being pro choice. >> donald trump is a lot different guy than he was in 2016. >> he used to be right on foreign issues, now he's getting weak in the knees. >> they're at a debate tonight. i don't think anybody talking about it. >> two months before voting begins in iowa. good morning, everyone, and welcome, there are only 67 days left until the iowa kaucaucuses. >> last night, five republican presidential candidates faced off in the debate stage to make their case to voters for the third time in a row. donald trump was not on the stage. during the debate, trump held a rally miles away, calling the whole thing a waste of time as he continues to dominate in the polls. >> it's time for the republican establishment to stop wasting time and resources trying to push weak and ineffective rhinos and never trumpers that nobody wants and nobody's going to vote for. they're not watchable. the last debate was the lowest rated debate in the history of politics, so therefore do you think we did the right thing by not participating? >> jeff zeleny live in miami, good morning, jeff. great to have you. the candidates spent a lot of time on substance. i thought it was an important debate on substance, on key issues, but also attacking each other. >> reporter: good morning, phil and poppy. of course it was a deeply substantiative conversation. this was the first debate since the october 7th attack in israel. of course it changed the shape of foreign policy which really had not been discussed much in the campaign up until now. but the question is in this furious race for second place, is an academic exercise or are voters open to changing their minds. on a raucous debate night in miami. >> change your mind, that's allowed but don't lie to the people. >> reporter: florida governor ron desantis and former south carolina governor nikki haley scrambling to become the leading alternative to donald trump. desantis blaming the former president for presiding over a party that endured major defeats tuesday in virginia, kentucky and ohio. >> he said republicans were going to get tired of winning. we saw last night, i'm sick of republicans losing. >> haley, also imploring republicans to turn the page. >> i think he was the right president at the right time. i don't think he's the right president now. i think that he put us $8 trillion in debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for that. >> reporter: two months before the first votes of the republican race are cast, the winner may not have been on the debate stage, but rather a few miles away. holding a competing rally in hialeah. >> i think they're at a debate tonight, nobody is talking about it. >> reporter: trump holds a commanding lead in the primary fight with time running out to slow his momentum. still, a fierce exchange broke out on china, the middle east, abortion, and more. with south carolina senator tim scott pushing his rivals to support a national 15-week abortion ban. >> i would challenge both nikki and ron to join me at a 15-week limit. it is in our nation's best interest. >> reporter: yet voters send a clear message on abortion rights tuesday night in ohio and virginia. haley called for a consensus. >> we don't need to divide america over this issue anymore. >> reporter: desantis pointed his finger at the antiabortion movement for failing to make its case. >> you got to do a better job on these referenda. of all the stuff that's happened to the pro-life cause, they have been caught flat footed on referenda and losing the referenda. >> reporter: the debate was the first since hamas attacked israel october 7th. all candidates pledged support for the u.s.'s long time ally. >> finish the job once and for all with these butchers, hamas. >> america is here, no matter what it is you need at any time to preserve the state of israel. >> reporter: haley and scott placed blame for the brutal terror attack squarely on iran. >> we need to be very clear eyed to know there would be no hamas without iran. >> you have to cut off the head of the snake, and the head of the snake is iran. >> reporter: some of the biggest flash points of the night came between haley and vivek ramaswamy who accused her of rushing to war. >> do you want dick cheney in 3 inch heels. >> reporter: she wasted little time pushing back. >> i'd first like to say they're 5 inch heels and i don't wear them unless you can run in them. the second thing that i will say is i wear heels, they're not for a fashion statement. they're for ammunition. >> later with tensions inflamed and a discussion over tiktok and china, the attacks grew personal. >> in the last debate, she made fun of me for joining tiktok, her own daughter was actually using the app far long time. you might want to take care of your family first. >> leave my daughter out of your voice. you're just scum. >> former new jersey governor chris christie sought to rise above the fray, defending the u.s. for taking an active role in israel and ukraine. >> let's remember the last time we turned our back on a shooting war in europe, it bought us just a couple of years, and then 500,000 americans were killed in europe to defeat hitler. this is not a choice. >> jeff zeleny, thank you, and joining us 2024 presidential candidate, former new jersey governor, chris christie, we appreciate your time this morning. i want to start with part of your closing message last night, which i thought was striking. i'll tell you why in a secondmsecond. take a listen. >> you can't truly say you love america unless you're ready to open your heart to every american. i'm going to open my heart to every american as president, and return honesty and integrity to the oval office. we deserve and should accept nothing less. >> i had a republican official, not as a criticism but after your closing official text me and say it's a great general election message or a gop primary message from 2000, unfortunately, it's 2023. that wasn't a criticism, that was a kind of oh, well. what's your response to that? >> i thought the whole idea was to win the 2024 election, and defeat joe biden and to show who, in fact, could do that in this field. when you watched last night, the juvenile back and forth between vivek ramaswamy and nikki haley, the nonsubstantiative answers from ron desantis on almost every topic last night, looked like he had memorized all of his answers and was relieved when he could get them out and get them done. those are not the kind of people who are going to beat the democrats next november. and the fact what i wanted to show everybody is what it looks like to be able to take on the democrats