early state polls aren t being included in the criteria for the debates here. when i asked chairman priebus about it, he said he does want to see more early state polling incorporated into the debate criteria down the line. the rnc doesn t have official control over that. ultimately it is the network s decision. but that would be what priebus would suggest in the future. kasie, thanks. hallie jackson is following donald trump s campaign. what are you hearing about his biggest target tonight? will it be ben carson? reporter: potentially. yeah. i think you will see trump maybe go after a lot of the folks on this stage as he has been doing, even in the last 24 hours. we saw that tweet storm against marco rubio, who may be another target. ben carson, obviously trump has been talking about this for awhile, talking about carson in the same breath that he says he likes dr. carson, he s a nice guy, he s also picking up this line of questioning about carson s anecdotes about his life story.
guys, you know, then i don t think that the chinese and the russians are going to be too worried about you. that is an effective line that he just had. fantastic. and he is making fun of the republicans, and it is as if he wanted the do the debates hosted by the republicans, and he didn t want to do a debate with fox news when he was running for president in 2007 and 2008, and so he has his own history there as well. sure. they have the opportunity to decline this debate before it happened, and the fact that they spent most of the time talking about the questions being unfair, i think that some of them were a little tough, and they should be able to handle that, because when you are going in to negotiate with the other foreign leaders, it is not a fair debate criteria that you negotiate ahead of time. well, angela, it is clear that the washington post and the huffington post and all sides of the media all basically said the i same thing that the biggest losers were the cnbc
trump. i like the debates. i think debating is a good thing itself. you can ask about anything you want to hillary had only softballs all night long it was like this. here. hit this one over the park. the meeting to take about changing the debate criteria will convene by barry bennett. what has happened with this letter? it pyred that most of the candidates were on board and now they re not. about three or four that sent their own letter. i really don t care. learn earlier about what the format is so we can all plan and do a better job. one of us is going to win the
some big changes in the race for the white house with ben carson extending his lead on donald trump and jeb bush trying to prove that he has staying power with a brand-new slogan. kristin fisher following the latest developments for us from washington. good morning, kristin. reporter: good morning, heather. yeah, so the protocol for future republican debates is becoming increasingly uncertain. most of the campaigns are moving forward with their plan to bypass the republican national committee and negotiate directly with the host networks. but trump s campaign now says they re going it alone. quote, as we have for the previous three debates, the trump campaign will continue to negotiate directly with the host network to establish debate criteria that will determine mr. trump s participation. so trump may be leading the charge in that regard, but he s no longer leading the republican field. for the second time in less than two weeks, ben carson is beating tru trump in a national poll.
chafee. i respect him for having the nerve to run. i was wrong about a couple of these guys. i thought walker would be tough. i thought he had all the tickets. i thought rand paul had a uniquely strong following. he would always have 25 points in any contest. doesn t have it. donald trump and ben carson have threatened both of them to pull out of the next republican debate on the 28th hosted by cnbc unless their demands are met. they submitted a letter to cnbc saying their opposition to the debate criteria. we won t participate if it s longer than 120 minutes including commercials and doesn t include opening and closing statements. this isn t the first time trump has threatened to pull out of an interview or a debate. he has done it in the past when he doesn t think the reporting is fair. trump wants an opening and closing statement. i agree with him about the two hours.