A choice the clinton camp agreed to when this was announced by the Debate Commission just one week ago. But tonight, a controversial clinton ally is trying to change the rules. This man here is david brock, described by bernie sanders, his campaign as quote, one of the worst practitioners in the dark arts of dirty politics. Brock is now demanding that the Debate Commission boot Chris Wallace, a journalist with a Sterling Record after more than 50 years in this business saying wallace is somehow unqualified to moderate because he used to work for roger ailes at this channel right here fox news. And ailes is now reportedly counseling donald trump. In moments well speak with Charles Krauthammer about mr. Trump, mrs. Clinton, and the debates themselves. But first we go to Chris Stirewalt and howie kurtz, both of whom are very familiar with the track record of mr. Brock, not to mention mr. Wallace. Good to see you guys both. All right. So lets just start with david brock because i think, howie, most people dont know who this man is and why should they . But he has made it his mission to destroy fox news and to destroy pretty much any repu on the scene. And its no accident he is the accuser coming after wallace this way. And he is also the head of a prohillary super pac. So this is kind of a twofer. Attack of fox news. Defend Hillary Clinton. Work the reps. And doing it in this way, you got to kind of twist yourself into a pretzel to follow this argument about Chris Wallace, who just a few weeks ago had a perfectly fair interview with Hillary Clinton. She didnt complain. Well the commission is independent. Thats why Chris Wallace was chosen. And when we have a moment i will tell you a little bit about my dealings in the past with david brock, who used to be a conservative who tried to smear the clintons. I mean this is a man who, you know hell do anything to bring down fox news. Thats his white whale. But this is different. Hes coming after Chris Wallace just because he says number one, wallace used to work for ailes, who is no longer the ceo and chairman of this channel. And, number two, wallace said hes not the truth squad when hes out there moderating chris. And he is suggesting he and others actually that ailes is like the intimately familiar with wallaces preparation and debate style and that he oversaw wallaces preparation for the three primary debates. Now, you and i unlike these idiots were actually in those debate preparation sessions every single one of them. You and i actually know how chris prepares for these debates. Why dont you enlighten the audience . God help the poor fool that tried to oversee Chris Wallaces debate preparation. No way. No one is more thorough. No one is more scrupulous. He and his Research Team were i mean as you know nobody does it better. Yeah. This is how good they are. And i dont wonder at all that people of both campaigns would like to have Chris Wallace not doing a debate because guess what. Even without, quote, unquote, truth squadding, hes going to be the best one, fyi, of all the debates because hes the best prepared. He asks the best questions and hes not afraid to put it out there. He doesnt care about making himself look good. He wants the right question and answer. Im sure brock doesnt want him on it, but you know what . Too bad. Just to set the record straight ailes is not intimately familiar with wallaces preparation and debate style. He did not oversee wallaces preparation for the three debates. He had nothing to do with our debate preparation. It was wallace, bair. Me stirewalt and bill salmon. We wrote our own questions. No one told me what to write because theres another report out there that Rupert Murdoch got involved which he didnt. The nonsense that circulates out there, and then its just accepted. Then this guy wants wallace booted off the debate because of his cockamamy theories. Your team was widely praised across the mainstream media. 15 years ago, i interviewed david brock at a time when he was trying to flip to the liberal side after being a conservative activist. Heres what he told me. Dont take my word nor it. He told me quote, i lost my soul in printing allegations about anita hill that i knew to be false. He had called her a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty as you may recall. He told me quote, i consciously lied in print. I was so blinded by my tunnel partisan vision i believed my own propaganda. I was a whiting cog in the republican sleaze machine. People grow. They evolve but this is part of his background. She needs to reign him in. She helped form media matters, did she not . She did. Shes on record. She is a creator of david brock in this incarnation, no doubt. But remember hes also angling for position inside clinton world because he tried to take a larger role. He got burnt and shut down so this is probably a relevancy play in addition to just trying to just for the record Hillary Clinton, institutions that i helped to start and support, like media matters. Shes on record. This is her guy. This is her group, and she needs to come out and say, Chris Wallace, love him. Great to see you both. Good to see you too. So these tactics by some affiliated with Hillary Clinton clearly suggest that some of her supporters are looking for an early edge in these debates. And if youre wondering why, heres a little reminder about how anything can happen when donald trump takes the stage. Raise your hand now if you wont make that pledge tonight. Mr. Trump. I think youre on the wrong side of this if youre still arguing for a single i dont think you heard me. Youre having a hard time tonight. I have never gone bankrupt by the way. I have never. But out of hundreds of deals but, sir excuse me. Thats your line but i think women all over this country heard very clearly what mr. Trump said. I think shes got a beautiful face and i think shes a beautiful woman. The one guy that had some special interest that i know of that tried to get me to change my views on something that was generous and gave me money was donald trump. He wanted casino gambling in florida. I did not. Yes you did. Totally false. You wanted it and you didnt get it because i was opposed to casino gambling before during and after. The simple fact is more energy tonight. I like that. Youre the one. Youre the one. Release the tapes. Let me just say excuse me. Ive given my answer lyin ted. Lets leave it at that. He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. Look at those hands. Are they small hands . And he referred to my hands if theyre small, Something Else must be small. I guarantee you theres no problem. I guarantee you. Moving on. I was there for a lot of that. Joining me now, fox news contributor, nationally syndicated columnist and author of the book things that matter, dr. Charles krauthammer. Great to see you charles. So anything can happen with donald trump on that stage, and shes got to find it very disconcerting. Here we are about two weeks out from the first debate. Thats true and i think she might have made a strategic error because shes been very extremely heavy in the criticism, calling him everything unstable essentially, psychopathic racist. I mean these are a string of attacks that maybe might have been more strategically placed after the debates because what she has done is she has set the bar so low for trump, that if he just shows up not foaming at the mouth, if he looks follow relaxed, and sort of reasonable he wins automatically. I think thats happened a lot in the past as well. I think in 1980, the strategy of the Carter Campaign was to make Ronald Reagan extreme, somebody that you couldnt possibly imagine, somebody unstable that would be a danger to the world. And then he shows up in the debate with jimmy carter. Hes affable. Hes relaxed. And then he came out with that single line. It had nothing to do with anything. I think it was jimmy carter accusing him of wanting to cut back Social Security and reagans answer simply was, it wasnt a policy answer. It was, there you go again. And the air came out of the balloon. People said we can live with this guy. And he won in a landslide. Well the other thing that reagan had and that donald trump has as well is a healthy sense of humor. And what do you think about that . Because trump, he has the ability to win over an audience. His ability to penetrate that lens goes beyond just being interesting, which he clearly is. He is funny. She is not. And that that makes you kind of warm up to a character on tv. Well, you know if you watched any of the debates in the primary and unfortunately i was sentenced to watch all of them. You were sentenced to participate in some of them and live the aftermath. I mean on policy and on substance, trump was you know he didnt do very well. Lets put it kindly. But when it came to whether he came out of it with people having a better feeling about him, the facts are, whatever the polling shows, that his numbers kept going up and he kept winning primaries. So it does show that it is look the debate forum is one about personality and comfort. Its not about policy. When kennedy beat nixon in the first debate in the first sort of history of these debates, it was because he looked better. You know he did makeup and nixon didnt. Its quite simple. The fact is that people heard the debate on radio thought nixon won, and those who watched it thought that kennedy won because nixon was sweating and thats what was remembered. So that raises an interesting question because i think one of the reasons people thought trump won, even though he may not have scored the postmost points on policy is because he was so unusual. He is an outsider in so many ways and they like that. They liked that he was different and he didnt play by the same rules as the others. So does he do that in these debates, or does he show up as president ial trump . Well i mean i think hell just show up as who he is because he cant i mean he wont be reading from a teleprompter. I think the key in the republican primary debates, it wasnt only that he was an outsider. Its that he is an entertainer, and he made you feel comfortable. Thats the essence of entertaining. Yeah. As you know for example, hosting a show hosting, say, a latenight comedy show everybody says, oh that looks easy. I could do that. But it is extremely hard to do. Looking natural is the most unnatural thing in the world when a camera is on you. And anybody who has done it knows it. He has had cameras on him. Hes very comfortable. And shes coming in with extremely high expectations. Shes been at this for 25 years. Hes a novice. She has been, you know on television, on camera, answering questions forever. Hes new at this. But i think what he really is not new at and that she has never really mastered is how to endear yourself with an audience ingratiate yourself and hes got a way of doing it. How to charm. You got to know how to charm up on that president ial debate stage, and he may offend with his attempts. But its like the same number of people who are offended are charmed on the other side. Charles, its how i feel whenever i see you. Not the offended part but the charmed. Thank you for being here. My pleasure. Up next karl rove on mr. Trumps possible new path to victory in november. Plus is president obama about to pick the interests of saudi arabia over those of the families who lost loved ones on 9 11 . 