Talking to longtime Democratic strategist and Clinton operative James Carville on Monday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer fretted that Donald Trump visiting the flood zone in Louisiana could give him an edge in the presidential race: “He goes down there, looks at the damage first hand, talks to people, before President Obama. It wasn’t until after his visit that Hillary Clinton picked up the phone, called the governor there. Did he appear more presidential in the wake of that tragedy than Hillary Clinton?”

Carville tried to excuse the absence of the Democratic leaders: “I think the timeline is, is that she and the Governor spoke. The Governor has said that he would prefer that people come later because they have – particularly the President comes.” He added: “I’m sure the President is gonna come on Tuesday. But here’s one thing everybody agrees on down there, the federal response has been really good.”

However, even Carville praised Trump’s visit: “I’m grateful that he came, I’m not going to criticize the visit. He gave $100,000 to a church in Greenwood Springs, which is a hard-hit area.”

Later, at the top of 7:30 a.m. ET half hour, the morning show devoted a mere 12-second news brief to President Obama returning from vacation before finally traveling to Louisiana. Co-host Savannah Guthrie noted: “And President Obama arrived back to the White House late last night after the First Family’s 16-day vacation in Martha's Vineyard. Tomorrow the President travels to Louisiana to view the devastation from that state's historic flooding.”

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At the top of the exchange with Carville, Guthrie wondered: “Let's pretend you’re in your old job, you’re working for Hillary Clinton, what should she do about this e-mail issue? It continues to dog her....Do you think they’ve handled this issue well?” In part, Carville argued: “Well, look you can go back to anything in politics and say, ‘Well, you could have done this better at this time, you could have done that.’ But you know, right now, they’re up in the polls and they’re ahead.”

Lauer pointed out: “They’re ahead, but there’s a kind of reboot on the Trump side of things right now. A little bit of a softer side of him, he's walking back some of his most controversial policy issues, including this mass deportation. How worried should the Clinton campaign be that this is going to actually help him?”

Carville downplayed the shift: “...his campaign manager is saying that he’s going to redo this, it’s not Trump himself that’s saying that....everything that I read indicates to me that they’re not doing things that a campaign does, they don’t have a field organization.”

Here is a full transcript of the August 22 interview: