Your grit. It does. And your resolve to do what you were called to do. It was hard. It is not easy being out on the campaign trail. You know, it reminds me of the old chicago song wishing you were here. But ive got a job to do and i do it well. Its really tough being in charleston [ applause ] in this Beautiful Hotel. Lovely people. What an amazing place. Yeah. Absolutely gorgeous, historic. Every time we come back here. And weve got a big story to cover and well be doing that through the weekend. Special editions of morning joe saturday and sunday. New polls out of South Carolina show donald trump with big leads across the board ahead of saturdays primary. A new Monmouth University poll has him ahead of cruz by 16 points. A Bloomberg Politics poll has him ahead by 19 points. A new poll from the South CarolinaHouse Republican caucus also has him ahead by 19. Lets stop quickly. Well dig deeper in a minute if you can go back and show us that. Mark halperin, look at the big board where you have trump at 35 in monmouth 36 , bloomberg 35 . Those are pretty consistent and what i found in New Hampshire, what we all found in New Hampshire, is that the voting for that primary ended up remarkably similar to the polls that preceded it. Its hard to see a lot of movement there. What do the numbers show you . Im no math genius but on my abacus this morning i figured trump has about a third of a vote and no one is in a position to stop him. The strongest candidate beside him according to the polls is ted cruz and yet senator cruz is not engaged in a full all out effort to finish first so donald trump will finish first by a big margin two contests in a row puts him in a commanding position in the next state where he has a big lead. Lets talk about marco rubio. Rubio is in third place. Got the endorsement of nikki haley. Got the endorsement of the governor. He also fared well on cnn last night from everything that i read and understood. Trump, we, of course, had a town hall meeting with trump. Back and forth. But trump seemed to be in pretty good position there as well. You guys were very spirited with him, you asked him a lot of hard questions face to face and he is on his game. Hes not tired and distracted. Hes a little annoyed with other candidates but hes focused on his message that is disciplined. Hes a first time candidate performing remarkably well. Marco rubio as should grit and determination. A couple weeks ago in New Hampshire, the horrible debate, disappointing showing and hes fought back to a point where i think people can say dont underestimate his resilience and ability. Necessary a position to be a finalist. If he finishes third or second, hes in a position to be a finalist. Lets dig deeper into the numbers from bloomberg. South carolina voters say trump is the most likely candidate to bring about needed change, be the strongest leader, win the general election and take on the washington establishment. However, South Carolina voters say ben carson and ted cruz are the two most likely candidates to be leaders guided by faith and share the religious values of south carolinians. Trump falls fifth on those metrics. And in keeping with the states, voters say they havent made up their minds or could be persuaded to vote for someone other than their first choice. However a majority of Trump Supporters and cruz supporters say they are locked in. Mike barnicle, you go back to whos best in economy, best in Foreign Policy, dealing with terrorists, weve been seeing this for six months, trump seems to win all of those categories. Its hard to see how somebody overtakes him when he is so dominant once you go deeper inside those numbers. 43 brings about change to cruzs 15 . 43 can win the general election. The strongest leader 41 to 17 and taking on the washington establishment 51 to 20 . Nobody else is close. Those last two indexes are carrying him. One of the more interesting aspects of last nights interview was, as mark pointed out, this guy is a first time candidate, first time entrant into the big theater of politics. The level of certainty he provides in every answer, no matter how many times hes interrupted by either one of you probing with another question, the level of certainty he brings to his campaign is to me astonishing given where he came from. It was interesting. We keep peppering him with questions. There are haters that will never be happy unless we get a knife and stab him in the side of the neck and watch him bleed out while shouting profanities at him. Its unbelievable. Good luck finding another interview where he was interrupted as much as he was last night. Talk about biassed . Theres a lot of bias, a lot of jealous people out there. Thats their problem not ours, id rather be on this side of it. But we asked him questions and we were specifically peppering him. I had one person on the internet, a verified person on the internet who one minute was attacking me for being too easy and the next minute attack megafor interrupting him too much. But we did that on purpose. We decided we were going to interrupt him, pepper him. Sit close to him. When he started doing his talking points we were going to say well, of course, the followup answer to his general answer is general but thats trump. Unless you want to stay there for one hour on one issue youre just not going to get to the bottom of that general pit of generalities. At the same time, we noticed he still stayed on his game, even being peppered and interrupted in a way that i dont think hes been. You had good followups but hes a confident guy who understand what is he needs to stay to get through an interview, what he needs to stay to get through a debate and his performance, we keep coming back to the same words, strength. Those traits, hes runningahead of his horse race number. Half the people say hes the best to take on washington. He doesnt even have half the vote stos peop votes. Generalities work