our question is what is his closest rival, ben carson, going to do about him? might surprise you what he s doing on the trail right now actually, not on the trail right now. putting a pause on campaign events and he s on a book tour. let s discuss this with carson s business manager, a very close adviser, armstrong williams, nice to see you in person. let me read you a quote from the national journal, a well-known writer, jim garrity, writes, why would any serious campaign for president decide to stop campaigning at a moment? will he skip any campaign events next year for the paperback version? where did it come he suspended douglas watts said you i just spoke with doug watts before coming on this set. he was misquoted by an abc reporter. fund-raisers, rallies fund-raisers, yes, but public
the house committee denies the allegations. he said, because i do not know him and do not recall ever speaking to him, i can say for certain he was never instructed by me to focus on clinton nor would he be a credible person to speak on my behalf. we have a lot to talk about now. here to break down what to watch ahead of tomorrow s cnn debate, cnn national political reporter maeve reston, jeff zeleny and senior cnn political analyst and editorial director of the national journal ron brownstein. great to have all of you with us this morning. let s start with hot off the presses poll numbers. these came out six minutes ago. let s start in nevada. jeff, al start with you. let s look at the numbers. these are democrats choices for who they would like to vote for. the numbers for clinton are impressive. she gets 50% of those democrats in nevada, sanders 34%, biden if
taken care of. saddam and gadhafi, do you think things would be more stable? of course it would be. with us, joining us from los angeles, cnn senior political analyst ron brownstein, editorial director at the national journal. and cnn global affairs analyst, kimberly dosier. you re experts in this. we ve heard this argument coming from foreign policy experts who do say if you had the strong men in power, the middle east would not be the mess it s in today because of the power vacuum created by u.s. policy. start with you, ron. is it true? well, i think you re dealing with, you know, a series of bad alternatives and i think donald trump as you say is not the first person to say this. i think he s saying it from a very different angle than we usually hear this line of argument. it fits in what i would call his defensive nationalism. look at his bills on immigration, talking about building a wall. look at his views on trade where he s talking about higher tariffs. essentially he
people? i was recruited by a number of fin people and finally said i ll give it a shot. maria, a democratic strategist, tara worked on the hill as communications director for a house republican member, peter is a contributing editor your the atlantic and the national journal. thank you all for being here. you worked on the hill, so let me begin with you. what go you think? does jason chaffetz have a shot? he said it s all about the numbers, all about the math and mccarthy can t get 218 votes. as of right now chaffetz is right about that. mccarthy doesn t have 218 votes which is what he d need. some republicans flat-out aren t going to vote for kevin mccarthy as of right now. because of the benghazi comments? the freedom caucus and some of the tea party folks were thinking they were going to give him a chance but weren t sold on him. there was still room to move around here. the benghazi remarks just blew the lid off of everything. everyone is pretty upset on
biggest vulnerability. interestingly, the national journal s tim alberta has an interesting take on tonight s debate. he writes, the quote is, the most important person at tonight s debate won t be donald trump. it will will be hugh hewitt, one of the debate s moderator. trump s stumble on the radio sh show. hewitt says i m going to pose tough questions on policy tonight. you think donald trump is going to be ready for that? we ll see. i would actually argue at the last debate trump got some incredibly tough questions from the fox moderators and he ended up giving back as much as he was actually taking. as far as just the questions that were aimed at him, all tough, all fair, very good questions. but he gave it back. and i would it will be interesting to see the answers that he has for tonight. from hugh hewitt, from the moderators, everyone who really