Piers Morgan Uncensored - “IDIOTIC” James Carville On Democrats Meltdown - And Being WRONG About Trump
Episode Date: March 7, 2025James Carville, affectionately dubbed the 'Ragin' Cajun', is a political consultant known for his role in the election of Democrat Bill Clinton. Carville can confidently expect to hold the attention o...f anyone hoping to climb the political ladder of the American left, especially now that the Democratic Party is in such desperate need of new blood. In this interview with Piers Morgan, James opens up about how he influenced Joe Biden’s decision to stand down, how some Democrats seem determined to lose forever, and what those who want to win must do to strengthen their chances of getting back in power. Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Field of Greens: Visit https://BrickHouseNutrition.com/PIERS & use code PIERS for 20% off your first order Tax Network USA: CALL 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://TNUSA.com/PIERS to meet with a strategist today for FREE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Turned on TV and it was three minutes into debate.
I watched three minutes.
I took two gummies and I started listening to country music.
People say that you were an instrumental part in persuading Biden to stand down.
I hated every moment, but I just didn't think I had another choice, honestly.
It might have been the single most painful thing I've ever done in my life.
And we lost by point in a half.
They would rather lose on principle than have to compromise and win an election.
And there's a word for these people.
It is idiotic.
We are just getting started.
Kind of weird, but Trump being elected in some ways kind of freed me.
I cannot wait to get in the morning and just kick the living crap out of Donald Trump.
It's the economy, stupid.
James Carville's typically blunt explanation of U.S. voter priorities
will be forever associated with the election of President Bill Clinton.
But Carville's prolific record of wisdom and insults runs far deeper than that.
He's been a top strategist and a leading influence
of the Democratic Party for decades.
Now he co-hosts a weekly podcast,
Politics War Room, is the subject of a CNN documentary.
Winning is everything stupid.
And now, for the first time, actually,
I'm pleased to say James Carville is not only going uncensored,
but I'm interviewing you, James, for the first time.
And I found that an extraordinary fact,
given our parallel lives.
Well, I'm the only person that you get stupid in twice.
introduction.
Well, hopefully,
I'm glad you don't use it a third time at the end of the interview.
Maybe so.
Maybe so I've done a lot of stupid things too.
Well, look, it's great to finally interview.
It's great to have you on uncensored.
I was really struck by a few things you said recently.
I'm going to come to what you said about the Trump administration
potentially collapsing within 30 days.
But first, I just want to focus, first of all, on where the Democrats are,
because you thought that Carmelah Harris would win.
You're actually in, I think you've got 26 elections you've called right.
You've called six wrongly.
Two of those six were Hillary Clinton and Carmelah Harris.
Be honest with me now.
Did you really think Carmelha Harris was going to win?
Or did you hope she was going to win?
Well, you know, I'm a Catholic of a thing called an examination of conscience.
And I actually, my reasons were as follows.
The polling was close.
It turned out the polling was accurate.
It was a very close election.
I thought a combination of her having more money, which she did,
a better field organization, which I don't count for a lot.
But I said, you know, I said, might get you over the top.
Had considerably more popular surrogates, I tell you.
Whether they were used correctly is something to revisit.
And I honestly thought that that would carry over the top.
but where my arrow was people wanted something different,
and she resolutely refused to give them anything different.
You know, remember the famous view question,
what would you do different than Biden?
He said, well, I can't think anything.
That might have been the worst answer
I've heard by a presidential candidate in a long time.
Having said that, Pierce, I admit I was wrong,
but I'll point out to people, before you start spiking a ball,
we played our seven-string quarterback at the Super Bowl,
and we lost by a point in a half.
Can you imagine what happened
if you played out third string quarterback?
Well, yeah.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I would, to me,
it was very interesting to watch it all play out.
Primarily from the moment that Joe Biden gave that debate
and it became crystal clear to Americans
who were watching in large numbers
that all the rumor mill
that had been dismissed
largely by the mainstream media
that Biden was somehow
cognitively impaired, he wasn't
for the job, et cetera, that all those rumors that have been roundly denied by the Democratic
establishment actually were laid bare as being a cold, hard reality. Where were you when that
debate happened and what were you thinking as it took place? Exactly where I was.
