Excuse me. We are going to take those people and those people are going to be serviced by doctors and hospitals, well make great deals on it but we wont let them die if the streets. Who pays for it . Gentlemen, please wolf, it to clarify this. This is the Republican Debate because that attack about letting people die in the street if the government doesnt support them im having fun up here tonight, i have to tell you. Thank you for the book, appreciate it. Donald, relax. Im relaxed. Youre the basket case. Dont get nervous. Go ahead. Theres nothing about you
that makes anyone nervous. You dont know whats happening. Wolf, im goingc to ask my time not be deducted when hes yelling at me. Take control. Gentlemen, please. I get my answer. I want to move on. What ive seen up here. First of all, this guy is a choke artist and this guy is a liar. This guy always goes off combination of factors other than that, i rest my case. This is the typical thing he does. Any debate about policy he goes right for the outrageous statement. You have to floor. Do i get a response . You will but i promised governor kasich he would zblo respond. Can somebody attack me, please . [ cheers and applause ] that kind of sums up the night. Can somebody please attack me . Please, please . Did you see that . Look, it was like fruit salad, thats it. It was fruit salad. On fire. Somebody poured gasoline on it and lit a match. Good morning, everyone, its friday, february 26. That was a mess. It was a hot mess. That was a hot mess. At one point i tweeted, this is a disgrace because i dont know. Even after that section, soon after thatc they were yelling, willie, at each other for about two minutes uninterrupted all three yelling at the same time. In that clip there, the frustrating thing was theyre all talking over each other and nobodys like, stop, you talk, you talk. I thought that was an ugly part. I will say right from the beginning marco rubio did finally what everyone has been asking him to do. Boom, boom, boom. He came to play and he fought. He came out fighting. Donny deutsch is here as is senior Political Editor and White House Correspondent for the huffington post, sam stein. In washington, republican pollster and columnist in at the Washington ExaminerKristen Soltisanderson and in houston, managing editor for Bloomberg Politics mark halperin. We were in touch with him all night as he was analyzing it firsthand. Give us your report card,
mark, really quickly. I gave marco rubio and donald trump a minuses. Again, my grades are based on performance and how the performance affects the candidates chances of being the nominee. I thought rubios performance really most surprising to me was hed never flinched. Everyone else whos gone up against trump inc these debates has had moments where they flinched and trump has gotten the better of them. I dont think rubio took trump down but i think he showed a fortitude and people in rubio world are wondering why he didnt do this sooner. Any impact i mean, bloomberg came out with polls that shows donald trump crushing everybody in the deep south. Rubio showed two polls of him being crushed in florida where hes a sitting senator. The thuz chan does this change your mind . I dont think see any reason that this would separate any of donald Trump Supporters from him and he last night was his normal
self. He stayed on message. He had moments where he was under attack and he held his own and talked about what he wanted to talk about. I gave ted cruz and john kasich bs and ben carson a c plus. But rubios performance, while strong, doesnt erase the huge gap he has not just in florida but in that poll of ours, the Bloomberg Politics poll you mentioned, where trump is in the Southern States voting on tuesday way ahead even thoughc voters know hes not the most conservative american the race. Well get to an incredible moment of the night but first we should let everyone know we flew down to South Carolina yesterday, we have a big interview with Hillary Clinton to show you, extremely wide ranging, sat down with her with well over half an hour. Fascinating. And she was very relaxed. She was what she had been in 2008 when she really went on that run. So thats coming up as well. But back to the debate, there was this moment where rubio demanded trump offer explanations for his health care
policies and then look what happened. You may not be aware of this, donald because you dont follow this closely. When they passed obamacare, they put a bailout fund in obamacare. All the lobbyists put a bailout fund in the law that would allow public money to be used, taxpayer money, to bail out companies when they lost money. We led the effort to wipe that out. What is your plan . I understand the lines around the state. This is no you dont know what it means. That is your problem. The biggest problem hes got is he doesnt know about the state. The reason we have no competition is because we have lines around the state and you have we already mentioned that as part of my plan, i no what that is. I think you dont know much. So the only thing is to get rid of the lines around the state. What is part what the lines around the state means, instead of having one Insurance Company taking care of new york or texas, youll have many, theyll compete and it will be a
beautiful thing. [ applause ] so thats the only part of the plan . Just the lines . The interstate competition. The nice part you have many different plans. Youll have dpe competition. Now hes repeating himself. [ cheers and applause ] i watched him melt down on the stage like ive never seen anybody lets stay focused on substance. Lets talk about your plan. You say the same thing, everyones dumb, hell make America Great again senator rubio, please, please stop. And the lines around the state. Every night. c [ laughter ] it was a beautiful thing. Thats america right there. What a difference between the democratic debates and the Republican Debates. Where you actually talk about policy. The democratic debates are one on one now. And that really does help. I dont think anybody is paying attention to substantive issues there. I think clearly rubio, to his point, had a very, very strong
