the criticism that what fox is doing with this debate structure is worthy of criticism and that that is a part of the story of how this debate is happening tonight, who isn t there, how it was done and the manipulation of it, is that as relevant as what happens tonight? not as relevant but it is important. let s keep in mind, it is not just fox news, this is something that the rnc decided. they decided to front-load this and sort of push everybody into one news organization. that news organization then outsourced its decision making to pollsters. i mean, what everybody expected was that there was going to be a fairly orderly kind of sort of shoveling together of the traditional candidates. then donald trump steps in, not so much donald trump, but there s an anchor out there he represents and that s representative of him rising in the polls. now they have to contain that and that s the thing to watch. how much of the real populist anger that s out there, that accounts for the rise in
deploying all kinds of tactics to prepare and to shake off their nerves. after a couple of political stumbles this week you could take dollar for dollar, although i m not sure we need a half billion dollars for women s health issues. reporter: jeb bush will spend the morning going to mass. and scott walker is kicking off his day at the wisconsin state fair before hopping a flight to ohio. but the man who was overshadowing them all, donald trump is laying low. he s expected to land in cleveland this afternoon, debate and depart the very same night. his rival campaigns say they don t have much interest in taking on trump on stage. a strategy that would be high risk. if you attack donald trump, and look what happened to lindsey graham, not even in the debate. look what happened to rick perry, not even in the debate. if you attack donald trump, he s going to come back at you twice as hard. reporter: candidates like chris christie and scott walker are hoping for a chance to take
hillary clinton to task on issues from the iran deal to her support for planned parenthood. you can bet every candidate on that stage is looking for a breakout moment. but for now, they are keeping their jstrategies close to the vest. now as for that 5:00 p.m. debate, senator lindsey graham is calling it the happy hour debate. that s where we ll see him, carly fiorina, texas governor scott perry and a number of other candidates. many are looking forward to a debate without donald trump on the stage. everyone starts drinking at 5:00. people are taking the idea. have you been seeing in the media how many drinking games are being developed around these? i m not kidding. i believe you. we ll break down what we can expect tonight in the sober debate. our cnn political analyst and correspondent for the new york times is here. and a political commentator who is a political commentator at new york one. maggie, you say that you do not
trump, how much of it is going to find its way into the debate? because the rest of the folks, professional politicians, they are aware that the anger is out there. they know that donald trump himself is a problem and that his supporters are a challenge. maggie, beyond donald trump, who are you keeping your eyes on? jeb bush. that s the single other person who you need to be keeping an eye on. he had a very rough week. jeb bush has gotten better as a candidate over the last seven months and was an unofficial candidate before june when he declared but basically been a candidate since december. he has not gotten better. he makes a lot of gaffes that really worry his supporters, his donors. on monday in a candidate forum he was pretty listless. he was not very on his feet. he had a very tough answer still and a hard time answering a question about his family. what is it about that, by the way? is he not practiced or game for sort of the blood sport that is campaigning? what do peopl
at the point where this is a significant factor in our domestic security that we are ignoring. is that going too far or is there something to it? not at all. people are trying to figure out if there s a linkage between the incidents. whether it is terrorism, isis or these kinds of cases, the linkages are a mental health issue related to the culprit. and then there s access to weapons. and so the challenge for the mental health issue, the violence, is either we ignore it or in a lot of cases we incarcerate people. and i think what you re starting to see is this is not a public safety problem but a health problem. and getting the public health agencies more resources to deal with this and then lower the public safety threat. but chris, one of the challenges we have with the costic gun debate is that it is viewed as political these days. it is not political but a public