I was in Aspen, Colorado, Tina Brown's Aspen Ideas Group. And I went back to the Jerome Hotel
I turned on the TV and it was three minutes into debate.
I watched three minutes.
I took two gummies and I started listening to country music
because I knew this was not going well at all.
It was just, it was too painful to watch,
but I can show you that till this day,
I could walk back to the room I was in in the hotel.
And I texted the director of the documentary
and I told him I'm taking two comets and watching country music.
This is too brutal for me even me to watch.
Did you know in that moment, James, did you know in that moment that he was not going to be the candidate come the election?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it was pretty evident.
You know, there's a new book coming out.
You know, read it about what people do and when did they know it?
I don't know.
I called on President Biden not to run for election even earlier than May of 2023.
And, you know, I think he's one of the more consequential presence we ever had, frankly.
And it was the most, it might have been the single most painful thing I've ever done in my life.
I cannot wait to get in the morning and just kick the living crap out of Donald Trump.
It just gives me joy, pleasure.
It brings a smile to my face.
I hated every moment, but I just didn't think I had another choice, honestly.
And so that's where I am.
It's kind of weird, but Trump being elected in some ways kind of freed me.
I mean, people say that you were an instrumental part in persuading Biden to stand down.
It's pretty clear that he didn't want to do that.
Is it true that you were one of the leading drivers for him to stand down?
Did you talk to him yourself?
No.
Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer.
And positive as a result of people in the caucus,
and we can't do this.
We're going to get slaughtered.
And they went to the White House.
You know, their message like you would expect
was not particularly well received.
And I'm quoting publicly.
And President Trump tells one of the book,
which has got to be the title of a book, okay?
He says that Mike Donnellan, polling says we can win.
She said, get Donald on the phone.
I mean, if that, that woman might be the toughest
most courageous person
I've ever been around in my life.
I mean, I don't love her.
I love her, and I'm totally intimidated
by I just think she's just
wonderful human being.
But I think that was when,
you know, it was the equivalent when Barry Goldwater
went down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Yeah.
Now, the only thing I would fall to
Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumwell,
they're both friends of mine,
what took you so long?
Not that you did it, but, you know,
it should have done it.
You know, ifs and buts.
But it was clear after that debate.
I was in a room with 60 Democratic donors that morning,
and it was just brutal.
And you could see that they...
And I said just call and say, no mas, no more money.
That's it.
You do something different.
We're not going to fund this disaster.
That, I think, had a part in it.
Yes.
when Hakeem, people of Schumer would call these donors, you know, wanting money,
and they said, I'm not giving you any money.
I think that gives people's attention.
I did play a role with that, yes.
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The second phase was obviously the sort of coronation of Kamala Harris
without any rivals really to try and see off first.
With hindsight, or maybe you felt it at the time.
But was that a smart move?
I mean, obviously it didn't work out well.
But should they not have, would it not have been better, as I was saying at the time,
to just go through the convention and actually have a few people put their hat in the ring?
So you're right.
I've said in the York Times that Harris is going to win.
I was wrong.
If you look at July to 7th of 2024, I said that he's going to drop out.
He should.
In President Clinton and Obama should host four regional town halls and invite six candidates.
and open the process up.
Had we done that?
And this is my, there is more talent into,
when people who say the Democrats are dead,
but I don't, you know, they don't have anybody.
That's insane.
There is more political talent currently in a Democratic party
than any party I've seen in my lifetime.
People don't know about it because we don't put them front and center.
And that's what I was driving for us.
So could you imagine if you'd have had President Obama,
President Clinton, and,
I don't know, Milwaukee, Wisconsin having a town hall with six candidates. Could you imagine if you'd
have gone to the convention and no one would have secured the dollar? People would watch. They'd be
interested. It'd be a storyline, all right? You've got to create events for people. For people
like you to cover, you would be going crazy. You'd be, oh, my God, we've got this person and that person
and look who's going on here. The New Mexico Democratic caucuses,
We're waiting to see if they're unified behind, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's so easy to do.
