Quote:

---

Democratic strategist James Carville in an interview with MSNBC's Ari Melber on Monday advised Democrats to "play possum" with President Trump.


ARI MELBER: We are joined by legendary political strategist James Carville. Welcome, James. Happy President's Day.

JAMES CARVILLE: Well, thank you. I don't know if I can call it happy, but it is Presidents' Day, so and I think your intro gives a pretty good indication of where we are. It's pretty comprehensive, I think.

MELBER: Yeah, look, I always appreciate you fact-checking a greeting. The word happy depends on the person. That's debatable.

The words President's Day are true. So with that in mind, I want your views. I want to put up again what I just showed the people watching the news.

This is a news day. It's all over the country. It's been put together by grassroots organizers.

It's very now. It doesn't feel like the 2017 version or the campaign of last year. It's addressing a lot of concerns about the current agenda, including we're seeing signs of protesters saying, James, this is not even what people voted for.

Even if they are anti-Trump voters, they're calling out a lot of things that they say exceed the president's authority or are dangerous or are gutting of the federal government. What's happening here? What do you see?

CARVILLE: What I see is something organic coming up from around the country. I don't think that there was a lot of organization. If you remember, in 2017, you had like a million women on the mall.

This is happening all around the country. So the question is, how should Democratic politicians respond to this? And what I think they should do is what we call in rural America, play possum.

Just let it go. Don't get in the way of it. Or as we like to say, don't just stand there, do nothing.

Let it let this germinate. We don't need to be. We don't need to get in front of it.

This freight train is moving. Let's just get out of the way. And then we're going to have time.

---