night. He was on the offensive. What i think he did is what i would do if i was advising anybody to go against trump is go at him as the businessman. Go after Trump University. Go after youve hired immigrants, say you are a shady guy. Shady, shady, shady i dont think that makes ao; though. If you are a trump supporter watching that debate, youre lensing it through thats my guy, hes strong, he was punching back. If you didnt like trump you still dont like him. Had rubio started off that way, we would have a very different what about the devils advocate. I agree with basically 99 of what you said but theres a devils advocate of rubios night which is that he spent all this time crafting an image as someone who is elevated, positive thinking, forward looking, and then toc get into the mud with trump might have hurt that brand. As a branding guy, what do you think . I dont think it hurt him. I think he just added a dimension. It was not okay this is a guy looking into the future, this was a guy who punched back and did not flinch. I was shocked. If you go against trump its
tough to keep your footing but i thought that for the first time trump was in the positionover not even defending himself but at least having to swat those things away. I thought it was a strong night for rubio. I dont think it moves the point on the needle. Heres the thing, though. Im with mark halperin. If you look at the polls, look at the fact hes 20 points down in his home state, marco rubio, you look at how badly most of us think, other than donald trump, how badly most of us think donald trump did in South Carolina. The South Carolina debate was an absolute disaster. It was a Nuclear Meltdown so we thought. Compared to last night. Doesnt matter doesnt matter. Thats why i say it doesnt matter. But this is why it matters to marco rubio. Because rubio and cruz are not just fighting for 2016. Marco rubios losing in the next 11, 12, hes going to lose 15 primaries in a rowc he wants t going to even get to florida. But rubio and cruz have to prove to their donors that they are
worthy in 2016 to be in pole position. Marco rubio cant hear over the next three years. Marco, id give you money again, man, but you had the chance to fight trump and you never did. For marco rubio to be able to raise the money he needs to raise in 2016, he had to do what he did last night. I doubt it will move the polls for him that much, maybe a little bit. But heres another thing, too, willie, if it gets him ahead of ted cruz by instead of half a point like, say, one, two, three points he can go into 2020 going, you know what . I took on ted cruz, he had more money, he had a better porti organization and i beat cruz in then he starts naming the states. Because these two too guys are young, theyre in their mid40s. How olds marco . 44, i think. Wow. This will be incredible for him. So in if 2020 hell be 48
years old. Hec had to do this because we were saying, his donors were saying, the writers were saying why is he scared of donald trump . He proved last night even though it wont make a difference hes not scared of donald trump. And if he is going to be the future of the Republican Party which hes been called by Time Magazine he has to prove to be the future of the Republican Party by punching back. What party . Thats the question. But if you talk to him, hes not giving up. He believes if he gets in a one on one with trump theres a way. You may disagree its not that i dont disagree, it goes back to data, willie. It goes back to every super tuesday poll. Hes down in all 11 super tuesday states, hell probably lose 15 in a row and he has to go to florida where hes down by 20 points. If hes 0 for 15, 0 for 16, he doesnt run in florida. He may be governor in 18 and run for senate again. It brings up the point of why didnt they do this type of
attack against trump months and months ago. I couldnt help but think you remember 2008 Hillary Clinton the inevitable candidate and everyone is barack obama, go after her, inc the fall of 200. And it took actually chris dodd to go after her in that debate, on illegal undocumented citizens drivers licenses in new york for her to finally get the glean ripped off of her. So now youre wondering if they had done this back in september or october, would it have made a difference . No. You dont think so . No, i dont think so. Trump was not coming ive got to say this again, donny. If any debate performance was going to hurt donald trump it would have been South Carolina. It would have been South Carolina. But that was too late. We went back to september. If you just for the first time out of the box were watching that but hes stronger since that debate. If you were watching that debate you would say wow, rubio is the guy and trumps not a viable candidate. Youre coming in now lensing it
through trump winwinwin. Theres so much equity in him right now. Theres so much built in gravitas. People are finishing his sentences for him. Its different. But if you watch last night fresh you would say rubio was the guy. Butc too little too late and its not going to happen. We put up a story yesterday about how these campaigns didnt even put up Research Files to get trump over the summer because they assumed he would go away. Last night was a research debate. They could have done that months and months ago had they prepared. Sam makes an interesting point which is i think most people thought donald trump was a passing fever of some kind and they felt like were not going to go through this, were not going after him and by the time everybody woke up he was on his way ive never seen more people with who with more experience in journalism and politics sit here in shock and sit here kind of with their pants down because they didnt prepare. Not literally. Well, i hope not. Theyve come back on the