if youre confident and people like what youre saying. Sam stein, you look through the bottom of these polls, weve got marco in third, jeb usually in fourth or fifth. The question a lot of people are asking not only around here but also in washington is can marco and jeb survive if they end up behind the other . This does seem to a degree a bit of a death match between bush and rubio. Who finishes ahead of the other gets to punch their ticket out. Who finishes behind the other. Really has no reason to continue campaigning. Jeb, for reasons of pride, marco because he just went have the money to continue. Yeah, and this is probably the last grasp the establishment lane has here. At some point theyll consolidate, it will become a threeperson race with ted cruz, whoever the establishment candidate is and donald trump and at that point neighbors a chance that a third of the vote will be trumps peak and that will be it. But the statistical evidence is not that compelling at this point. Obviously there was an nbc wall street journal poll the other day that had the National Race with trump below cruz but if you look at the upcoming primary states, as you pointed out, they all look really, really fortuitous for donald trump and at some point marco rubios got to win a state. This is a delegate contest and its until the field thins out a little bit, its tough to see him winning a state. So, you know, its a waitandsee thing right now. Its very dramatic. So lets look at the two new National Polls. You mentioned one, sam, the republican field that produced two very different results. In our new nbc news wall street journal poll conducted after saturdays debate, after the debate, senator ted cruz has pulled ahead of donald trump 28 to 26 . Thats a 15point swing in cruzs favor since january. A possible explanation for trumps decline is an increase in very conservative Republican Voters from januarys sample. Now, if the current poll is reweighted to reflect the ideological composition from last month, trurch mp is ahead point. The poll also shows a drop for donald trump in the percentage of Republican Voters who can see themselves supporting him. Marco rubio does best in this category at 70 followed by cruz at 65 and ben carson at 62 . But that survey comes as a new National Poll from usa today and Suffolk University conducted last thursday through this monday shows trump with a healthy 15point lead over cruz. Yesterday both trump and cruz weighed in on the nbc poll that shows them in a virtual tie nationally for first. I have never done well in the wall street journal poll. I think somebody at wall street journal doesnt like me. But i bother with well with the wall street journal poll so i dont know, they do these small samples and i dont know what it represent represents. Nbc and the wall street journal announced a new National Poll and for the first time in many months theres a new National Frontrunner on the republican side. Nationally were in first place with 28 . [ cheers and applause ] in second place is donald trump with 26 . [ boos ] and the next closest candidate is way down at 17 . So the sound youre hearing is the sound of screams coming from washington, d. C. [ laughter ] after the sounds that, mark halperin, im hearing, the sounds of a thousand pollsters scratching their heads simultaneously. [ laughter ] you have a quinnipiac poll that came out yesterday showing trump ahead by over 20 points. You have a reuters poll that i think has trump up by 25 points. We just showed you the usa today poll that has trump up by 15, 16, 17 points. To say this nbc news wall street journal poll is an outlier is a very, very liberal use of the term outlier. Let me ask you this question. Do you know anybody that actually believe this is poll . The nbc news wall street journal poll is a very poll, its very methodologically sound. Even the best pollster, something goes wrong with the methodology but you get a bad sample so i dont think anybody thinks donald trump is tied with ted cruz nationally but its the case that ted cruz has picked up strength and i think National Media understates the extent to which ted cruz is communicating people around the regular media. Think about whos left the race, scott walker, bobby jindal, rick perry, mike huckabee, rick santorum, rand paul. Those guys all out of the race. A lot of that vote will go to ted cruz so he has moved up nationally but hes not ahead or even with donald trump nationally, i dont think theres any question about that. Mike barnicle, it looks as if either the nbc news wall street journal poll or quinnipiac usa today and these other and reuters who have him up by 20, 25 points, it looks like theyre all competing to be the gallup of the 2016 cycle. That had mitt romney up by 11 points to the very end. Somebody is drastically wrong. Theres no explaining this away a month from now. We all know polls are a snapshot of a moment in time. The rest of the polls other than the nbc wall street journal polls are landscape portraits of whats going on on the republican side, keeping trump up there. The most interesting aspect of these polls, at least to me, is that all of them when they rank the candidates portend in the future i dont know whether its the immediate future or four or five years down the road the breakup of a political party. You can see the establishment wing of the Republican Party sliding away from large elements of the rest of the party. The populists have taken over the party. No doubt about it. Well, after being threatened with a lawsuit by donald trump, ted cruz has a singular message bring it on. During a News Conference yesterday, cruz read from a southeast and desist letter his campaign received from a lawyer from trump. Theyre demanding the Cruz Campaign stop playing the ad that you see right here. It shows part of a 1999 meet the press interview where trump said at the time he was very prochoice. Cruz insists hell