country, believe me, folks, we will do very, very well. reporter: and, of course, there is china. trump has accused china of shady trade deals, manipulating currency and making off with iraqi oil so many times an edited video has become an internet sensation. china. china. china. china. chi china. reporter: mind you he s not really blaming the chinese. they have tough, smart people. it s time that we have tough, smart people because we re not going to be able to go much longer the way we re going right now. reporter: still, the depth of trump s knowledge is unclear. he says he follows many military entanglements by watching tv and when a radio host asked him about an elite iranian military force, he seemed confused. he runs the kuds forces. yes. okay. right. do you expect i think they have, by the way, been awfully mistreated by us. not the kurds. the kuds forces. reporter: trump said he
should stumble tomorrow night, it s not necessarily to jeb s advantage. it s probably to ben carson s advantage. it s probably to carly fiorina s advantage because there are several debates playing out on that stage tomorrow night. not just one debate. and in the end, i believe there will be an establishment candidate. and it might be jeb, or it might be kasich or it might be chris christie, and there will be one of the mavericks. a ben carson, a carly, or a donald trump. and that s the way this thing s is. jeffrey? i actually used to share michael s opinion it was going to be one of each. now i m not so sure. you think it might be a dr. carson and a trump? correct. correct. i think all the passion is right there. and these other folks, and i think in that same cbs poll, 37% had decided and there was 60%, something like that, i mean, a good percentage that hadn t decided but i have this feeling that they re going to be gravitating to one of the other three. we ve seen this ki
great people to do negotiations, how stupid everybody is, how parasites the media are, all that sort of stuff, and people enjoy it but at what point do people want to hear, well, wait a minute, what do you actually mean take the oil from iraq? i think that happens. i think that happens over time. i think there are stages of a campaign and as i ve said before, this is the swimsuit competition. the talent rounds are coming. and people begin to look at these people as perspective presidents of the united states. and those are more exacting tests. so i think it will come. i don t think, trust me, i ll take care of it, it s going to be beautiful, you re going to love it is going to pass, it s going to be terrific and huge. i don t think that s going to pass muster later in the process. i think david s right. obvious louly you ve been throu this several times mostly in 2008. once the field it s so big right now. historically big. once it narrows and assuming that donald trump still is
studies, independents now outnumber in this country, people who would rather be identified as an independent than a d or an r are the most growing demographic we have. i think there s been an exodus of independent types from the gop so the very passionate who are for trump, who are for carson, are what s left behind. you know, david axelrod earlier obviously a democrat was saying before that if you are some of these candidates, you don t go after trump, you basically use the limited amount of time you re going to get when there s 1 1 candidates on the stage to have one or two memorable lines to describe who you are. at this point they ve been completely eclipsed by donald trump and to have a large audience at least discover a little bit about who they are rather than them wasting time going toe to toe with somebody who s probably going to slaughter them in a knife fight. this was already a television show called survivor. right. and, you know, there was such an outrage at
humility, fear of the lord. i don t get that impression with him. ben carson, you look at his faith and i think you re not going to find so much. what am i supposed to call the guy, too? donald? i mean? should point out dr. carson basically apologized for making those comments and said he didn t want to get into a fight with trump. trump said he doesn t want to hit first but if he s attacked, watch out. where does that leave his rivals tomorrow night? what should the strategy be standing next to him on the stage? joini ining me now, anna navarr jeffrey, michael smerconish. anna, for jeb bush and the others, how do you deal with trump tomorrow? you can break down the field into three different segments, right? those who want to get close to trump, that would be people like ted cruz, those who want to be neutral and just kind of stay off the radar, chris christie falls in that category. and nose who have been taking