Democratic strategist James Carville said on Wednesday that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is enjoying unprecedented momentum on the 2016 campaign trail.
“He is dominating this conversation unlike anything I’ve ever seen, I guarantee you,” he told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
{mosads}“It is something to see,” Carville added of Trump. “Everybody keeps saying, ‘oh, it’s going to go away.’ As of now, it seems to be sticking around a bit longer than anybody thought.”
Carville also argued on Wednesday that the political establishment should not underestimate Trump’s impact on the national stage.
“The Republican Party is maybe 40 percent of the country,” he said. “Let’s just say a third of the Republican Party is enamored with Trump. So you’re talking about a third of 40 percent, but that can put substantial damage into the political system of a country.”
“You’re seeing that and a lot of other guys on the Republican side are sort of being blanked out, if you will,” Carville added of Trump’s effect on the GOP’s 2016 presidential primary.
Carville’s remarks come as Republicans have one of their most crowded presidential fields in recent memory.
The Democratic strategist charged on Wednesday that the party’s 17 major candidates offer a larger ideological chasm than the competition.
“I think the Republicans are much more divided than we are,” Carville said.
“The major difference between Trump and John Kasich is much broader than any differences within the Democratic Party,” he added, referencing the Ohio governor alongside the New York business mogul.
Carville added that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will eventually escape the scandal over her private email server currently plaguing her campaign.
“I would say it is constant non-scandal after non-scandal,” he said of criticisms of the former secretary of State’s technology habits.
“People have pointed out, at the end of the day, that there is nothing here either,” said Carville, former strategist to Bill Clinton and an adviser to Hillary Clinton in 2008.
“But we’re going to have to, you know, beat our gums about it for a little bit longer before the thing goes away like everything else.”
Clinton turned over her personal storage device and its backup thumb drive to Justice Department investigators earlier this month.
Voter concerns over her use of the server during her tenure at State are gradually eroding her standing in multiple national polls.