🧩 BND Motif Index · M1602
Rats leaving a sinking ship
Those who desert a failing side at the last moment to save themselves are called rats leaving a sinking ship; one who joins the losing side as it goes down is mocked as the rare rat jumping on.
🎭 Archetypes🗂️ Betrayal and Loyalty🗂️ Politician Archetypes
- 6claims filed under it
- 2left shows it came up on
- 1right show it came up on
- 4claims retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (2 left-leaning, 0 center, 1 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- left-leaning
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
- 📰 DOJ civil rights chief resigns after midterms 2026-11-05 to 2026-11-06
- 📰 Marco Rubio denies plans to resign from Trump administration 2026-11-05 to 2026-11-06
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “Fleeing won't protect her crimes” “He actually even started the day before because his pollsters told him what was about to happen.” “He’s a rat trying to flee a sinking ship.” “Huge fucking rat jumping a sinking ship.” “I see the rats have begun fleeing from the stricken Trumptanic as it flounders in the Sea of Doom.” “It's a bad look that now that there's backlash, all of a sudden you're jumping ship.” “Only rat in history to jump ONTO a sinking ship.” “Rat leaving the sinking ship.” “Rats are Jumping Ship!” “republicans are talking about jumping ship.” “Republicans trying to make themselves look good after this BLUE TSUNAMI is a joke!!!”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 1
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
- 2026-11-06 “Ron DeSantis is acting shamelessly by trying to distance himself from Donald Trump after being a bootlicker.” 2
Told on the right 1
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
- 2026-11-06 “Marco Rubio is said to be preparing to quit as Secretary of State to launch a 2028 presidential bid and distance himself from Trump and the Iran war.” 1
Retold online 4
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-11-06 “Harmeet Dhillon has resigned as the head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division.”
- 2026-11-06 “A former official should be investigated and held accountable for her abuse of power at the DOJ despite her resignation.”
- 2026-11-06 “Republicans are called weak, dishonest cowards who betrayed their oaths to follow a criminal leader and now jump ship after the rout.”
- 2026-11-05 “Haley Stevens and John Fetterman are rats jumping onto a sinking ship.”
M1602 · first seen 2026-11-05 · what this is · how the index works