our current president is one, and he said how do we get rid of them, kevin madden. that is deeply disturbing. >> sure. and i think it's a comment that a lot of people would disagree with. i disagree that that's reflective of views within the party. so i think one of the things that i think was great about last night's debate was you saw on that stage ten other candidates that if they were asked that question they would have confronted it and they would have -- and they would have answered it very, very differently. and that's one of the things great about last night was that so many of the other people in our party were on display they were talking about policies. they were talking about issues that matter. they were talking about their vision for the country. because of that, all of the republican voters out there who obviously would disagree with that one voter who made that statement are going to have a great choice of candidates, a great array of candidates to choose from. >> bob, i want to move on, but i want to ask you quickly. donald trump, his campaign has s

cupp and kevin madden. how did this preliminary debate set the stage for the main event about to begin. >> the news out of the debate was lindsey graham on national security. i think that will set a policy discussion up for many of the other candidates in questions about what we've done on national security with iraq and also what we're going to do to take on some threats we're facing with isil and some of the unrest in syria. so lindsey graham came out the big winner in that sense and will shape the tone for the debate in the later one. >> the tax on donald trump, they were pretty ferocious in the first few minutes. will he have to respond in the first few minutes coming up? >> i wouldn't put it past him to take his time for something bobby jindal said in the beginning. that's keeping with trump's personality. i don't know what kind of trump we'll see tonight. i've heard he may be softer. i don't know that side of him, personally. we'll see. i think it was interesting that rick santorum in particular said,

. >> let's talk to our kevin madden, joining us along with gloria boring ger, michelle kosinski. kevin, what do you make of this? >> a lot of people are pointing to john boehner's emotional response while the pope was speaking yesterday, creation the throng out on the west front of the capitol yesterday. and if anybody who's worked with john boehner would be able to tell you that john boehner is an emotional guy is not news. he is somebody who wears his heart on his sleeve. he's somebody who treats staff like family. and is also somebody who's a very committed catholic. seeing all of that really didn't -- i didn't think it was much news. what i did find was news is when john boehner was asked about the historical significance of that moment and saying that this topped all other days that he'd ever had working in the congress. this is somebody who's been there since probably the early '80s. that, i think, had a tremendous -- that made me stop and think. and then when you hear this news today, you recognized the profound impact of the pope addressing the congress had on john boehne

joining us is a former debate preparation manager for president barack obama and also kevin madden who was the debate manager for mitt romney, and so, tell us, now, what do you see going into the debate tomorrow night? >> well, with the primary debate where there are many, many debates and many, many propositions, and i think that when senator obama was running in 2007, he found that getting ready for the multiple candidates debates one of the most frustrating and difficult things in the experience, and participating was more frustrating, and you have a a two opportunities, and grand total of four minutes, and you don't know how it is going to go and what the flow is going to b and the preparation is largely coming into the segues of what you want to say, and selecting the the three or four sentences in hoping that you will score. >> and a key issue, and let me bring you in, kevin, how hard do you go against the republican front-runner donald trump? >> well, nott in a way that invites donald trum of the do what he does best which is to punch and counter punch. craig is right, that in t

it does not say it. >> chloe is back with me, maria, kevin madden and ben ferguson. the point donald trump always makes when he is questioned about his lack of policy specifics, is that if it wasn't for him, that we wouldn't be talking about an issue, it wouldn't be an issue in this campaign. maria. >> that's just not true, though, don. we've receive how the immigration has been a huge issue in the past several presidential campaigns and, in fact, it has been a hiej problem for the gop in 2008 and in 2012. like donald trump, they went way to the right. they went way to the extreme. just talked to john mccain who did a 180 on the legislation that has his own name on it. mitt romney talked about deportation. >> let me ask you this, any of you, did you -- you heard the speech tonight, right? did you hear the cheers and he applause he got when he mentioned immigration and building a wall and people cheering usa, usa, and screaming. i have never heard anyone in the republican rally around the immigration issue like that. did you? >> but those are the same shouts that happ

madden and cnn national political reporter maeve reston. great to see all of you. what did you say about the intellectual quotient? >> not since howie mandel. that was exactly what i said. >> and we'll continue now. so donald trump has said that he will play nice, but he's a counterpuncher. he's going to hit you if you hit him. >> right. >> he just spoke with david brody of the christian broadcasting network. and one of the most interesting parts is when brody asked him about his tone and will he tone it down? kevin, listen to this, and then i'll get your take. >> what i think maybe i can sometimes tone it down, when somebody hits you, you can hit a little bit less hard. at the same time, that may be the kind of thing that the country needs because we have to hit back hard. we have to hit hard because we're not going to have a country. >> i could maybe tone it down a little bit. do you expect donald trump to tone it down tonight? >> no, i don't. if i were advising trump, i'd say, look, let's do what trump does really well because that's wha