And we were just two, about a time, so I wrote out on July 7th,
he drops out on July 21st.
I think the convention starts somewhere around August 16th.
Don't hold me to the exact date, but I'm not very far.
Well, in that time, they had to pick a vice president,
they had to write a speech, they had to rearrange
change things. And so Harris gets Joe Biden's staff, keeps the headquarters in Wilmington,
keeps the furniture, the artwork, and doesn't even have our own people. And when you run,
you've got to have your own people. And most of them were lobbyists, so they were scared to run
on anything popular, like, say, raising the minimum wage, or taxing people with high incomes
and using that money to help young people buy a house or rent a house,
they said, well, that would look anti-business.
Oh, my God.
But my criticism, actually, is they should have run further to the economic left than they did.
Really?
So that's interesting, because it struck me, one of the problems Kamala Harris had
was a bit like with Hillary Clinton, actually, I felt,
was that, and she played a very Hillary playbook in the end.
She just got a lot of famous people to go on stage with her and all that kind of stuff.
But if you've taken 100 Americans outside a subway station in all the major cities
and say, give me three things that Kamala Harris stands for.
Same with Hillary.
I don't think they could have answered that.
Whereas Trump, for all his faults, is a supreme marketer.
He knows how to convey message better than any politician I've seen in modern times.
It may not be a message you like, but he's a brilliant marketer.
I felt, you know, you touched on it there, that Carmel,
they couldn't sell this.
But part of it was her own inability to sell herself
and to sell a message of anything for America.
I still don't really know what she was planning for her America.
As you say, she went on the view
and said she wouldn't do anything different to Biden.
But that's not a new, refreshing, exciting message.
That's just more of the same folks.
Supposed you have just said, America needs a raise.
I'm going to give them one.
We're going to raise a minimum wage to 14, 25 an hour.
Right.
People need, you know, young people are struggling in this economy, so we're going to ask old people to throw a shekel or two in the pot and try to help them out.
Okay, you do that.
Then you, some people say, well, she's there.
I mean, there's something coming back, and you're correct.
If you said Trump, you would say to southern border, tariffs, America first, or something.
But you did have that association.
That's why, in the night.
C-92 campaign, remember, we had three things on the white board.
You couldn't go beyond those three.
And 14 total words.
But that is an astute observation on your part.
And unfortunately, there's much truth to it.
The president, obviously, Trump, he, he benefited himself from a few things.
One, the assassination attempt where obviously he was nearly killed.
And he reacted in a way that was surprising, I think, even to those he knew.
him well, the show of defiance, the fight, fight, fight, the arm raised, I think was a very
powerful symbol for him and certainly would have been very influential in a lot of American
minds, even if they didn't like him.
They thought, you know what, this guy, he's a fighter, he showed courage literally under fire.
Secondly, and I think, you may question this, but what they've called the lawfare campaign
against Trump.
It wasn't so much the more serious stuff against him.
It was the fact the first thing they took him to court over
was such a pathetically trivial case, Stormy Daniels,
and shuffling a bit of paperwork about a one-night stand 18 years before.
For that to be the first time any American president
had been taken through a criminal court
and to then convict him over it,
I felt was a catastrophic strategic failure.
What was your view of that?
Well, let me say, let me take what would happen.
You're right?
the butler event, he showed real strength there, and it was kind of what he was.
So he had that.
We had a catastrophic debate.
We had a catastrophic nominating process.
We nominated a person who actually turned out to be a little bit better candidate than I thought,
which, you know, I wouldn't think is going to beat that much,
who actually did pay for taxpayer-funded transition surgery for prisoners, okay?
If you asked me to come up with something more unpopular than that, I'd say,
Pierce, you got to give me about 30 seconds, all right?
And we lost by a point and a half.