directly and to be able to give them a new look at what the republican party should look like. everybody complained about how much we lost on tuesday night yet they continued the same rhetoric and the same behavior on the stage last night. all four of them continued the same, and the fifth one, ignoring the republican electorate. ignoring independents at a rally and another place in florida because he's too much of a coward to get on the stage and defend his record. these folks last night still said nothing about the fitness of donald trump for president of the united states. they dance around it. i didn't dance around it. my first answer right out of the box, and i'm not going to dance around it now to the convention. >> to that point, there's endless discussion about poll after poll after poll. one of the most striking numbers in the "new york times" sienna poll, what would happen to his republican support if donald trump was convicted and imprisoned. you said this last night, take a listen. s >> i'll say this about donald trump, anybody who's going to be spending the next year and a half of their life focused on keeping themselves out of jail or the courtrooms cannot lead this party or this country. it needs to be said plainly. >> governor, do you think trump will end up convicted here? >> yes, i don't think there's any doubt anymore that in the january 6th case, he's going to be convicted. i want everyone out there to remember something, the first witness against donald trump in that trial that starts the day before super tuesday is going to be mark meadows, his former chief of staff, who is cooperating with the federal government. he's going to testify that donald trump was lying from election night forward and committed crimes right in front of his eyes. this is not some rogue democratic prosecutor, and this is not a product of the two-tiered justice system that donald trump likes to talk about. this is one of the founders of the freedom caucus, and his former chief of staff who he referred to as the next james baker is going to be sitting 20 feet from him in a courtroom and telling a jury that he committed crimes against the united states. he is going down. the walls are closing in, and he knows it. that's why he won't show up on the debate stage, and i would say to all of your viewers this morning, look, you want to have someone who's going to actually take on donald trump, instead of the other four on the stage right now who's going to dance around the problem. go to chris christie.com this morning, donate a dollar to make sure i'm still on that stage in the next debate in december because i will take him on directly. >> governor, you said last month if trump skipped this debate, continued to skip debates, you would follow him around the country, ensure that you two had a face-to-face, back and forth. when does that phase of your campaign start? >> look, we tried to do it when he went to minnenew hampshire t register for the ballot, his campaign closed down the state house, wouldn't let anybody in unless you were on a trump invite list, which i would not be. and would not let anybody near the building, unless you were a sycophant hold ing a sign and cheering. he's a coward. we're going to make sure we confront him. wait until you see the look on his face that day. folks need to understand this. he has spent the last couple of weeks every day in a courtroom, trying to explain why he defrauded banks all across the country with his investments in new york. he's going to wind up having to pay a substantial amount of money there, maybe up to $250 million, and so if you wonder, does donald trump care more about the country or his own money, it's where he's been, he's been in a courtroom defending his money, rather than out on the stump going after joe biden and defending our country. >> to follow up real quick, do you have kind of a mapped out plan for running into him, for confronting him to what you were saying there, or you're going to figure it out in the weeks ahead? >> phil, what we have to do is look at what his schedule is, and he doesn't usually release his schedule weeks in advance. it is going to be a week-to-week adventure for us. i can tell you this, ron desantis and nikki haley have no interest on getting on the same stage with donald trump. they won't mention his name except for a passing glance last night, and still, they're the ones that raised their hands in the first debate, and haven't come back since to say they would support him even if he's a convicted felon. to me that's disqualifying, if one of them is the republican nominee for president that you won't be seeing the hand raised video from joe biden and the democrats every day of the general election campaign, you're dreaming. >> governor chris christie, it was a substantiative debate last night, another one next month. we appreciate your time, sir. thank you. >> great, phil, thanks for having me. hollywood soon to be back in action, a tentative deal struck between the actors and the studios. newly unsealed court documents allege that meta ceo mark zuckerberg ignored proposals from executives, aimed at mental health. those details ahead. lights, camera, action as sag-aftra reaches a tentative deal with major film and tv studios, after four months. that means about 160,000 film and tv actors could return to work as soon as today. our senior media analyst, reporter of axios, sarah fisher joins us now. it took a long time. what do we know about what they got, the actors? >> poppy, they had a huge wage increase. this might be one of the biggest wage increases that they have seen in four decades, and landmark provisions around artificial intelligence. this was the big sticking point at the end of negotiations. essentially for the first time in the actor's guild history, there are provisions around how studios can use ai to replicate actors making this a landmark deal. >> i also want to talk to you about a story of significance surrounding mark zuckerberg, the ceo of meta. there are these newly unsealed court documents, and they allege that zuckerberg repeatedly ignored proposaled bs by high ranking executives aimed at improving mental health on the platforms. the e-mails are part of the ongoing lawsuit filed by massachusetts last month, and one of the initiatives that they allege that zuckerberg vetoed is 2019. it would have disabled those so-called beauty filters on instagram. if you look at the complaint, zuckerberg argued there was a demand, and he didn't see any data to suggest they were har harmful. meta executives sounded the alarm on well being concerns. they