i want to bring in manu raju, and gloria borger, and also kevin madden, our cnn contributors, and now, manu, can you explain to us, what is so important about that vote that he woke up saying that for the good of the institution and the house of representatives that he needed to quit. >> well, wolf, this started in the end of right before the august recess, there was an effort by representative mark meadows from north carolina to vacate the chair, and what that is essentially means is that a vote on whether or not to keep john boehner as speaker. what we know, wolf, there are 25 republicans who are going to be voting against john boehner, and they did it in the beginning of the year, and what they were hoping to get is more than 29 republicans to vote against john boehner, and if they did get more than 29 republicans, then boehner would need to rely on democratic votes to keep his job as speaker. and now, that would have really undermined him, his standing among the republicans in the conference, and in addition to that, we have been hearing for weeks about how the fact that boehner h

we have kevin madden and ana navarro and dan pfeiffer, former advisor to president obama. that was pretty interesting to see bernie sanders go to liberty university. and he was talking there about racist principles being the founding principles of the country. he struggled, obviously, more than clinton has to connect with black voters. do you see him making sort of an appeal here in trying to kind of right some of that? >> reporter: i think first going to liberty university was a smart thing for him to do. democrats should not leave any plate on the table. court and go across the country and look at every vote. barack obama 2008 most certainly would have done. i think for bernie sanders to have any chance to win the nomination, he's not going to have to do a little better with african-americans but a lot better. he has a ton of work to do if he wants to build the coalition that barack obama used to beat hillary clinton in 2008. >> this is interesting, kevin, in part because liberty university is where ted cruz chose to launch his campaign. this is a bastian of certainly co

i'm joined now by three of our cnn political contributors kevin madden and ana navarro. their republican strategist peter binard joining us. also he writes for the atlantic media. guys standby. i want to take a quick break. we want to discuss what we just saw. lots of political news coming up reaction to the debate last night. stay with us. you tuck here... you tuck there. if you're a toe tucker... because of toenail fungus, ask your doctor now about prescription kerydin. used daily, kerydin drops may kill the fungus at the site of infection and get to the root of your toe tucking. kerydin may cause irritation at the treated site. most common side effects include skin peeling... ...ingrown toenail, redness, itching, and swelling. tell your doctor if you have any side effect that bothers you or does not go away. stop toe tucking... and get the drop on toenail fungus. ask your doctor today about kerydin. when you're not confident you have complete visibility into your business, it can quickly become the only thing you think about. that's where at&t can help. at&t's innovat

coming up reaction from kevin madden and also with us, old friend and colleague paul stenhouser political director and anchor. paul, let me start with you. you were there at the trump event tonight. this question about muslims, again, from your vantage point, what was the crowd's reaction? >> you know, sarah said i think since donald trump didn't react, it was pretty quiet in the room at the time and he glossed over it and moved on. he wanted to move quickly to the next question so the crowd didn't have a chance to react. >> what do you make of trump's response to the question of muslims because, i mean, not to put too fine a point on it, some may claim this is an over exaggeration and trump was trying to be sarcastic and say look, we need this and try to move on from it. should he have actually though confronted the premise? >> oh, anderson, i think what -- yeah, i think that kind of confrontation probably would have served him well. donald trump is not a polished politician in that sense. i think a lot of the energy that he has and a lot of his crowds he doesn't necessarily try to confr

kevin madden, andy smith. thanks. >>> still to come. trump's momentum has him leading and front and center in tonight's debate. we'll look at the poll numbers that got him there. next. >>> we are just hours away from the main event. 11 presidential hopefuls packing the debate stage, testing their knowledge of foreign and domestic policy. donald trump, of course, front and center. but how did the former reality star get such a prime spot? tom foreman has more for you. >> reporter: what a difference a debate makes. before the last debate, if you had measured the strength in the polls of all these candidates by height, this is how they would have stacked up. yes, donald trump was in the lead, but not by a whole lot over jeb bush or scott walker. and everybody was kind of in the game here. everyone thought, at least many people did, that that debate would cut trump down to size. but look what happened after that debate. he rose even higher. so much so that even bush, for example, did not really change position much. he fell relatively furth

and here with me, we will have the c nshnn political commentat anna navarro and kevin madden, and i want to start with the top two, donald trump and ben c carson, and you can see that since ben carson jumped up in the polls, donald trump is taking jabs at him. >> i'm a dealmaker, and i will make great deals for the country, and ben can't do that. he is not a dealmaker at all, and that is not his natural ability at all. >> it is ridiculous to think that the only thing that i can do is neurosurgery, and i find it quite humorous when people think that he is an idiot savant that i only know neurosurgery, and they don't know what it takes to be a neurosurgeon. >> and carson's rise is the expense of other established candidates and not just donald trump, but do the attacks show that he is getting nervous about ben carson? >> oh, trump's attacks show that he is being donald trump. that is what he does. he attacks anybody who attacks him sh him, and he attacks anybody who is close to him at the polls. what he doesn't do which is a smart thing to do is that he does not attack those who are barely

joining me now, republican strategist kevin madden and former obama adviser, dan pfeiffer, now a cnn analyst as well. two separate things here. these videos the campaigns are putting up for free and then the advertising out there. i want to start with the videos first because we saw it with marco rubio, the super pac backing carly fiorina, with jeb bush yesterday. they are trying to frame their candidates in a certain way heading into this debate, dan. >> i think what every candidate wants, for every campaign is to go viral. if you have a video that is catchy and can get shared on social media, that's free publicity. the rubio video is the best of the cycle. >> it was terrific. >> it shows us a side of him we haven't seen. it shows the political skills everyone talks about that i don't think we've seen a lot in this campaign. it was smart. i thought the fiorina video was also a great video. >> the carly fiorina super pac ad showing the many faces. i was surprised that rubio was at the 1985 game where dolphins beat the bears in that great season. let's talk about the paid media. jeb b

. >>> talk over everything 2016 with kevin madden and van jones. thanks for being here. mark leibovitz has a new profile of donald trump in the "new york times" magazine. talks about his vision for america, and the presidency. he said this, quote, jimmy carter used to get off of air force one carrying luggage. i used to say i don't want a president carrying his luggage. it was interesting about this, i when pope francis got on the plane and carrying his bag, i noticed it, because we 15 rarely see it. obama doesn't do it bush didn't do it, et cetera. do americans agree with trump? i think is the question. do they want their presidents to not have bags? >> well, maybe not. maybe so. listen, i thought, first of all, the pope just set a completely different standard. he made all of us take a step back. his humility, ability to connect with people was extraordinary and part was his willingness to carry his own bag. the problem with donald trump is that everything becomes this big show. i don't know if americans want presidents carrying bags or not, i know they don't want a sh

. >> let's talk to our kevin madden, joining us along with gloria boring ger, michelle kosinski. kevin, what do you make of this? >> a lot of people ar

also joining us, kevin madden, and van jones. a cnn political commentator. just quickly go around. van, your thoughts on who stood out? >> well, carly had a tremendous night. she'll be up five points. i just think that she wanted the ball, she fought for the ball, she got the ball. jeb actually humanized himself. he talked about his brother, stood up for his brother. not necessarily politically smart. he talked about hi mom and he talked about his desire to do well for the country. i thought jeb bush actually humanized himself tonight. rubio put in a good performance, but carly was the standout. >> s.e. cupp. >> i agree. it's really hard to meet very high expectations. i thought she beat them. she came in with incredibly high expectations. she performed incredibly well, she was quick on her feet. i like what she did. every opportunity she got, she laid out incredibly substantive policy points. they weren't even asked for and she went -- she knew how valuable her time was. she wasn't going to use it with platitudes. she was going to use it with policy points that i don't think any o