Anybody else, I could tell you, five people that would have won the selection easily,
even under those circumstances.
It's like if the country wants something different, tell them you're going to give them something different.
I tell him, you know, it's not disloyal.
And people say, well, she's a very loyal person.
Loyal to who?
Right.
If you're loyal to Biden.
Are you loyal to the party?
Are you loyal to the voters?
Are you loyal?
I mean, when you say someone is loyal, okay, who are you loyal to?
For what reason?
And, you know, it's in the title.
There's a lot of Democrats, I can't believe these people exist, but I can assure you they do.
They would rather lose on principle than have to compromise and win an election.
And there's a word for these people. It is idiotic.
I mean, I've seen you say, you wrote in the New York Times after the election,
we lost it was, it is and always will be the economy stupid.
I don't dispute for a moment that the cost of living crisis raging through America,
at the time of the election and still going on now,
was obviously the key factor.
But I would also say that the immigration issue was a huge factor.
And I also think, although many Democrats want to try and downplay it,
but you just touched on it there.
You know, one of the most successful ads in modern political history
was Carmel as for they, them, Trump's for you.
And I do think the whole woke stuff collectively,
as Trump put it, a kind of abrogation of common sense,
that that also resonated hard with people,
that they did actually think these things,
like transgender athletes in women's sport, for example,
which Kamala supported.
You know what I say about that,
we should say,
if you're concerned about the state track meet,
please do something about it.
We have an athletic association that can do it.
But if you go to that
or you weren't concerned about bathrooms to Olston,
hang out in bathrooms.
It is not of concern to me.
there are people that can deal with this.
I'm worried about the cost of living.
I'm worried about access.
But I think if you don't mind me saying,
but James, I would dispute that.
A lot of Democrats have tried to say to me,
it didn't really matter the trans stuff and the woke stuff.
And I keep saying, I think it matters more than you think
that when Trump positioned himself as the voice of common sense
and you had a party led by Joe Biden and Kamala
who both thought it's fine for biological men to compete in women's special.
for example, that actually that was more powerful
than people realized in the third tier of why they voted.
Economy one, immigration two, woke-mined virus three,
supported by Kamala Harris.
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slash peers. There's no, I can't think of a Democrat, I doubt if you can too, that has spoken
out more against identitarian politics, more against faculty lounge goofy academic language
I have. So we went through to that phase. We lost the election. So the answer of the
identitarian left is, well, it didn't matter because no one ran on it, famously by John Stewart.
Oh, well, somebody did run out it. See, in politics, the other side gets to play.
Correct. If you're in comedy and you tell a bad joke, you just throw it away. In politics,
And all that, and Harris was for transition taxpayer transition surgery for prisoners, okay?
I breathe through myself, that is not my, that's not my number one thing.
Honestly, I don't think about it that much.
In terms of the border, all of that is because Biden listened to the idiotic far left.
And by the time that he left office,
the border was a very oddly place.
A lot of good it did us,
but it's really true, if you look at the crossing statistics.
Every person in history that has listened,
not just to the far left in the United States,
but anybody in the West that pays attention to the far left
has lived to regret it.
These people have never been right about a single thing.
Absolutely.
Nothing.
You're completely right.
And they keep running their mouths.
And the only, read this book,
and you should get this guy, why nothing works.
And the only thing progressive ever successfully killed is progress.
Right.
That's it.
Which is very a signature achievement.
Yeah, it is.
And I'm, you know, I don't, I consider myself very much a liberal Democrat.
I don't, people ask me how they feel to be a modest.
I don't know, because I'm not.
I'm very liberal.
I believe we ought to use opportunity to help people.
You know, we should never discriminate anybody.
I even believe that there are certain groups who have been historically left out
that we ought to give more of a helping hand to.
I'm completely fine with that.
But the idea that we were going to change dictionaries,
we're going to change the world by changing dictionaries,
is historically stupid, to put it mildly.
I mean, I thought it's very interesting that, I mean,
Look, your views are echoed by Bill Maher.
I would position myself, actually,
historically with my own political views,
pretty similar to you guys.
Joe Rogan was certainly in that camp.
Elon Musk was in that camp.
Tulsi Gabbard, RFK.
I mean, a lot of the people now in this cabinet around Trump
were people who would have identified as Democrats previously.
And it seemed to me that the Democrats,
as they move far left and into this more so-called progressive world,
they lost a lot of people who thought this lacked any common sense.
Yeah, I don't even know if I guess it's left.
It's just idiotic.
Yeah.
Okay, there's no, there are principles, I think, that a lot of people who, like myself,
would describe themselves as liberal.
There are principles that we are, what we tend to share.
We tend to not look at, we look at people as individuals.
is not part of a larger group.
We tend to want to help people who are trying to make it as opposed to people that have it made.
That kind of stuff, okay?
We believe you build things and do things.
And it was a just a very loud part of the party that really came to rise a little bit more after the murder of George Floyd.
And they thought that had given them.
license to be stupid. And Pierce, you remember the German communists in the streets of Berlin
will march the worst the better after Hitler, us. Yeah, really? The piano wire. I mean,
that's how historically dumb these people have been. Yeah, it's getting worse. And guess what?
You're getting shot. Right. And that's the typical reaction of the Western left.
Yeah. Let's talk about Trump for a moment.
You said...
Remember, remember, I got to go back
because you remember the longest suicide note in history?
Go on.
Michael Foote?
Oh, yeah.
It was a real lefty.
Yeah, he was.
He was.
And actually, no real lefty has ever become British Prime Minister,
with a possible exception of Sekear Stama,
who's now pivoted extremely fast to a more centrist position,
a more sort of Blairite position,
but certainly used to be,
happy to identify as progressive left.
So it's interesting.
He's probably the most left-wing prime minister
we've ever had, actually.
Let me just talk to you about Trump, because you said...
Clement Attlee was pretty successful,
and he was pretty successful, and he was pretty far left.
No, that's true.
Some people think maybe the best prime minister
in British history.
Yeah, you could argue.
But he wasn't crazy, but he was pretty...
And I think in a pretty good way.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think Atley was a great prime minister.
Let's talk about Trump for a moment.
You said last week that you think the Trump,
administration. You're talking to Dan Abrams on his podcast, the Dan Abrams show.
Do you think the Trump administration will collapse within 30 days? Just summarize, for those
who didn't watch the podcast, summarize why you think that that's going to happen.
Okay. Very fair question. Okay. First of all, it started is the lowest approval of any president
in the beginning. In 30 days, it has deteriorated. All right? Consumer conference in the United
States came in at the lowest it's been in four years.
Inflation is back in ways you can't believe it, in particular eggs, and he's, oh, no, no,
but they had bird flu.
Profits of aid companies have never been higher than they are today.
You have an inverted yield curve.
Okay, this is kind of inside talk that I completely understand, but I am told it's a single
best predictor of a coming recession that they are.
And it kind of makes sense when you don't have much faith in the future when you'll take a three-year bond as opposed to a three-month, whatever it is.
But it's no expression of anything in the future.
Everywhere, and his poll numbers are going down right now, his plan to cut Medicaid and give $4.5 trillion to most wealthy people is massively unpopular.
And this is not going to do anything but get worse.
Sarah Longwell, who does, I think probably no way to prove this,
more focus groups than any person in American public opinion,
says there's already buyer's remorse from Trump voters.
What's 33 days of what we're on it anywhere into this?
The stock market has been down since he's been in.
Inflation has been up.
I don't see it, I see it continuing.
But there's also mean, though, on the counter side,
There's also been massive public support for the Doge stuff that he's doing with Elon Musk.
I mean, most Americans like them finding all this waste.
Have you seen, Elon, I'm fine. Who's for waste?
What if they found?
There's 100,000 condoms to Gaza?
Come on, man.
Saying that where federal spending has gone up since Trump has taken office.
And the people like the idea of getting rid of government inefficiency?
Sure, they do.
