when it comes to when it matters the most. joining me now is representative barbara lee, a democrat from california. e.d. demoyne. a senior fellow at the brookings institution. julie pace, chief white house correspondent for the associated press. and michelle bernard, president of the bernard center for women politics and public policy. lovely to have you all here. nice to be back in d.c. julie, do you think i got this right, do you think that drafting strategy is what s going on with a couple of those candidates? i think you nailed it perfectly. for rubio and kasich it actually is a great strategy right now. they re looking at this large field. they have a solid base of support at this point. they have enough money to compete for months if this race goes on for quite a long time. they don t really have an incentive to go after trump directly if they know that bush and walker and others are going to do that. they need someone to do it. it just doesn t need to be them right now. thi
the other guy who s doing a peculiar form of drafting is ted cruz. where his idea is some day trump will collapse or might collapse. i m going to pick up his supporters. so he doesn t say a cross-word about trump. he always said nice things about him. saying, guys, trump supporters, i m here if something happens. more the wing man than the drafting. it also occurs to me part of why we love nascar, north carolina, is the inherrant danger that always exists. also, it just strikes me that part of whatever strategy is going on in the gop primary, there s a stoking of fear. a stoking of this sense of danger. and especially around, for example, the iranian deal, the idea that somehow the president is not keeping us safe as a nation. and i m wondering if you can respond to that. you know, preying on fear, which is a terrible emotion, to me, is just fundamentally wrong.
jihadist. being muslim doesn t mean you hate america. being muslim doesn t mean you want to blow up the country or it disqualifies you from being president. secondly if you want to be the leader of the greatest nation in the world, and even appear or pretend that you care about our constitution, why not put that person in their place and say this is not the america we stand for. maybe giving trump a little too much credit. you have to remember where the trump running for president the birther movement. so he is not almost to expect that he would i think is giving him a little too much credit for what his real goals here probably are. he embarrassed the country. he absolutely could not renounce that guy. first of all, good for you, it s so important, whenever this comes up, people say, why what could be wrong with having an arab or muslim president. that s important. but secondly, his base are the people who believe what that guy believes. significant part of his base.
after you even hear mr. trump during that moment say, oh, better energy tonight, good job, jeb, right? i m wondering, should jeb be drafting or does he need to attack trump? i don t think he has a choice. hope every nascar fan in america now becomes a fan of the this isn t the only political show i know talking about drafting. although it s funny, a conservative friend of mine, henry olsen, a great political analyst, probably because he s not from carolina, also talked about drafting. he was talking about horse racing. he agrees with you. i think this is a classic thing in campaigns. you saw it, for example, in a governor s race, in california, where there were two front-runners and this was when gray davis was running. they just went at each other. the voters get sick of the attack and they say who else is up there. so i think there s a classic political thing here. but those guys don t ever want to gain by going after trump.
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