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New Day
Trump on Cruz: 'The Bromance is Over'; Donald Trump Weighs in on Debate. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired January 15, 2016 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Who the hell knows if you can even serve in office?
[05:58:21] SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Since September, the Constitution hasn't changed. But the poll numbers have.
TRUMP: Go out. Get a declaratory judgment.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I hate to interrupt this episode of Court TV.
DR. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am very happy to get a question this early on.
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You cannot give Hillary Clinton a third term of President Obama's leadership. I will not do that if I'm the nominee.
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How do you think it went tonight?
TRUMP: Well, I think great. Everyone said I won.
Certainly, I don't see him as my biggest competition.
How do you pick a nominee that, in a year from now, doesn't have the right to run?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who will share the record $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got money. Yes, I do!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Their identities remain a mystery.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. it is Friday, January 15, 6 a.m. in the east. Put your dukes up. Trump versus Cruz did not disappoint. A very heated first Republican debate of the year. The birther issue loomed large, the Texas senator coming strong. Trump coming back, reminding what New York values means in this country in the shadow of 9/11. Their rivalry leaving little room for other candidates to make an impression.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So coming up, Donald Trump talks to NEW DAY about how he fared last night and his battle to win Iowa. But who were the big winners and losers in the debate? Let's begin our coverage with John Berman, here to bring us the key moments of the debate. We love your post-debate analysis. What have you got?
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, it wasn't about the key moments as it was about the key players. It was Donald Trump and Ted Cruz taking up so much oxygen. Gerry Seib for "The Wall Street Journal" wrote this morning, "The problem with the other people on the stage is they were the other people on the stage." So much focus, and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz delivered in a way they have not before.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[06:00:14] BERMAN (voice-over): In the race between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the current Republican frontrunners, two things now abundantly clear: it is truce off and game on.
CRUZ: Back in September my friend Donald said that he had his lawyers look at this from every which way. And there was nothing to this birther issue.
BERMAN: Cruz mocked questions Trump is now raising about the fact he was born in Canada and whether he is even eligible to run for president.
CRUZ: Since September, the Constitution hasn't changed, but the poll numbers have.
BERMAN: Trump acknowledged, yes, that is part of it.
TRUMP: Because now he's doing a little bit better. No, I didn't care before.
BERMAN: But in their most pointed exchange in this race so far, he said there is more.
TRUMP: Here's the problem. We're running, we're running, he does great. I win. I choose him as my vice-presidential candidate, and the Democrat sue, because we can't take him along for the ride. I don't like that. OK?
CRUZ: Well, listen, I've spent my entire life defending the Constitution before the U.S. Supreme Court, and I'll tell you, I'm not going to be taking legal advice from Donald Trump.
TRUMP: You don't have to.
BERMAN: The battle moved from Canada to New York in the charge from Ted Cruz that Donald Trump represents what he calls New York values. CRUZ: Everyone understands that the values in New York City are
socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage, focus around money and the media. Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan. I'm just saying.
BERMAN: Trump responded, uncharacteristically somber, by invoking September 11.
TRUMP: We rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched. And everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.
BERMAN: For the most part, the other candidates focused their fire on the president...
CHRISTIE: This guy is a petulant child.
BERMAN: ... and Hillary Clinton.
JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She's under investigation by the FBI now. If she gets elected, her first 100 days, instead of setting an agenda, she might be going back and forth between the White House and the courthouse.
BERMAN: Though Chris Christie unleashed on Marco Rubio for dodging a question on entitlements.
CHRISTIE: You had your chance. You blew it.
BERMAN: And Marco Rubio, with just a few minutes to spare in the debate, did some unleashing himself on Ted Cruz.
RUBIO: Ted Cruz, you used to say you supported doubling the number of green cards. Now you say that you're against it. You used to support a 500 percent increase in the number of guest workers. Now you say that you're against it. You used to support -- you used to support legalizing people that were here illegally. Now you say you're against it. You used to say that you were in favor of birthright citizenship. Now you say that you are against it.
BERMAN: Cruz fought to respond.
CRUZ: At least half of the things Marco said are flat-out false. They're absolutely false.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PEREIRA: What a night and a fabulous recap from our John Berman.
Well, after the debate, Donald Trump talking to CNN's Dana Bash in the spin room about tangling with Ted Cruz, Cruz bashing his New York values and Trump's own winning performance.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: How do you think it went tonight?
TRUMP: Well, I think great. Everyone said I won. Every online poll has me winning from Drudge to "TIME" to everybody. And so I'm very happy.
BASH: Do you see Ted Cruz as your biggest competition right now?
TRUMP: No, not really. I mean, we're going to see what happens. But certainly, I don't see him as my biggest competition. I see him as competition. Certainly he's competition, and others are competition. All smart people up there.
BASH: Were you surprised at the way he turned the whole birther issue around and asked about your heritage?
TRUMP: And I think he made a mistake, because, you know, first of all, he insulted 20 million New Yorkers. I think he made a lot of big -- a lot of mistakes tonight. I think it was maybe not a good performance. But we're going to have to see. But as far as his, you know, his whole birthright and all, which is a very, very big problem.
And I've been watching your reporting on it. You have a lot of lawyers that are saying that he better get himself checked out, because he's got a problem. I'm not bringing a lawsuit. But the Democrats will definitely bring a lawsuit. And if there's a 5 percent chance or even less than that that he could lose, it's a problem.
