Debate Setup News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

against, but they were just potted plants. >> i mean, it's not like they actually participated in the debate. no disrespect to the cpd maturity. >> and ultimately your audiences to television audience exactly. >> it's really the only one that matters when you're in the hall, your perception of actually how it plays it's really muted. all right, thank you very much to our panel. thanks to all of you for joining us on this incredibly consequential day. i'm kasie hunt. don't go anywhere. cnn news central starts right now say the words. >> debate de in america, this is special coverage o...

The commission on presidential debates. five days ago, this set and this crew were in farmville, virginia. everything that you see tonight has been moved here from the vice presidential debate setup, tested, rehearsed, beautified in that short time span. i hope those of you in the audience here at washington university will look at your programs and study those names that are listed there under the production crew. they are without pier, in terms of all the aspects of this extremely complicated production that will be carried for 90 minutes live, nationally and internationally. the audio light...

Correspondent jim acosta is inside the debate hall here at the wynn hotel. walk us through the debate setup. >> reporter: you got it, wolf. and to continue the gambling parlance you would say, hillary clinton is holding the best cards right now if you're looking at the poll numbers. that explains why. i'll show you what the debate stage looks like right now. she has the center position. as you can see, those aren't the candidates up on the stage. those are some fill-ins standing at those podiums as our cnn crews go through the motions of getting this debate stage ready for tuesday night. you c...

>> reporter: it's going great. john, what we're seeing is sort of debate prep, debate setup in action. you can see all the scores of cnn employees behind me setting the stage for tuesday's debate, the first democratic debate of this season. you can see the fill-ins for candidates standing at the lecterns on stage right now. there's a lady standing where hillary clinton will be standing in that middle lectern position. she's obviously the front runner this campaign. you talked about the other candidates who are in this race and where they'll be positioned on stage. the candidate obviously that ...

For jeb bush. >> i don't know there is another option, jim, particularly with this debate setup. when you're going to be a foot and a half, two feet apart, and jeb is going to be on one side of donald trump, ben carson is going to be on the other side, if he is insulting you and calling you names while standing a foot and a half from you, how do you not respond? you can't just ignore it. so i think what you've seen from jeb is that for a long time, certainly at the start, he thought, okay, is this serious? could this be possible? if you asked me -- i've known him for a long time -- jeb would m...