because we know he s going to take incoming fire from other candidates, and we know he likes to punch back and punch back hard. but there s some concern that if that s all you do, you don t appear presidential enough to be the nominee. michael smerconish, if we take trump at his word and he wants to be nicer and tone things down, do you see this man for two hours taking blow after blow and not hitting back? no. it doesn t seem to be his nature, although i think self-deprecation, some humility on his part would go an extremely long way. because we would all perceive it to be so out of character. do you think he could do that? i don t know. especially not for nearly three hours. it sort of seems like a contradiction, humble donald trump. i think that s something that could appeal to evangelical voters. that s where ben carson is catching up and surpassing him in a place like iowa. i think if you were an evangelical voter in iowa you want to see a little bit of
because people feel the system is so broken and somehow trump is above all that because he s spending his own money. but in a democracy to not have respect tore your politicians and people who have given their life you said there s a lot of anxiety. it s a big deal. these people are putting themselves forward. i still in a democracy think you have to have respect for people who want to become politicians. when they become a dirty word as they have now, it shows we re upside down in our democracy as a system. speaking of the front-runners here, donald trum i was reading some of the notes you told one of our producers. he had an interesting observation as someone who is a presidential historian of what you think when you watch donald trump on tv. what was that? well, you know, i think the thing is that what he s doing is he s able to undo as people have said all the normal wisdom about not attacking your opponents in a time when people don t like attack politics, saying things that
tonewise, they couldn t be more different. he says he doesn t want to get into a gladiator fight. but the american people want somebody who will stand up for who he or she believes. tapper wants a debate. how does he do that? the most fascinating thing about ben carson going to his ral rallies, a lot of people in the audience liked trump at first and moved to carson because they liked that quieter, more thoughtful persona he has. it will be interesting to see if he can capitalize on that. have good lines and look tough against trump but keep the people moving from trump to him. i think that s his challenge tonight. thank you all so much. i love this. we should postgame tomorrow. thank you so much. please make sure to tune in tonight for the first of the two debates, the first one beginning at 6:00 eastern and the main event with 11 candidates squeezed on that stage 8:00 eastern right here on cnn. coming up next, the rules.
the wild card for me is the governors as a group. i think the most interesting subtext going into this debate is the collective collapse of the governors. it you look at some of the latest polls if you add up all the governors they poll collectively fewer points than ben carson alone. jeb bush, kasich, huckabee. before this all ramped up in the debate season, a lot of governors were saying executive experience is a necessary qualification to be president. i m wondering if they will once again circle the wagons on that or if they ve abandoned that completely with the rise of donald trump. it s the wrong night for those guys to cite their resumes. nobody wants to hear about it. again, eight out of ten americans wants change in washington. final thoughts for you. i think we would be remiss not talking about ben carson. i think it will be a fascinating juxtaposition. he is standing next to donald trup am. they could not be different.
how many times people say his name. with the plane behind the stage, they re going to be saying reagan a lot more than they did in cleveland. if that s on there and this is a drinking game, we re all done early tonight. like gone within the first 20 minutes. reagan or aavocado. i couldn t make out the word. in addition to the bingo game, there s a guy tom brady. this is pretty interesting. tom brady and donald trump have known each other for a long time since tom brady was a judge at one of trump s look how you light up. talking about tom brady. he s a winner. he s known trump since 2002 when he was a judge at the debates. he s got to make america great again hat in his locker. brady was essentially asked today if he endorsed donald trump or if he would vote for him. listen to the exchange. speaking of liking winning, you have the trump hat up there. he loves winning.