Debate Setup News Today

against, but they were just potted plants. >> i mean, its not like they actually participated in the debate. no disrespect to the cpd maturity. >> and ultimately your audiences to television audience exactly. >> its really the only one that matters when youre in the hall, your perception of actually how it plays its really muted. all right, thank you very much to our panel. thanks to all of you for joining us on this incredibly consequential day. im kasie hunt. dont go anywhere. cnn ne...

The commission on presidential debates. five days ago, this set and this crew were in farmville, virginia. everything that you see tonight has been moved here from the vice presidential debate setup, tested, rehearsed, beautified in that short time span. i hope those of you in the audience here at washington university will look at your programs and study those names that are listed there under the production crew. they are without pier, in terms of all the aspects of this extremely complicated ...

Correspondent jim acosta is inside the debate hall here at the wynn hotel. walk us through the debate setup. >> reporter: you got it, wolf. and to continue the gambling parlance you would say, hillary clinton is holding the best cards right now if youre looking at the poll numbers. that explains why. ill show you what the debate stage looks like right now. she has the center position. as you can see, those arent the candidates up on the stage. those are some fill-ins standing at those podiums as...

>> reporter: its going great. john, what were seeing is sort of debate prep, debate setup in action. you can see all the scores of cnn employees behind me setting the stage for tuesdays debate, the first democratic debate of this season. you can see the fill-ins for candidates standing at the lecterns on stage right now. theres a lady standing where hillary clinton will be standing in that middle lectern position. shes obviously the front runner this campaign. you talked about the other candidat...

For jeb bush. >> i dont know there is another option, jim, particularly with this debate setup. when youre going to be a foot and a half, two feet apart, and jeb is going to be on one side of donald trump, ben carson is going to be on the other side, if he is insulting you and calling you names while standing a foot and a half from you, how do you not respond? you cant just ignore it. so i think what youve seen from jeb is that for a long time, certainly at the start, he thought, okay, is this s...

If this is how hell explain things on the debate stage. >> you know the thing that i keep coming back to is, the reason hes successful is because of his message. people are trying to press him on policy details, you know in a wonkish style and i worked for ronald reagan. this was a complaint about ronald reagan not only when he was a candidate coming through the ranks but a complaint about ronald reagan when he was the sitting president of the united states. he didnt know the details. this was a...