not be based on the way you have treated me. but i wouldn t do that. randi kaye watched the debate with a group of mostly undecided republican voters in florida, all of them women. she joins us from key biscayne. so what did they think? what did you hear from them tonight? reporter: they re a pretty punchy group, anderson. they had a lot to say, a lot of thoughts on this debate. and they certainly spent a lot of time talking about trum. and certainly about that sound bite that you were just mentioning. but we re here at the moment of marili cancio. and you said that you were a little bit surprised by trump s performance tonight. how do you think he did? i think he did well for trump. it was very entertaining. we had a lot of fun watching him. you know, it s funny. most of us here, he s not our favorite, but he says how it is. he s not a politician and he s very appealing to a lot of people just like dr. carson is. but even as a woman you said you would probably still vote for t
women in the past. you know, eric ericsson wrote a thing about his comments to groups of evangelicals at a values voter forum and saying that many evangelicals maybe had written off trump based on his comments about not asking god for forgiveness. so i m wondering if as the days go by he s sort of alienating various blocs and that s all going to add up or, to jeff s point, to the regular rules not apply and his popularity continues to grow? the answer is we don t know. and that s why this is so fascinatin fascinating. what we did see, though, is his shallowness. it was revealed. it was revealed in a lot of his answers. there were no substantive answers. when the questioners pressed him he couldn t come up with but he hasn t given a lot of specifics before and that hasn t hurt him. and i m wondering if people think, well, you know what, there were people who made the same criticism of ronald reagan and said you know, what he had a vision and other people filled in the details. a
i deal with these people, like he s got them in his office, he s calling them from his plane. but the fact is which is a line he s also used about veterans, by the way, that he s meeting with them repeatedly and that they re crying to him. which may be the case. but that is something he has said also. the thing we ll see what happens with trump. i still believe he s a summer fling. and as we ve talked about before, four years ago everybody from michele bachmann to herman cain to santorum to newt all led the polls at some point and then they kind of drifted off. amanda, i asked you about anyone else you thought didn t do themselves any favors. anyone else on that stage who stood out? yeah, i thought rubio no, amanda. sorry. i thought you were asking me. i do want to revisit the trump issue for a second because i think his first two big answers, number one, the fact that he pledged not to run or excuse me, not to support the republican presidential candidate. if you
spoke with reporters in the spin room. listen. well, i really enjoyed it. it was something i ve never done before. and everybody tells me i m winning every one of the polls. i m very happy about that. it s an honor. i thought their questions to me were much tougher than to other people, but maybe i expect that. but i really enjoyed the evening. he was quoted by a time magazine reporter as saying he also thought some of the questions were unfair. we didn t get that on camera, though. that s according to a time magazine reporter, who just sent that out over twitter. a lot to talk about. joining us some new and important voices. republican strategist rich galen. also amanda carpenter, former communications director for senator ted cruz. and donna brazile, democratic strategy exist vice chair of the dnc voter project. rich, you ve been involved in republican politics a long time. everyone s looking to see what donald trump would do tonight, if he would do anything to hurt his lead.
of. we have to end obamacare, and we have to make our country great again, and i will do that. thank you. back it w. our political commentators. jeffrey lord, former reagan white house director. van yoenz, former obama administration official. i m wondering, jeff, as you ve had some time to sort of think back on the two hours, you still think trump we just saw that group in iowa, all of whom were very enthusiastic about trump going into this. none of them seemed as enthusiastic after. what interested me about that group, the woman who spoke up, what she was concerned about was when he raised his hand. and i would just suggest this really is a problem in the republican party because you ve got a whole group of people when you listen certainly to conservative media, quh you talk to a lot of people in the base, who just feel basically what s the difference? if they nominate one of these other people, will there really be any difference between that