At FoxNews.com, our old MRC colleague Alexander Hall reported a double standard in the use of political metaphors this week. After all of the leftist media hyperventilating over Donald Trump using the word "bloodbath" to describe the economy in a second Biden term, CNN brought on "Ragin' Cajun" James Carville to describe how Team Biden needs to do the "wet work" on Donald Trump.
That's slang for an assassination. But Carville apparently has rhetorical immunity. He gets to use violent metaphors, and that's fine.
Cooper played a clip of Joe Biden exaggerating what Trump said about the "Latino community," as if illegal immigrants and the "Latino community" were the same. It was Trump's opening campaign speech in 2015 about Mexico not "sending their best," and some immigrants are criminals and rapists. Cooper offered the floor to Carville: "You are a proponent of the President and all his spokespeople in the campaign doing that more and more."
"Yeah, not so much him," Carville responded. "I mean, to be candid, Anderson, President Biden is not the best attack politician I've ever seen in my life, and I'll leave it at that. But there are a lot of people to do what I call 'the wet work.'"
"Sounds like a mob hit," Cooper replied.
"Well, it's kind of, but it's paid TV and stuff like that. But yes, that's a CIA term," Carville said. "Take a guy out."
He continued, "But he doesn't need to do the wet work. People like me and other groups in the party need to do that. He's not very good at it. I don't think people want to hear from that. And then he can, you know, cruise along here at a better altitude. But this has got to be done, and they've got to press this advantage right now when they have it."
Hall noted this is standard operating procedure for Carville, and no one takes exception. In January, when asked by MSNBC's Jen Psaki how Biden and his spokespeople should go after Trump, Carville said "I would tell the president and his campaign just, we got your back, dude. We are going after him with a meat cleaver, okay? A rhetorical meat cleaver, if you will, but that's what we're going to do."
During that same segment, Carville added boot-on-your-neck imagery: “We do what we got to do. And that’s where we are right now. We have to keep the foot on this guy, right on his neck, take our heel, and twist it.”
In late February, Carville brought the violent metaphors to CNN anchor Jim Acosta, "I’m a big believer in politics, when you got somebody down, you just kick the living you know what out of 'em. And I think that’s what the White House needs to do, and I think Democrats around the country need to jump on this early and tank them."
