Democratic political strategist James Carville told CNN on Monday that he is “not a fan” of Vice President Kamala Harris’ newest campaign strategy involving numerous media appearances.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has taken to a media blitz recently, appearing on the podcast Call Her Daddy and Howard Stern’s Sirius XM channel as well as television shows like The View, 60 Minutes and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She will appear on Fox News on Wednesday for an interview with Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor, though Carville does not see these moves as favorable.
“She’s obviously working hard,” Carville said. “I’m not a fan of doing interviews with different people because the problem with the interview is you have to answer questions that the interviewer asks you.”
Instead, Carville suggested that the vice president needs to be on the offensive about former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
“We need to stop being timid in making these connections that he is going out of his way to make,” Carville said. “I think what Trump is saying now is unprecedented and I’m afraid that people just don’t know how—I don’t know if radical is the word—the things he really is proposing. She has to put a light on this, a big shining light.”
Newsweek has reached out to Harris’ campaign via email for comment.
Carville focused on how Trump has said he would use the military or National Guard to “round up” his domestic enemies.
Trump has suggested that an “enemy from within” could threaten Election Day security, telling Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that “if necessary” the National Guard or military may have to intervene, which sparked alarm online.
Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Harris’ campaign, released a statement on Sunday in a campaign email: “Donald Trump is suggesting that his fellow Americans are worse ‘enemies’ than foreign adversaries, and he is saying he would use the military against them. This should alarm every American who cares about their freedom and security. What Donald Trump is promising is dangerous, and returning him to office is simply a risk Americans cannot afford.”
Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesperson, told Newsweek in an email Sunday night that “Trump is 100% correct—those who seek to undermine democracy by sowing chaos in our elections are a direct threat, just like the terrorist from Afghanistan that was arrested for plotting multiple attacks on Election Day within the United States.”
Trump has previously threatened to prosecute his perceived political enemies, including Harris, President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat.
In an interview appearance last week with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, Trump was asked about restoring faith in the justice system, with Ingraham noting the concerns of his critics that he’ll use the courts to get back at his opponents, “Punitively using government institutions is what got us in this mess in the first place.”
Trump replied: “They’ve started a terrible precedent. We’ve never had this.”
Carville told CNN on Monday that the use of the “US military to round up domestic enemies is about as anti-Constitutional as anything you can think of.”
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s campaign via email for comment.
Harris’ campaign noted that at her rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday night, the vice president will “ratchet up warnings about the risk a second Donald Trump term poses to the American people if he returns to power, pointing to his increasingly unhinged and dangerous rhetoric at his rallies calling his fellow Americans ‘the enemy from within.'”
The campaign released a new ad tilted “Enemy Within” that features Trump’s former national security aides Olivia Troye and Kevin Carroll, warning against a second term for the former president.
“The second term would be worse,” Caroll says in the ad. “There will be no one to stop his worst instincts. Unchecked power. No guardrails.”
Carville also noted that Trump’s power is also evident within the rally he is set to hold in Madison Square Garden in New York City, which will “mimic a rally held on February 20, 1939, by the American Nazi Party.”
“Where do normal people campaign on October 27 before Election Day? They’re generally in places like Sheboygan [Wisconsin] and Flagstone [Georgia] and Reno [Nevada],” Carville said. “He’s going full throated authoritarianism…He’s going to say, Michael Flynn is going to say, we told you so and you voted for us so we have no choice but to arrest our political enemies. He’s stating it right in our face.”
Even still, Carville said he refuses “to believe we’re going to lose.” It’s not a thought in his mind anymore, he said, but people need to know “what exact is at risk here.”
Carville said he did agree with David Plouffe, a former Obama aide who now works as a senior adviser to the Harris campaign. Plouffe said on Pod Save America that the Democratic nominee’s lead is “not real” because it is “basically a tied race in seven states.”
According to pollster Nate Silver, Harris’ chances of beating Trump in November, however, have plunged in recent weeks. Silver’s October 14 forecast showed that her chances of winning the Electoral College had plummeted to 51.8 percent—dropping by about 6 percentage points since late September.
“What’s going to happen is if he wins the election, he will be in the position to say I told you all of this. I have the authority of the election behind me to round up my political enemies,” Carville said. “Somehow or another we’re not getting that word out. This is a very dangerous time if you think about it.”
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