Former strategist James Carville has called on the Democratic Party to exercise patience and wait for the right moment after President Donald Trump’s series of executive orders during his first week back in the White House.
In a conversation with MSNBC’s The Beat on Friday, Carville expressed to anchor Katie Phang that Trump’s rivals should allow him to “tire himself out” before considering the best approach to address the repercussions of his “America First” policies.
As Phang questioned Carville, “On a scale of one to 10 regarding fascism, with 10 being the highest, how would you evaluate Trump’s initial week?”
Carville responded, “He’s just going to keep pushing forward. What we need to understand as Democrats is to let him punch himself out. This might be a bit before your time, but folks from my era remember Muhammad Ali and his rope-a-dope strategy.”
Carville continued, “He’d endure the first six or seven rounds. Then you come in and start throwing punches. It’s tough to focus on [any] specific [issue]… Greenland, Canada, canal zone, delta smelt… whatever you want to call it, you just have to keep bobbing and weaving, bobbing and weaving, and eventually you’ll be able to move in.”
Carville advised Democrats to adopt a policy-first approach, which he claimed has proven successful for him as a strategist under the principle of, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
He noted, “[Trump’s] primary pledge, the most significant political promise of his era, was to lower food prices. Then when he took office, he claimed there’s nothing he could do about it.”
He concluded, “He continues to throw distractions our way, and we keep getting sidetracked. But we’ll return to it—we’ll align [that] target and get it back within reach before too long, I believe.”