keep playing it on tv and dared trump to bring on the suit. To mr. Trump you have been threatening frivolous lawsuits for your entire adult life. Even in the annals of frivolous lawsuits this takes the cake. So donald, i would encourage you, if you want to file a lawsuit challenging this ad, claiming it is defamation, file the lawsuit. Trump later responded saying cruz is a liar and these ads and statements made by cruz are clearly desperate moves by a guy who is tanking in the polls. If i want to bring on a lawsuit it would be legitimate. Like wise, if i want to bring the lawsuit regarding senator cruz being a and a half a born canadi canadian, i will do so. Time will tell, teddy. He also talked about his conversion on abortion issues in our exclusive town hall last night. Ive had Great Success in business, ive had Great Success with lawsuits. Ive had Great Success in things i do and i dont know that well have a lawsuit but we want to keep somebody honest and when he make statements about like as an example im prolife and he says im not prolife, he cant say that. But your opponents would say you havent always been pro life. Thats true. And Ronald Reagan like wise. So what happened . When did that change come . It changed years ago and what happened is i saw things with people and people that i know and people that i respect that made me change. Ronald reagan changed. He said he evolved, he used that expression. Ronald reagan actually used to be a fairly liberal democrat and he became a fairly conservative conservative. I mean, fairly. But ted cruz says we cant count on donald trump in the future, especially in Picking Supreme Court justices if hes changed in the past. Im the only one how do you convince a republican like me that if you were nominated youre not going to nominate the type of Supreme Court justice that always seems to flip. So if you look at me as a conservative, okay . And im not sures necessarily the most important word, but im a common sense conservative. Okay. What did you make of his answers . You were going right after him, boom, boom, boom. I thought that he was as mark said, he was speaking in generalities even in the followup questions but he was confident, he was in control and the people that are voting for him, they are not saying donald trump, we want to see your 12 position packages, we dont want to see who will be in the white house. They trust him because he has strength, they think he will be a strong leader and they think a lot of them say hell put good people in charge. So did he drill down as far as other candidates . No. But he drilled down more last night than he usually does. He did disclose that next week hell reveal his Foreign Policy team. That should be fascinating and give a window into his outlook in terms of how to approach the world stage. So, sam stein, obviously ted cruz and Donald Trumps bromance ended many weeks ago but its getting ugly enough to suggest these two understand that at the end this will be a death match between cruz and trump for the republican nomination. At least they certainly seem to think so. Yeah, and its kind of tiptoeing that way already, right . The threat of suits and countersuits, that stuff. I happen to believe in this situation ted cruz is kind of right, right . Donald trump did say those things in his past. I think its fair ga imto point out ideological inconsistencies. Hes literal he replaying past statements from donald trump so i dont think ted cruz is out of bounds. Trump might think its unfair but this is politics and certainly in South Carolina this seems above ground so well see. Ted cruz had a strategy, he would hug donald trump as long as possible until donald trump fell out and ted cruz would inherent donald Trump Supporters and become the nominee. Clearly he missquall collated. Donald trump never fell and support continued to grow now ted cruz has had to readjust so that means it will get bitter. Those are the two at the top fighting right now. When it comes to bush and rubio set that up for us, do you agree that whoever finishes behind the other will go home . I think so and i normally dont like to force anybody out of the race but bush will have no political rational for going on if he finishes behind nooub th rubio in this state. We have five guys competing for the nomination. I think after saturday well have four. John kasich will go on and he has to play in the northeastern states, midwestern states but trump is not fading away, trump is a finalist, cruz is a finalist. Were looking to see now if we have two more people going on or just one after saturday. And the problem for certainly is establishment lane with bush and rubio, they go to the deep south next. They go super tuesday states where as you say donald trump, if you look at the polls is in a position where right now if he comes out of South Carolina and naff naff strong he will be the prohibitive favorites in every one of those super tuesday states. And maybe getting more like 40 or 50 of the votes 23450 s. If hes getting a third of the vote, you can imagine that hes getting a third, but if hes in the 50s, people can speculate all they want about when trump will fall, he may be winning states so big the next month that nobody stops him. We havent even got on the the democrats. Real quick, we have to go to break. The Human Element comes into play, one of the most interesting aspects of politics with rubio and bush, after this which one wants to go back to their home state and lose in their home state . Well, rubio needs to go home at some point. Well, the difference between rubio and bush is that jeb bush politically is at the end of the line. Theres a lot of things he can do and will do. Regardless of what happens he emerges from this race. The brightest rising star in the Republican Party, thats something he has to way that jeb bush doesnt have to weigh. Rubio cant afford to lose to donald trump by 15 po