mike Rogers or Roger Wick. They're saying that, wow, there's no reason for this. They never gave us a reason. And, you know, Phil Clay, it was that on the Iraq war, the articulate, he said, look, I served in Iraq. I could have told you why I was at.

And it turned out to be not a very good reason, but there wasn't reason. There's no, nobody, no Marine that hits the ground anywhere, I can tell you what he's doing there where he's fighting for. Because no one knows. Trump doesn't even know. So, you know, sometimes you fight for something like they're our war. There was a reason. On the surface, it looked like a good reason, but it didn't work out. It turned out that it could use American military right to reform people and to be

small D Democrats. But it was a risk. Okay, you could actually articulate. No one can articulate while we there. It does feel like they're trying to scramble for. an off-ramp at this point. I mean, do you see an off-ramp here where they are able to move forward that isn't, one, politically detrimental for them in November, or two, where it doesn't make them just look like they have egg on their face? So, one of my favorite movies,

you should re-watch it, is Gandhi. And so they're at this long conference table in this British colonial administrator, high-end agent of a crown, says, you don't think, you don't think that we're just going to get up and walk out of here, do you? And Gandhi says, yes, that's exactly what you're going to do. You're going to get up and just walk out of here. Right? That's what we're going to do. We're just going to get up and go home. And he may try to get some statement or declaration or something. We're just going to leave. It's not hard. Just take to Gerald Ford, reassign it, to the South China Sea

bring everybody back we build the ordinance bring all of the stuff we got say hey we got a lot of more serious things in doing this world you know artists have been depleted which is we rang out of bombs

people don't realize that there is a finite number of bombs you have and we've hit 17,000 different targets in Iran you know with pounding Sam now and the one thing we know is if If you bomb people, they tend not to like it. I can't imagine why somebody would not want to be bombed in the middle of the night,

but apparently they don't like it. I'm curious what your thoughts were if you saw it at all. And earlier this week where he was talking about Iran and how they gave the U.S. this present. And he wouldn't say what this present was. Apparently, it left White House aides baffled. What were your thoughts on that when you saw that, if at all, in terms of him floating?

out there. My first thought was being monuments clause in the Constitution, but then I busted out laughing by that effect to think. It's just

make stuff up. It's like, it sounds like, because if he says that, it sounds like my people will believe that they're trying to suck up to me because I'm winning the war by so big.

That's all. Yeah, it's just another just another life. And you'll never know because there's nothing there's nothing to part about it. It just, well, that sounds good. I'll just say it. I mean, in terms of getting out of this situation, if the negotiations do move forward, who in this administration do you have confidence in in negotiating?

We had Jared Kushner. We had Steve Whitkoff that we bombed. We have J.D. Vance apparently getting in. And Marga Ruby has been in it throughout. I mean, who would you have confidence in this administration? to move forward. The one that gets the biggest bribe, I don't know, Wickech and Jared,

who it is, but if anything happens, somebody's going to get to license to build a resort on the Persian Gulf. I don't know, whatever they do, just open an all company or something.

That's about, you know, usually a career of diplomats, they have fixed rules, and have things that they follow, they're sad, this all the side. Not now. We just go right to, I mean,

there's all kinds of stories that say, you know, do arithmetic on how much the Trump family has made since the election, and it's, I've heard figures it's $4 billion. It's a lot of money. To me, it is anyway.

But it's, all of this is done through financial transactions, diplomacy. It's just how the way we do business, in the United States today. We don't have diplomats. We have grifters.

And that's who's in charge of the country, who's in charge of the peace, in charge of war, charge everything. I mean, during your illustrious career, have we ever been in a situation like this, like what you're seeing with the conflict with Iran? No. And this is the question.

When you're in a situation like this, people say, well, you've got to admit that the Democrats have this kind of problem. problem, or you gotta admit Trump was right to give it an opinion. You know, I could have written a thousand-word essay on why Japan had reasons to be aggrieved on December 1st, 1941. I couldn't have wrote that same essay on January 1st, 1942, because nothing justified what's happening.

And that's my complaint with both silos. It tries to make a 90-10 situation look like a 50-50 situation. It is no such thing. And if people say, well, James, you have Trump derangement syndrome. My answer is yes. And we know that times in history where insanity is so prevalent that insanity is actually the same reaction. And in a novel Catch 22, as I pointed out, the guy said, I don't want to fly because I'm insane. And the psychiatrist said the fact that you're insane makes you sane.

So if you're sane right now, go to the psychiatrist because you're really truly insane. If you're insane, you're fine. You're in the profoundly normal range. Because there's only thing that's something like this can do, this level. of creation. If it doesn't make you crazy, then, well, you're crazy. That's what I can explain. In this crazy world that we're in, do you see a scenario where we're still in Iran in November? We're bombing Iran in November. I'm honestly, I'm off the top of my head. I don't know. But, you know, as Doggy Bearer said, predictions are hard to make, especially about the future.

and especially in the area, but I don't think there's any appetite to be there now. I don't think there's one. I would love if this country would turn around. I understand that we've got Iranian people, so are the most talented people on Earth. I mean, half the people in other country have a higher education degree, and half of them are women. I mean, the regime is autocratic, is non-democratic,

It has no respect to human rights. It engages in international crime. But the Iranian people are very talented. And I, you know, would dream one day that come back into the community of same nations. But I think what we're doing now is delaying that day, not accelerating that day. I mean, Trump says we're winning. He's apparently watching montage videos as his briefing of us winning. I'm just curious on your thoughts on that before I let you go.

It's a video compilation that is his briefing as he declares the U.S. is militarily winning this war. Well, I'm a veteran of Vietnam era, and all I heard was how much we were winning. We were winning so much our heads were spent. We had little casualty counts. We dropped more bonds. We didn't work. But you know what we didn't do? We didn't win the war.

And, I mean, there's a lot of strategists and people. to understand this kind of thing a lot more. Now, dude, what is winning? I mean, if I've watched a baseball game last night, the opening night in San Francisco, there was a score, right? We know who, but war than, war is not like that. It's different. All right. James Carville is a pleasure to speak with you, and I hope we do this again in the future. That was our show with James Carville. I was particularly interested in what he had to say, and his ominous warning about the midterm. and what Trump might do as he questions the validity of the election. But Carville making some bold predictions about who will come out on top

and saying that Democrats can take not just the House, but he predicts also the Senate. It will be something to keep an eye on moving forward. For now, we encourage you to join us in the conversation. Sign up for our YouTube channel. Follow us on social media. With that, I'm Sarah Ewal Weiss, the Daily Beast. Thank you so much. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now.

There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team, Devin Rodgerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Pissarro, Neil Rosenhaus.