The people like the idea of cutting the CDC or the NIH or customs enforcement or anything like that?
Of course they don't.
And they're making a huge miscalculation.
You know, they think that federal employees are a bunch of lazy don'ts.
There are no such thing.
There are some highly educated, highly clever people,
and we're just going to get, we're getting ready to find out that.
You watch the Virginia governor's race in November.
It's going to be like power slapping.
They're going to get hit so hard.
What do you think of Elon Musk?
Is he a force for good or not?
Well, first of all, he said, Walter Iveson, who's a very good friend of mine,
who's a fellow in your Alenian.
I asked him from a time and said,
what's the main thing about Musk I need to know?
And he said he's a hell of an engineer.
Right.
And apparently by any account, he's a hell of an engineer.
I don't see any evidence that rifling through federal computers, sending people, laying people off,
is, A, going to save a whole lot of money, and B, has any chance whatsoever of being popular.
over any period of time. Now, if he can come up with an algorithm that automatically saves the
federal government a trillion and a half dollars, they're great. But he's not going to come up
with that because you need to be honest with people. The government of the United States is a giant
insurance company that has an army and services its own debt in a very efficient way.
So once you take out insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, once you take out defense, once you take out debt service, you can find something, I'm sure.
And maybe you can improve federal contracting and maybe you can move the bid process.
I don't know that you can't. A guy's got $4 billion, but I haven't seen anything yet.
On just quick two last suggestions, but first of all, the Ukraine situation.
I mean, I'll sort of couple them with Israel Hamas,
because you're seeing Trump behaving
on what many think is a very erratic way,
but that his calculating business brain
may have told him if he goes to the extremities
with both the Ukraine situation and Israel and Gaza,
that it may lead to people getting around a table
and doing a deal, and if he ends up bringing peace to both places,
he ends up the Nobel Peace Prize,
and it's a good move for Trump.
I mean, what do you think of where we are with this?
If it does end up with peace in both Gaza and in Ukraine,
would you end up applauding him or not?
I mean, first of all, if this happened and that happened and this happened, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, so letting Putin win is going to get you to Nobel Prize,
letting a massive kleptocrat dictator, okay, invade a country.
that was holding elections that I've been to Ukraine five times.
So we're going to give the Nobel priest prize to Putin.
All right.
Secondly, if somehow another, by the way, any piece that they're talking about in the Middle East
does not include the Palestinians.
You've got to understand that.
It's the Saudis and everybody else in there,
and they're going to decide the Palestinian future without Palestinian input.
Oh, come on, give me a break.
But yeah, if he walked across the Mississippi River, all right, and turn water into gold,
we should give him a prize.
I got news for you.
He's not going to do it.
Okay?
He's not going to do it.
And we're not going to give a Nobel Prize.
Look at Mark Levin, who might be the most right-wing guy I've ever seen.
I kind of listen to conservative radio.
Mark Lervin says people like James Corby will hate America.
They wake up every morning
and they try to think about how they can hurt America.
Markle Ben says, I'm done with this Putin, Ukraine stuff.
What normal person, I mean, I read everything,
Tim Snyder writes, a hand an apple bomb.
They know exactly what's going on.
You're not going to get a Nobel Prize deal
with a kleptocrat who sits off,
halls off and invades peaceful countries.
It's not going to happen.
Let me end with your spat with Stephen A. Smith, which was highly entertaining to watch him as sidelines, I must say.
Basically, he's dipped his toes into politics, said he made run as a Democrat.
You told him to stop running your effing mouth off about politics, saying he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.
And Stephen A. Smith hit back by saying this.
But I do have to ask you a question, Mr. James Carville, albeit rhetorically, you do know that you're talking to a voter, right?
Could that be one of the reasons why y'all lost?
Just a thought.
Because you sound like one of those old curmudgeons
that want things to stay or be the way that they used to be.
And you're resentful harboring an abundance of animosity
because you're not being heard.
That's not Stephen A. Smith's fault, sir.
that's that damn Democratic Party
that I was talking about.