recommend the company address issues of addiction, self-harm, bullying, this was the summer of 2021, and months later, these documents say, a response came from the cfo who tersely responded that staffing was too, quote, restrained to meet the requests. these are the allegations in the suit, but they're significant, are they not, especially given how much control zuckerberg has of this company? >> they're very significant, poppy, because they're starting to lead to other lawsuits. you saw just a few weeks ago you had over four dozen, you know, u.s. state attorneys general join together and say that they're going to sue meta for this exact reason. they're also significant because if you think about facebook's user base or instagram's user base more so, it's extraordinarily young. the future relies on young users. if lawmakers are going to push restrictions, that's going to impact their business enormously. >> can you also speak to zuckerberg's power, the power structure within facebook and how that's different than a lot of companies that might have some more checks? >> absolutely, i mean, not only is he technologically speaking in terms of voting, the sole controller of the company, but what these documents show is he has unilateral control over small decisions over things like how we're building products for kids. that was the thing the whistleblower testifying in the senate yesterday wanted to call to the attention of members of congress, essentially saying, look, i flagged these issues. the topmost people at meta, and they themselves were the ones who made these certain decisions. it speaks to the fact that processes underneath them to double check could be over rode easily. >> the guy heading up instagram at the time, we did invite mark zuckerberg on the program, nick clegg, we continue to welcome them if they would like to join us to discuss the issues. i want to read a statement that came from a spokesperson for meta, and let me read you, quote, we have protections to help keep teens safe and away from potentially harmful content or unwanted contact. the complaint is filled with selective quotes from hand-picked documents that do not provide the context of how the company operates or what decisions they have made. we'll keep following this. who came out on top in round 3 for republican presidential hopefuls? we're going to unpack the attacks and the substance from last night's debate. the justice department announces arrests connected to a high end brothel network with a wide ranging client base. those details ahead. >> pick a profession, they're probably represented in this case. (car engine revs) (engine accelerating) (texting clicks) (tires squeal) (glass shattering) (loose gravel clanking) the power goes out and we still have wifi to do our homework. and that's a good thing? great in my book! who are you? no power? no problem. introducing storm-ready wifi. now you can stay reliably connected through power outages with unlimited cellular data and up to 4 hours of battery back-up to keep you online. only from xfinity. home of the xfinity 10g network. we need a 15-week federal limit. 3 out of four americans agree with a 15-week limit. i would challenge both nikki and ron to join me at a 15-week limit. >> as much as i'm pro life. i don't judge anyone for being pro choice, and i don't want them to judge me for being pro life. when we're looking at this, there are some states going more on the pro life side. i welcome that. there are some states going more on the pro choice side. i wish that wasn't the case but the people decided. >> that was nikki haley, you heard tim scott grappling with the republican party's stance on abortion, after sweeping the election losses. the party front runner, donald trump, held a rival rally about ten minutes away in hialeah, florida. with us now, seth herndon, former seeker of the democratic party, christine quinn, and scott jennings. good morning, scott, republican at the table, let me ask you about last night and abortion. did we get any closer to the republican party writ large finding its way? >> you still see the party trying to sort out whether it needs a national position, which is what tim scott was arguing for or nikki haley arguing for more of an acceptance of the state-by-state regime, which we're putting in place in some of these elections and state legislatures across the country. she did have an interesting moment with scott, i thought. he's calling for this national plan, and she said there's got to be 60 votes for the senate for anything. i think everybody believes that, but the question is can you run a presidential campaign on not having a national unified position as a party. the democrats are far more unified on this than the republicans, so i think the division is going to continue to exist honestly, and for the candidates who are running for iowa like desantis, they've got to be here. i think haley may be playing more for new hampshire, gives her a little more latitude here to soften the rhetoric where she expects to make her stand. >> i think one of the dchallengs on this issue was really played out in tuesday's election. if the republican party goes, you know, harder to a more narrow, one standard, like the 15-week, they're going to lose voters, and they're going to lose voters in places like ohio where i bet they never thought they were going to lose voters. so this issue, you're right, i think you need to be unified politically in the primary. but then if they have that tough position, it's really going to hurt them in the general. as we saw on tuesday. so they're really kind of stuck. >> i mean, the republican party has to have a tough talk with its activist wing. the part of the party that has pushed them to embrace the most ardent antiabortion stances is clearly out of line with the majority of the electorate. i think that's what's playing out here on this stage. you have various degrees of willingness from those candidates to really kind of speak to those activists directly. speak to some of the evangelicals, nikki haley was doing to basically say we can't go that far on this issue, and i would as as donald trump has done, create distance from them. as i talked to the susan b. anthony wing, they're pushing candidates to embrace the national standard because they actually agree that not having a stance is hurting the party. so they would actually say the kind of evangelical, like the most ardent wing, the group of people who see this as a human rights issue, they would say you need to be talking about a 15-week standard. not having a kind of clear consensus position