Democratic strategist James Carville acknowledged the premise that the Biden White House covered up President Biden’s cognitive issues as “basically true.” In an interview with Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles, Carville said while the Democrats don’t have power in government, “the party has not collapsed” “Look, the story is basically true, that he was in the White House,” Carville said. “He was saying he was running for re-election. He obviously, he was slowing down physically. He obviously had some cognition issues. It’s obvious that some people knew about it, and it’s obvious that they tried to cover it up.”

JOANNA COLES, DAILY BEAST CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER: We’re recording this on Wednesday. It will drop on Thursday. There’s been a lot of focus this week on Joe Biden’s diagnosis of prostate cancer. You’re, I think, the same age as Joe Biden. JAMES CARVILLE: I might be a little bit younger, but close enough to scare the hell out of me. COLES: Well, I was going to ask you, do you have your PSA levels checked regularly? CARVILLE: So, honestly, what I am told is that after you reach 75 or some age like that, they don’t check it. And the theory being is generally very slow going. I do not only know what I read in what my own physician said. Actually, I had some more extensive blood work done by a nephrologist and they did check it. So you did have it checked? But I didn’t ask for it. And I think you have to get a urologist, but I don’t think it’s recommended on people Biden’s age. COLES: Because almost everybody has it at that point. CARVILLE: I don’t know the whole story. And Ed Kilgore, who’s a really smart guy who’s dealt with it, he’s had it and it runs in his family. There’s some cases that usually very slow going according to what Ed said. And sometimes it can be very fast. I don’t know the whole history, but I do know there’s pretty standard that you stop doing PSA tests after a certain age. And I think Biden has reached that age some time ago. COLES: So you don’t think that he would necessarily have known that he might have prostate cancer while he was in the White House? CARVILLE: I don’t have any idea. I do know that it’s not recommended for people about a certain age, but I don’t know any of the facts. I think that all this is going to put a real focus on the health of presidents or potential presidents. And I’m not saying this just spending it. This is going to cause a lot of attention on Trump, who is not a young man at all, and who will be 80, 81, I think, when he finishes his term. But there’s more to find out. And the revelations that have come out thus far have not been very complimentary to the President’s team. COLES: Well, I was going to ask you about that. Have you read the Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson book, Original Sin? Because obviously that’s dropped this week, too. So it’s like a double whammy against the Bidens. CARVILLE: I have not read it. It’s only been out since yesterday, I think. I’ve read a lot of excerpts. Look, the story is basically true, that he was in the White House. He was saying he was running for re-election. He obviously, he was slowing down physically. He obviously had some cognition issues. It’s obvious that some people knew about it, and it’s obvious that they tried to cover it up. COLES: And you were pointing this out two years ago and saying he needs to step aside. CARVILLE: Yeah, I was pointing it out as early as 2022 that I always thought I was in a unique position because I was elderly myself. I had some idea what the job entailed, and I don’t think that’s a job that is designed for a person in the 80s. I just don’t. And I thought that if the party had so much underutilized talent that if he didn’t run and we let all this talent go out there, we would have won this election by six, seven points. If we would have had an open process, we would have won this thing easily. And what people forget, there’s always the doom of the Democrats. It’s the end of days. It’s the worst a party has ever been in history. It’s the lowest rating. Will it ever exist? So we go into the 2024 cycle. What about as a disastrous lead up as you can have? An unpopular president who’s aging and the public knows he’s aging, and he stays in the race until less than three weeks, I think, before the start of the convention. Then we nominate someone who is elected vice president, but that doesn’t mean a lot in terms of electoral appeal. We just sight unseen and we take it and she offers no change. And by the way, we lose by a point and a half. We played a seven string quarterback and we lose by a point. We actually pick up a house seat. So it was a disappointing election. I’m not saying that at all. But the way that it’s being reported on, you would think it was like a ’64. COLES: Well, it’s because the Democrats lost every single tranche of government, right? All three. CARVILLE: Well, I understand that. And we don’t have power in government, but the party has not collapsed. Okay, it didn’t get blown out by any stretch of the imagination. And what we’ve seen in the past is electoral blowout. But everybody, I’ve never seen a single Arab. Okay. Yeah. And by the way, women lost an election in this year. And I don’t think we’re gonna start. COLES: Should Kamala Harris run again? CARVILLE: She talked about thinking about running for governor of California. I don’t know if she runs. That’s her perfect right to do. But I got to tell you, the field is going to be really fast, really good. And I hope everybody runs. But I would tell