weakness. there is no weakness. i m not going anywhere. let s discuss. matt lewis, also with us, m mercedes slap. matt, i want to start with you. trump says he is in this race to win. he s not going anywhere. and this is after a former romney strategist said on our air yesterday he believes the real estate mogul will be out by iowa just because he can t stand to risk losing what is your take? i think this is premise oond couple of things. the first is the suspicion that everyone has had that donald trump doesn t want to be president. he got into this on a lark to get publicity as the stunt and he caught fire surprisingly to himself and now he s riding it out and may someday be looking for an exit strategy to get out. the other part too is frankly
pay for that. he claims it would not reduce the deficit. it would be three years that it would be budget neutral. it s a classic donald trump thing. everything is going to be fabulous and we re going to be so rich but there s nothing backing up the math. i want you to listen to his exit strategy should he decide to drop out. here s that. the prospect of losing primaries, would you decide and you re not winning anymore, would you step away? i m not a masochist, okay? right now i m leading in every poll and in most cases big. i m leading iowa, new hampshir., i d leading everything. that s good. if i m only leading by 1%, 2%, there s no reason to go forward. if i tank, sure, i go back to the business. why wouldn t i. i know you ve been to hsome f his events. do you think he s in this for
probl problem. in the longer term, putin is trying to protect the two military bases there, and he might just be in the long term someone that when all of the e jihadists start banging up on putin, he may be in a position to have an exit strategy for assad which right now is assad is certainly in his plans to protect putin s military bases. we know that the intel is or the conversation and the intel between the russians and the u.s. that it is happening right now. but, in your estimation, senator, if it is proven that russia has targeted trained forces by our cia and they are not strictly going after isis, then is putin bla and thely stand ing
just want to talk with these strikes now, is that leaving the door open or even cracked in any way to allow for ground troops down the road? that s the million dollar question at the moment. in 1998 putin and russia withdrew from afghanistan after an eight-year war and they lost 15,000 soldiers, spent billions of dollars and didn t really achieve anything. so my question at the moment is, is that will russia have learned from that. obviously you d have the demise of the soviet empire since that s occurred and russia is in a very different place. i think economically alone putin can t afford a long enduring ground war. i think the key question here is, what is the exit strategy? what is the exit strategy for u.s.-led coalition air strikes on syria? what would be the exit strategy for what putin s doing the a the moment with his air force? i think ground troops would be a very dangerous move. i think special forces activity is more likely.
assad must go. is that policy going to change in the next couple of months? that red line is looking a little pinkish right now, fading. they will begin to say, well, he can stay, as we try to negotiate an exit strategy. and the exit strategy will take years and years and putin will keep propping him up. it s interesting the president still said he wanted assad to go, but it was different language. slightly softer. i know you ve have to do nightly news, we ll see you in 90 minutes there. thank you for that. we ll keep an on raul castro. busy day. thank you. thank you. you re my right hand. to the campaign trail, marco rubio is campaigning at the villages, the adult senior community, it s big in the central part of the state. he s now one of the big movers in our new nbc/ wall street journal poll, really the only candidate sitting in