Well, I'll let the old commandant have the last word.
Yeah, well, yeah, I guess
was I the one that wanted someone different
than Biden to run to get a younger person in there?
I think so.
But look, Stephen A. Smith,
I said this in a video.
When I first saw him, I said,
this guy can't last.
I mean, he's just coming in too hot.
And he grown people,
and he grew on me in the sports analysis.
He does not know how he might know something about a lot of things and anybody can
voice an opinion on politics.
Actually, a lot of the stuff he did that he and I agreed on.
He was not for Biden runner neither.
What he can't do is evaluate talent.
That's the problem.
He cannot draft.
He doesn't know who can hit a baseball and who can't.
He doesn't know who can kick a football and who can't.
And when he says that there was no talent in the party, so he may have to be able to, he may have,
to have to run himself, man, if you ever got on a track with five or six or seven of these
Democrats, you would be dizzy to run so many circles around you.
Well, you say that.
I was trying.
Yeah, but hang on, hang on, you say that.
And I would question that, James, because the reality is you would have said exactly the same
thing.
I don't know, actually, you can correct me.
But I assume when Donald Trump first said he was going to run against Hillary Clinton, you
would have dismissed him in the same way.
you know, that's a great thing.
You thought Hillary was going,
so you can't have an opinion.
You thought that's the number one thing we go back to.
Well, you thought, I'm not a very good,
I don't, by way, I was 26 and 6 on Tony Connhauser,
publicly against the spread, all right?
So you had Pierce Morgan and Steven Fisher,
were you wrong six times.
We're not going to talk about the 26 times you were right.
I actually gave you credit earlier.
I gave you credit earlier for being right,
26 times.
But my point about Hillary Clinton was,
Donald Trump was not a conventional politician,
nor is Stephen A. Smith.
Could it be that the criticism that he's making about you
is that actually the game has changed
and you now, as Trump has proven twice,
you could actually win the White House
by being completely antithical
to normal political behavior?
Okay.
I'll give you a very rational thing.
If you think that political talent,
the ability to communicate,
the ability to frame an issue,
the ability to draw a contrast,
okay, the ability to speak eloquently
to people in a language and understand
is out of fashion, is old-fashioned,
his time is past,
then stamp the expiration date on me.
Please do.
But if you think that these qualities
are essential
to be in successful in politics,
then I have not expired.
And I see people that have enormous potential currently in senior positions in a Democratic Party.
And that's what I was trying to do in early July of 2024.
Let's get these people out there and let people see them.
Because the image of this party right now is we're urban and we're old.
And, you know, we do a pretty good job of validating that impression of people.
But I don't think there's anything new in the ability to communicate,
and they probably won't be for the long-term future.
You've got to have these skills.
Very quick answer.
Final question.
Give me one name, one name from the Democrat ranks that has the potential to be the person
you're talking about.
So I'm a slip and slide here, and I'm going to equivocate and things you hate.
I used to give five or six and then somebody would
call and say, why didn't you mention me?
But if you look across at some of the governors we have,
you look across even some of the senators we have,
and you watch them communicate.
I mean, these people are really good.
I'll give you one name, but you wouldn't think about it.
He's hardly the only one, Chris Murphy.
Chris is a stunning communicator,
but I can't sit here and tell you.
that they're not six other people that are just as good, but because everybody wants a name.
I'll give you one name, but there's a gazillion other. That's why, some peers, what you should
do is say the Democrats need to hold a mini convention in 2026 and they invite these people.
I agree. Let us see them. I agree. We can evaluate the talent. They should have done it in, if they'd
done that in August, I think they could well have won the election. I agree with you. Thank you.
You and our great minds across the Atlantic, we think alike.
James Carville, brilliant to finally interview.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you, man.
I'll be in London here in March, and we'll go see Ruthie at the River Cafe.
Love it, let's do that.
I would absolutely love to do that.
That's a date.
That would be great.
Look forward to it.
Okay, I'll let you know.
That'd be great.
Take care, James.
All the best.
Thank you.
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