shields, but we re fighting a very politically correct war. but we see that happening in ramadi. with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. they care about their lives, don t kid yourself. mr. trump they say they don t care about their lives. you have to take out their families. you have to take out their families. what do you think of that strategy? well, i m not sure what mr. trump has in mind, whether he s saying that we should kill the kids of isis members. you know, i will say this. isis is using people as human shields in areas in iraq, for example, that are being encircled by iraqi forces. they don t want the civilians to flee. they are threatening to kill civilians, trying to flee because they want these civilians as human shields. and it has been, i think, a very difficult dilemma for the administration to figure out just which targets to go after and what risk of civilian casualti
hughes, chief political correspondent for usa radio networks who has also spoken favorably of mr. trump in the past. it s great to see you all. a lot to get through in these polls, as always. scotty, first to you and the big headline that we re seeing here, donald trump, double digits. ben carson, he s falling from being neck and neck with donald trump just a month ago. the big change a lot of folks will point to is the fact that he s had controversy surrounding him that has dinged his number. why do controversies impact ben carson s support but not donald trump? because he s definitely a man who has controversy around him at every turn. i think the key is and this is what, when you look at all four of the people that are leading is about weakness. and when you see ben carson, he surges when he shows strength. and when he starts to backtrack or apologize for some of his comments, you see his numbers start to fall. and that s one thing you don t see with trump. whether he s right
that s a year away from the election. i think what really needs to happen in the republican party is less of a focus on donald trump and more of a focus on how do you consolidate the vote around donald trump? if you look at the quinnipiac poll, bernie sanders has almost the same amount of vote in the democratic primary that donald trump has in the republican primary. but we re not talking about bernie sanders because that other vote is consolidated around hillary clinton. so i think as you see rubio and cruz start to surge, carson, because as scottie said, he s kind of become an uncertain candidate, and uncertainty translates to weakness. as you see rube crow and cruz begin to surge, we re going to find one or two of those candidates that begin to consolidate that vote, and then we ll have a real race and we ll see if trump s candidacy is sustainable. it s been sustainable despite people saying very similar to things you re saying all summer long. that s right. van, to you, let s
including bush. what a surprise that is after all the money he spent on this campaign so far, particularly in advertising. what do you make, though, of then the head-to-head, these hypothetical head-to-heads, depending on what side of this people land on, they care about the head-to-heads or they don t care about the head-to-heads. in this latest poll, this is not moves that donald trump is going to be happy about. that s right. you look at these polls over the last couple of months, and sometimes, you re right, people dismiss the head-to-head numbers because it s such a hypothetical, right? before you did see trump in the lead in some of these hypotheticals against hillary clinton. and now it looks like she is doing much better in these hypotheticals. she s doing much better in winning these hypotheticals almost against everyone. for a time you had carson doing better in terms of hypotheticals. but again, i do think those are some of the numbers that people don t pay much attentio
number, and he could dream to be bouncing around there. that s true. my point is you still have a bunch of republicans out there who now they know trump s in the race. they ve got a bunch of weak candidates. they still have not gone to trump. i think trump may have a ceiling we re not talking about. i want to get you i get really excited, scottie, and you can weigh in on this, whenever we can throw up a pie chart on tv. i though that drives people crazy. let s put this up and i ll get your take really, really quickly. this goes to the money spent by the campaigns on ads. i want everyone to squint at your television and find the slice of the pie that is donald trump. yeah. you can t see it, actually. it s that small. but then look how much jeb bush has spent. what is the deal here, bruce? you ve dealt with media strategy for the rnc. what is the deal here in this election where numbers the number of dollars spent towards ads is not equating to bumps to changing of the numbers in t