nuclear war. he served two terms as president of the united states. he ended the cold war. the berlin wall fell on his watch. it s not so much about the specifics when you run for president. it s about do you project an image of leadership? trump has that right now in part because the grasz rosroots of t republican party doesn t believe anything people with a title says. george w. bush was going to focus on our hemisphere. 9/11 happened. bill clinton said he d stand up to the dictators in damascus. had good relationship with the old man in syria, had a good relationship with the chinese. barack obama was going to be the peacetime president. look what happened. close guantanamo. what they say in campaigns almost never happens when they re president. it s more about do you trust this person to have that job? you know, let me play devil s advocate here. there are many different leadership styles a president can have and donald trump says, look, i even if i don t know the informati
of donald trump and tomorrow night he s not planning to do so at all. he wants to sort of be around where the collateral damage picks up. but for others like scott walker, he was on top in the polls in iowa. his clock is running. his donors are watching his campaign carefully. i spoke to one of his donors a short time ago and said, look, if scott walker does not sort of pick it up, bring it tomorrow night, we re not sure that he ll succeed. those are some of the pressures facing these candidates in the next 24 hours. yeah, the pressure is intense. jeff, appreciate it. with us now, dana bash who s going to be asking some of the questions tomorrow night during the debate along with hugh hewett and jake tapper. joining us, david axelrod, candidate barack obama s close campaign adviser, knows a thing or two about political moments like these. so do amanda carpenter and jeffrey lord. she s a former communications drebl director for ted cruz. he served as political director in the reagan w
david, if you had a candidate, republican candidate going against donald trump, how would you advise them to deal with him? because rand paul went after him, didn t really work. rick perry went after him on his faith. that didn t work out. no, i know. i think you have to be very careful. look, i would say about donald trump that this has been the summer of trump. he s eclipsed the entire republican field. but like most eclipse, if you stare at it, you can blind yourself. and they shouldn t be staring at donald trump. they should be thinking about the messages they want to impart, give people a sense of who they are, get those one or two lines that might be quoted, again, now, there may be some value in some of these candidates sparring with trump, but i can see other candidates. rubio has no reason to go after trump because he s not going after the trump voter. he s going after the center right voter who may be anti-trump. same is true with bush, although he for personal reasons ma
donald trump would be a get president because they saw him on the apprentice. one told me he d be a good secretary of state because his experience on the apprentice picking good people to work for him. his background in reality television, his background in business has carried over a certain appeal to the voters who are here today. is it that they already plan to vote for him, or some there just to kind of be part of the entire donald trump experience? reporter: you know, i think at a lot of events like this it s always a mix of people. there were a number of donald trump supporters including one guy who made a latinos for donald trump sign which is a pretty, you know, stark difference from the folks standing right outside the gates to my left who are protesting and who are saying the things donald trump is saying about immigrants particularly hispanics is extremely racist so we really are seeing sort of a mix of folks here s like we would at any other event. all right, sara
a tweet. to have a bunch of advisers telling republican candidates, you know what, you got to be angry. right. to have these guys on stage saying i m angry very dangerous. you have to communicate the essence of who you are, what makes you distinctive, what you re offering. if you try to be a faux donald trump, you re not going to succeed. one thing i would say about where we are in the race, it s important to remember that four years ago at this time that rick perry was the republican front-runner, and so what happens in september is just we re in the early innings of the game and for ben carson, this is a very challenging time because he s now the spotlight is on him and now people are going to want to hear more from him, more about who he is, his substantive ideas, and i think that s his biggest challenge in this debate. when does the moment come that people want to hear substance from donald trump? we listened we played last night a speech he made, i mean, it was full