Shot:

🚨James Carville issues wild prediction that the Trump admin will experience a “massive collapse” in the next 30 days:

“This whole thing is collapsing….the analogy I use is Pickett is 500 yards from the stone wall. Hold your fire. It's going to be easy pickings here in six… pic.twitter.com/1Rx7trZ07P

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 24, 2025

The George Pickett example might be apt, but not in the way that James Carville thinks. We'll get to the polls shortly, but for now let's just say that the Ragin' Cajun is getting high off his own supply. He might have read a recent Washington Post analysis highlighting a secondary outcome of an outlier poll, to which I'd advise Carville to check his sources.

Anyway ... chaser:

MSNBC's legal analyst leaves far left panel on the verge of tears after informing them Trump is not really losing legal battles.

"These are not major setbacks."

"They’re going to fight at every single turn. And that means appealing everything because it costs them nothing. pic.twitter.com/6OyXeRsnHf

— Thomas Hern (@ThomasMHern) February 24, 2025

This is why the idea that the Trump administration will collapse is absurd. First, Trump isn't even losing on the stays consistently. The first few forays threw up some roadblocks, but judges have relented on some of those now too. As MSNBC's legal analyst Danny Cevallo points out, none of these stays addresses the merits of the dispute, and Trump is likely to win most of those, with the likely exception being the challenge to birthright citizenship. 

Furthermore, the vast majority of these challenges relate to policies that are vastly popular with the electorate. Many of the attempts to block Trump relate to his efforts to reduce the federal bureaucracy and to force it to respond to his policies rather than act independently. Democrats who man the barricades to protect federal bureaucrats from accountability are not going to find themselves with many allies among American voters, whose confidence in these institutions are at all-time lows. Other challenges are trying to reverse Trump's EOs dismantling DEI, shrinking the IRS, and ending radical transgender policies that force girls and women to compete against males and to allow men and boys into their spaces.

If the Pickett's Charge analogy is at all apt, it's that Democrats are conducting a charge across an open political field at positions where Donald Trump's support is strongest. And in the end, Trump will likely win most of these court challenges on the basis of explicit Article II authorities, especially where statutes like Title IX make that authority even more broad. Cevallo clearly anticipates that and wants to inject some badly-needed realism on the Left as to the nonsense being spouted there of late. (John wrote earlier about MSNBC's decision to shed one of its more notable nonsense forums in cancelling Joy Reid's show.)

What about the popularity collapse? Carville cited Harvard polling in his argument, but their data shows just the opposite:

📊 President Trump Job Approval

🟢 Approve: 52% (+9)
🔴 Disapprove: 43%

Harvard/Harris | 2/19-20 | 2,443 RV | ±2% pic.twitter.com/OXiUg5IheB

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 24, 2025

What about the issues? Democrats and the Protection Racket Media are rushing to push their Poster Children of Woe propaganda with the assumption that Trump's agenda is unpopular. It's anything but:

The biology-based policy for women's sports and spaces are tremendously in Trump's favor, 69/31. The elimination of excess bureaucracy is even more popular. Trump's not losing in court, but he's triumphing in public opinion -- at Democrats' expense.

That would explain the other big takeaway from this poll. Their right/wrong direction numbers have shifted dramatically over the last month to the best results in nearly four years, 42/48. The same is true on economy measures, with another high on right/wrong track since mid-2021 (38/52) and in strong/weak (47/53). And this in particular shows how cheered the electorate has been after one month of the Trump presidency pursuing the will of the majority in all of these issues:

Where exactly does Carville see signs of "collapse"? It looks much more as though the electorate is rallying to the new administration and embracing Trump. Even if one looks past the Harvard Harris CAPS poll, the RCP aggregate average on Trump's approval has him at 49.3/47.5 -- a bit of a decline from the heady first week of the new administration, but far better than Trump ever had in the first term. And again, the RCP aggregate for right/wrong direction shows exactly what the Harvard Harris CAPS poll does -- that American voters have turned sharply toward optimism over the past month, and at the most positive state in nearly four years at a -10.6.

Perhaps Trump and his team will go too far at some point and dent that momentum. But to paraphrase Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, today is not that day. And from these numbers, it doesn't look like tomorrow will be, either. 

Addendum: The Protection Racket Media has gone full-out to propagandize for the Bureaucratic State. And so far, it's not working -- but we need to make sure that independent platforms like ours remain in play to fight against it. We push so hard against the "Fact Checks" and skewer the Poster Children of Woe industry to ensure our independence from the Big Tech platforms that capitulated to censorship, and buffer ourselves from the outcome of advertiser boycotts from corrupt "misinformation" services. As David wrote last week, we aren't getting gold bars at taxpayer expense to keep our operations afloat like the Protection Racket Media does, nor do we want it. We keep fighting to keep independent voices and dissent alive in the face of enormous pressure, and our members are right there on the front lines with us. 

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