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Just one of the many features that comes standard with our base policy. Call for a free quote today. Liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. Well, with just 60 days to go until the election and the newest polls looking better for donald trump, does he now have a more clear path to victory . Trump trails by nearly four points in the latest real clear politics average of national polls, and he is further back in the Electoral College race. But our next guest suggests the battle for those battleground voters could still be trumps to win. Karl rove is a fox news contributor, former deputy chief of stephaff. You have a piece out this week saying donald trump has 60 days to close the deal. Is that a lot or a little 60 days . Thats a little particularly since this contest has gone on so long. I think hes been in the race for 15 months. Hillary clintons been in the race for nearly 17 months. Theyve been at this a while. I thought you were going to say years. It feels like that. In fact it may be political junkies are sort of like dogs. We have longer we have shorter periods of time for years. But 60 days is not a lot of time. So shes been leading him in the National Average of polls. It was like by 6 1 2 points after that threeweek issue after the conventions. But now its down to three and change just after labor day. What does that tell us . Well her high point was 7. 9 points on august 7th. Since then her lead has been cut by twothirds. As of today, the real clear politics average is 2. 7 points. So its closed more because hes gone up than shes come down, but the race has closed. And, look theres no new path to victory. Its just that the old path to victory, the narrow path that hes got to victory, is more within reach. Look a democrat starts with an advantage. If you look at the 18 state and the district of columbia that the democrats have carried in each of the last six president ial elections, they total 242 electoral votes. You need 270 to win. So they start with an advantage. But hes got a path and the path has become clear in the weeks since. First you got to play defense. Mitt romney got 206 Electoral College votes. If you look at the real clear politics averages of states hes narrowly ahead today in arizona and georgia states that romney carried comfortably, and narrowly behind in north carolina. So the first thing hes got to do is carry the 11 electoral votes in arizona, 16 in georgia 15 in north carolina. Otherwise, hes going to start off in a deficit. The next ones are the states that are close, and whats interesting is that in the real clear politics average of state polls, florida is nearly tied. Ohio is almost tied. And trump actually has a modest very 0. 8 lead in iowa. If he were to win those states that would get him to 259. But at that point, hes got to take something away from the democrats that they have in all likelihood won in each of the last six president ial elections. You got to take away a pennsylvania with 20 or michigan with 16 or wisconsin with 10. Nevada with 6 that bush carried twice or a New Hampshire with 4 that bush carried once. Hes got to take away something thats in the democrats. All of these are ranging between five points and nine points so they theoretically would be possible in a fluid race. We just dont know how much fluidity there is in this president ial contest. So there was a very complete interesting piece in the National Review earlier this week by their chief political correspondent, tim alberto. And his answer to the question whether donald trump has any realistic path to defeating Hillary Clinton was, barring any unforeseen and transcend end developments no. Do you agree with that then or no . Well look i think that history is on the side of that opinion. If you look back in the last nine modern president ial elections, on labor day the candidates were tied one time. That was in 2012. Obama went on to win. In the other eight, seven out of eight times the person who led on labor day won. And, again, she has a lot of paths to victory. Lets assume that she wins the 242 votes that theyve won in each and every one of the last six president ial elections. All she needs to do is win florida. Or if she loses florida, win ohio and north carolina. Or you know virginia and north carolina. Or virginia colorado and nevada. Or nevada colorado new mexico iowa New Hampshire, all of which would get her over 270. So look i dont think that its a foregone conclusion. Thats why we have elections, so that we can play this thing out and we have 60 more days which is not a lot of time but it may be enough time. You saw now gives him one out of every three chance to win. Hes the underdog but hes got a path. Karl great to see you. Thank