. >> i'm wondering, i was talking to kevin madden who was saying earlier this is so much more "american idol" and not c-span. i'm thinking about that, a lot of this is about name recognition. so everyone has known who donald trump is, so that's reflective in the polling. if carly fiorina who with this new ad out so many people are looking at her right now. she's polling ahead of marco rubio, who has more name recognition. how is all of that shaking out? >> you look at this and you look at trump, ben carson, carly fiorina and basically this is the product of 20 years of increased polarization in our politics. everybody is going to his own corner. everyone is saying, whatever that guy on the other side says, i'm against it. it's produced or really dysfunctional government and frankly people are sick of it. on the right and left, you see bernie sanders. drawing big crowds. you see these nontraditional candidates who i ain't part of this washington elite, i ain't part of the political establishment who are really getting some appeal. the fact that trump and ben carson are so different in de

we have our commentators, former obama adviser, we have kevin madden and also with us, cnn senior washington correspondent jeff zellny. >> i'll go first. >> all right. you go first. what did you hear? >> chairman priebus has a couple things he can't control. he can't control who gets into the race and he can't control what they say. what he can skrol whether or not he buildings the infrastructure and he can build a negative frame around hillary clinton, he can build a negative record about the state department, expose that she is under investigation for potentially mishandling classified e-mails. on that, those two metrics, whether or not they're building an infrastructure, they're doing a fantastic job and that's all they can do. >> i think what the republicans are doing, trump in particular, they're doing an amazing job to help the dnc. >> there are reams of footage that we'll have, the horrendous thing that donald trump has said about immigrants in this country. about republicans agreeing with him. at the end of the day, our primary process has been helping us. your primary process is als

cupp, dan pfeiffer, former senior adviser to president obama along with kevin madden and anna navarra. trump gets a chance to flex his muscles aboard "uss iowa" people are saying on national security, almost a dress rehearsal for him going into the debate tomorrow night. i can't see trump doing a dress rehearsal. i feel like he's been doing this celebrity candidacy thing for so long that he doesn't really need that. i think it's trump being trump. one of the things i think he's doing tonight is taking this card off of the table where so many of the other candidates will say, donald trump's not serious on national security, he doesn't have any policy platform. during the debate, he's going to have rhetorical touch stone he can go back to anytime any of the other candidates or the moderators press him on national security or foreign policy issues. >> people are saying this is for jeb bush really coming down to make or break night tomorrow night. i know you like jeb bush. you support jeb bush. you're friends with him. he's not doing well in polls now. what does he need to do tomorrow nig

. >> cnn commentator kevin madden and cnn commentator paul. he is a senior adviser to a prohillary clinton superpac. thank you for being here. >> good morning. >> let's put up the stunning numbers, again. this is the first time it happened again. look what happened since july. ben carson has 8.5%. he's had a medeoric rise. >> these are three outsiders. the stylistic differences are interesting. dr. carson, you know, he said ak centric things, he's not bombastic. he's got bedside manner. he's a premier neurosurgeon. this is one of the greatest doctors ever. it might be that iowa republicans are trying to figure out do they want the bombastic trump or soft spoken carson. they don't want anybody from this zip code where i'm sitting. they want to capture the building, but nobody that has been in washington before. >> not political job experience. i want to put the numbers back up. 56%, if you look at iowa, 23 plus 23 plus ten, i think that equals 56%. they don't want anyone with job experience. you may hear establishment type, republican donors mi

madden. we have installed you both already in simi valley. and there are the podiums behind you where all the action will be happening tomorrow night. great the see you both. >> great to see you today. >> that is right. let's debate. >> this is a new poll of the the presses, just came out this hour. donald trump is at 27%. that is not the surprising part. ben carson is the surprising part. he is at 23% when in august the same poll, similar, he was at 6%. and also carly fiorina has surged up to 4% from zero. #tags. and the jeb hash babush has gon from 13% to 6%. who will you be keeping your eyes on tomorrow night? >> the outsiders without a doubt. it is pretty clear what people are saying in all of these polls is they are interested in the outsiders. they are interested in trump, in ben carson. there is some interest in carly fiorina. they have had it with the professional political class. i think that is the real message. i'm even wondering if this sort of one-two thing keeps going with trump

you know, kevin madden, the fact that donald trump is center stage, he's leading, he's the republican presidential front runner leading in all the national polls among republicans, leading in all the key states whether iowa, new hampshire, south carolina, you go on and on and on. >> yeah, symbolic of this campaign. >> and the fact he's center stage is a major statement, as far as donald trump is concerned. >> it is and that's his strength is throughout this whole entire campaign he's the one setting the tone and tempo. all the other candidates react to him. we'll see if this debate placement is similar to that. >> you see dr. ben carson is to his right. jeb bush to the left. they are also center stage because they are second and third in effect in most of the national polls. s.e.? >> all three of them, i think, are going to get a lot of attention with carly fiorina. i put the four of them sort of smack in the middle of most of the scrutiny. carly has to have a very good night after really clawing her way onto the main stage. donald trump, all eyes on him and jeb bush has to have a goo