other side angry. And theyre angry. Very angry. Mark halperin and kristen, we have to get kristen in. Lets go back to the bloomberg polls again. Give me a quick rundown of super tuesday Southern States. Talk about how massive Donald Trumps lead is there. Hes leading in the horse race 21c over rubio and kwlou a cruz who are basically tied. Voters dont say hes most conservative but they still like him. They rank him on a range of issues, strength, electability. It shows the difficulty these candidates will have in defining him. As strong as rubios performance was in some ways last night, the way you take someone down in a debate is to have a single frame to say heres why this person is dead. Rubio threw the kitchen sinke d enin various different frames. This guy who has new york values, who isnt seen as the most conservative is still the
dominant figure. So a lot of what they went after him last night on is hes too liberal. Well, thats been priced into the stock for voters again the most conservative part of the country. The other thing in our poll is one on one. We tested trump against rubio, trump against cruz, the sort of conventional wisdom was well, if only they could get him one on one and trump leads both rubio and cruz one on one, suggesting that even if the field winnowed before tuesday trump would be in a strong position. Kristen,c weve got donald trump winning the last three races. Hes getting momentum behind him and hes going into the area that we have said around the table would be the strongest. Hes a jacksonian. He seems to be a jacksonian and hes going into the heart of sort of jacksonian democracy in the deep, deep south. And its going to be very hard for marco rubio or ted cruz or john kasich or ben carson or anybody to get those people to turn away from trump. I think those twoway ballot tests that mark just talked about are probably some of the most interesting of the questions in that survey because the idea here is that folks have been saying, look, youll have to have either marco rubio or ted cruz step aside, make way for the other and thats the only way you take down trump at this point. And i think whats so fascinating about last nights debate performance is that you may not have a lot of trump hard core supporters turning away from him. I agree. If you like trump, you probably still like him after last nights debate. Whats responsibility that ac t of polls have shown if a cruz drops out of the race some of those cruz folks go to trump instead of to rubio. If rubio drops out, some of those folks go to trump instead of cruz. Last nights debate performance may have prevented people from switching from a rubio and cruz to a trump. If you were looking for someone who projects competence, if you were looking for somebody who projects i really can win, i think thats what made last nights debate so interesting. You may not have pulled away people who already like trump but you may have said, look, if you dont like me at least vote for the other guy who is not trump. I think thats whatbi making things interesting. If you look at the polls in texas, the last two polls ive seen come out of texas, one had cruz up by 15 but one only hand cruz up by one. If cruz wins texas by one or loses texas, thats a big problem. Trump is getting the nomination. Everybody has to grow up and deal with that. [ laughter ] its jeb bush says the man who said we needed a trump ban on the show three months ago. Well what im saying youre growingc up. No, no. You saw what the democrats play book is going to be and you paint one image trump is a lying sleaze. Just put him on the defensive. If im advising trump, id say
thats what you have to watch out for. If im advising hillary i say thats straight where you go. And rubio did all those things last night. Too little too late. If you want to know to the story of trumps success, go to the second line of the bloomberg poll. Do you believe trump is a committed christian . 12 . Yet he won evangelicals in South Carolina. He won evangelicals in nevada. People dont really care about the specifics of who he is. They love his style, they love his brand. Thats the way you cut into the style and brand. Thats the case. Its the same thing with mark. Mark halperin, youre saying they know hes liberal, that hes the most liberal candidate in the most conservative part of the country, theyre still voting for him and i want to show you in a very, veryc conservative state in the republican primary marco rubios home state of florida. This kind of goes follows up on what kristen was saying. Everybody assumed when jeb bush jumped out of the race that all of his numbers were going to marco rubio. Well, they didnt. Donald trump got a lot of them. Hes at 44 in rubios home state where hes a sitting senator. Thats a quinnipiac poll. I think they dismissed that poll but theres also a pp poll that came out yesterday that actually had trump at 45 . So real uphill climb for marco rubio, despite a really good debate performance last night and i would be shocked if he went into the florida primary without a win and didnt drop out of the race to maintain his viability. You cant lose your home state by 20 points. We have a lot to get to. We had such an incredible day incredibly long day yesterday. Back from washington, did the show, went down to South Carolina, incredible interview with Hillary Clinton. Was she asking for me . She was not asking for you ac all. Shes coy that way. Security was. It was extremely wideranging. It went from fun to dead serious. And then speaking of great
performances, your band last night at prohibition, you have incredible musicians. Theyre great. People need to come see this. Its an awesome band. I dont know how you did that. Whats the cover charge . Why didnt you ask me . Its free but for you its like 100. You were out performing with a ninepiece band. Why didnt you ask me to play the triangle. Can you bring your triangle next thursday . Do they serve food . It was you guys are good. It was packed, it was kind of crazy. You can watch it on periscope. Theyre incredible musicians. How many them . Nine, right . You have a horn section nine