every potential candidate, you better lace up your shoes because this is awfully fast track he’s going to be running on. And I think people are going to be blown away at the talent level in the Democratic Party, blown away. COLES: So our previous guest on the podcast, Anthony Scaramucci, pointed out the Democrats do much better with younger candidates. So JFK, your candidate, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, who are the candidates that you’re excited to, as you say, put on their shoes and lace up? CARVILLE: Well, the problem with me saying that is I always forget someone. Okay, but then I go, why didn’t you mention this? Well, let me let me. COLES: We’re some ways off. The number of potential Democratic presidential candidates under the age of 60 is stunning. I mean, it’s just stunning. And anytime I talk to any of them, I said, for God’s sakes, run, run. And we’re going to be helped when people hopefully we you know, my idea in the last election was at the end to just announce four town halls around the country, have President Clinton, President Obama moderated and invite six people. If you’d have done that, we’d have won this thing so easy, you wouldn’t even believe it. So, you know, I think the party chair, and I think this is a really good idea. We’re talking about doing like a mini convention in 2026. Let the public get a look at the people that are thinking about running for president. I think it’s important. COLES: So we talked about AOC and Bernie. You made the point – CARVILLE: That’s all we talk about is AOC and Bernie, but go ahead. Let’s continue to talk about AOC and Bernie. COLES: I’m only asking about it because — CARVILLE: I understand. COLES: Because they are doing something. They’re clearly putting themselves out there. CARVILLE: You know what they don’t do? Win elections. Okay. [LAUGHTER] CARVILLE: And you have to understand, that’s the only thing I care about. COLES: Right. CARVILLE: The progressives, all they do is impress other journalists. They never beat a Republican. Tell me when one body from that wing has ever run against a Republican. All right. That’s the problem. So everybody goes and say, okay, Bernie has run for president twice. He lost twice. He lost more the second time. But when I go on cable TV, or podcasts like this, the entire Democratic Party is AOC and Bernie. You know, Jackie Rosen doesn’t exist. Tammy Baldwin doesn’t exist. Ruben Gallego doesn’t exist. Alyssa Slotkin doesn’t exist. I never get asked about them. What about AOC? What about it? COLES: But to be fair CARVILLE: I am being fair. COLES: But I asked you and you said, Oh, I’m not going to name them. I’m not going to name them. So what we want is other people to watch, right? And they’re putting themselves out there. CARVILLE: There’s so many stories detailing so many potential Democratic 2028 candidates. You can just read them and see. And the names will just spark your lips. But let’s just say there’s an abundance of potential candidates. And there’s a lot more to the Democratic Party than AOC and Bernie. Okay, let’s stipulate that. COLES: All right. So I guess my pushback to you would be that some of this is about name recognition. And what AOC and Bernie both have, and I take your point about Bernie having run twice and lost twice, is name recognition, which we don’t know who will run from the Republican Party. But clearly, for Kamala, it wasn’t long enough. The 107 days she had wasn’t long enough to establish a beachhead against someone as well known as Donald Trump. So shouldn’t we be talking more specifically about names now just to get the names on the radar? CARVILLE: We don’t, we don’t go to post till 2028. Okay. Right. COLES: But remember, James, James, but remember, Donald Trump had 16 seasons of The Apprentice when he got up there. The man had dominated American media for 40 years. It’s a huge advantage. CARVILLE: I’m not marginally worried about the nominee of the Democratic Party not being sufficiently known by election day. This is not even the summer of 2025. The election is in the fall of 2028. Why in God’s name do we have to articulate an entire program and an entire laundry list of potential presidential candidates? The answer is we do not. That is not necessary. Timing is everything. I don’t, and I would push the clock up to the extent that in 2026, in the summer of 2026, I would have a cattle call or whatever you want to call it. And so, well, okay, AOC has recognition. You know how many times on Fox News AOC is mentioned in a day? I have no idea. Go on. A ton. Right. And so she represents a plus 25 Democratic district. And every time that you see a Democrat that is out there screaming and pounding the podium, ask yourself, have you ever beat a Republican? Is that really? Because if you know me, you know that there’s one and only one noble purpose in politics. And you know what that is? Winning the election. Okay. That’s why we exist. So we’re not going to win the election in the summer of 2025. We don’t need to try. You know, what we have to do is set up ourselves as the party that is simply trying to help people who are trying to make it. And what they’re trying to do is help people who already have it made. You know, you’re not going to achieve the American dream with a 7% mortgage rate. It’s not going to happen. And you’re not going to achieve it by giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to fat cats and billionaires and causing the deficit to go up and interest rates to go up even more. We have plenty to talk about.

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