Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville said Monday that President Trump’s recently signed “big beautiful bill” should be a rallying cry for Democrats while calling the controversy over disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein just a “distraction.”
“I think the Democrats have just this wonderful opportunity [with] the “big, beautiful bill.” People detest this. And the more that they find out about it, the more they detest it,” Carville said Monday night on CNN’s “AC360” alongside former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “So, we have a rallying cry here, and it‘s going to be up to the whole party to pick up the baton and run with this thing, but then they‘re stuck with this vote and they want people to forget about it.”
“Rahm‘s right. The Epstein thing is a distraction, but at the end of the day, I think people are going to vote on this. And express their utter anger and disgust at this bill,” he told host Anderson Cooper. “This thing is the most unpopular piece of legislation that has ever passed the United States Congress in the history of polling. That‘s how unpopular it is.”
Carville, who was critical of the GOP’s massive spending and tax bill as it was moving through Congress, previously argued that the measure’s passage would be seen as a “mass extinction event” and would help the Democrats take the House in the 2026 midterms.
“And I like with the unified party — every Democrat voted against this. Every Democrat, regardless of the ideology, their ethnicity … we can all rally around this, and we can run on this single issue all the way to 2026,” Carville said earlier this month, while supporting estimates that Democrats could pick up 40 or more seats in the lower chamber.
The “big, beautiful bill,” signed by Trump on July 4, is full of his domestic priorities, including money allocated for hiring more border patrol agents and finishing the border wall. The law also extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and features sweeping cuts to Medicaid and some food assistance programs.
Carville’s latest advice comes as House Democrats, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), said in recent days that the Trump administration should release all of the documents related to the Epstein case. Some Democrats have also moved to introduce resolutions that would force the administration to do so.
“The American people deserve to know the truth,” Jeffries told reporters on Monday. “What, if anything, is the Trump administration and the Department of Justice hiding?”
Many within the MAGA base have also aired frustration with the administration after the DOJ and FBI released a memo earlier this month concluding there is no evidence that Epstein had a “client list” and confirming that he died by suicide in 2019. Attorney General Pam Bondi has in particular faced strong backlash from Trump supporters over her previous interviews where she pledged transparency around the case.
She also said in February that the so-called “client list” was sitting on her desk for review — remarks she walked back this month.
Trump has defended the attorney general, writing on Saturday that Bondi is doing a “FANTASTIC JOB” and urging the voter base “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