How do you pick a nominee that, in a year from now, doesn't have the right to run?
BASH: What about what Ted Cruz has said, which is you didn't bring this up until recently?
TRUMP: Because it didn't make any difference to me. I don't care.
First of all, I didn't bring it up, Dana. I wasn't the one that brought it up. "The Washington Post" asked me a question, 1 of 20. And it was a question. I gave them an answer. I said you have to be sure. I'm not sure.
BASH: That is true, but now you talk about it pretty much every stop.
TRUMP: Excuse me. You asked me. I didn't bring it up.
BASH: I've been to your rallies.
TRUMP: Excuse me. I didn't bring it up. And I didn't bring it up over there either. Because it was brought up by, I guess, Neil.
BASH: What do you -- how do you think that the New York thing is going to play? I mean, obviously, people in New York...
[06:05:07] TRUMP: I think he made a terrible statement when he insulted 20 million people. I was there during this death and destruction. The World Trade Center came down, two 110-story buildings, and I was there. And New Yorkers were the bravest people that I and many others have ever seen. I was down there the day after.
And I want to tell you, I've never seen a sight like it in my life. Thousands of people killed, two massive buildings down.
And the way New York came back from that and rebuilt and did it with grace, I mean, with just absolute grace, you can't make a comment like that about New York.
And the whole world was watching. Your viewers were all watching, but the whole world was watching. And I thought it was just an amazing thing. It was the greatest attack in our history, greater than Pearl Harbor, because at least there, they attacked the military. Here they attacked civilian in a building.
And I think it was a terrible thing to insult 20 million New Yorkers.
BASH: On the question about his loan that he got from his wife's bank, Goldman Sachs, do you think it's a nonissue, as he's saying, because it was "The New York Times" who first reported it?
TRUMP: Well, you're going to have to figure that one out. That's a different issue. I mean, that's something that's very easy to -- they're not making it a nonissue. He's had a million dollars. He got it from Goldman Sachs.
Don't forget, Goldman Sachs loaned him money. When Goldman Sachs asks for a favor, you think possibly he's going to do it for them? I think so. So that's the problem right there. That's why I'm self-funding. I'm putting up my own. I'm not borrowing any money from Goldman Sachs. I put up my own money. I'll put up a lot. I'll be putting up -- I'll be putting up probably $30, $40 million before the primaries are over.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How much so far, you think?
TRUMP: Probably 6, 8. Yes. We just bought about -- we just bought about $6 million worth of ads.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your money?
TRUMP: All mine, 100 percent.
BASH: Thirty or 40 is what you expect. What's the ceiling? What's the ceiling?
TRUMP: We're 35 million under budget. Because I thought by -- I probably January 1 we'd be in for $35 million. Maybe even a little bit more. And I spent literally nothing. So I'm 35 million under budget.
We just bought a lot of ads. We went out to the three states with, primarily the three states. We bought a lot of ads. And we're going to be doing that for about five or six weeks.
BASH: If you take it the whole way, you could have the potential to need to spend more than that. What's your ceiling?
TRUMP: I'll spend more than that. I have unlimited. I have a lot. I have unlimited. Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CUOMO: I -- that last line, politics or no, wouldn't you love to be able to say that?
"Hey, I have to talk to you about what this is going to cost."
"I have unlimited."
CAMEROTA: Whatever it is. I have unlimited.
CUOMO: Unlimited. Donald Trump, ladies and gentlemen.
John Berman is going to stay with us. Let's bring in Maggie Haberman, presidential campaign correspondent for "The New York Times," and Matt Lewis, conservative commentator and senior contributor for "The Daily Caller."
Big moments of the debate. Yes, in full disclosure, Camerota, Cuomo, those names are not an accident. We are Italians. You've got New Jersey. You've got New York in the house. Some Pacific northwest time as well. That may count.
However, this moment about New York last night, Matt Lewis, Maggie, John, we're going to want your takes on it. It is the first time, maybe, we saw Donald Trump dealing, not just from a position of strength but a position of sympathy. Listen to this moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CRUZ: Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal or pro-abortion, or pro-gay marriage, focus around money and the media. Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan. I'm just saying.
TRUMP: That New York is a great place. It's got great people. It's got loving people, wonderful people.
When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched. And everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Matt Lewis, I have to start with you, because conservatives have been saying this for years. We've heard New York is Sodom and Gomorrah. New York does not represent America. How did you think Donald Trump handled that last night? MATT LEWIS, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: Well, I have to tell you, I
think Ted Cruz had this interesting line. Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan. It was actually a joke. It was a play on words. It references what Donald Trump has been saying about Cruz: not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba.
I don't think most people in the audience got that, so I think it fell flat. It came across as sort of mean-spirited.
This was an example where Donald Trump had the moral high ground. He was right factually. I think that Trump came across eloquent there and also on the -- sort of on the right side.
But I do wonder how it's going to play in places like Iowa and South Carolina, where I think that Ted Cruz's argument that New York values are not conservative values probably resonates.
[06:10:05] So nationally speaking, I think Trump wins that skirmish, but in terms of the early states, maybe Cruz did pretty well.
CUOMO: Was it a little bit too cute by half, Maggie, then? Not just because of that conservatives line that Matt rightly points out. But when you make New York about the metaphor of what this country suffered in 9/11 and the humanity of it, doesn't that trump politics on that particular issue?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Certainly did in that moment. I think what Cruz was going for was a play on the evangelicals line. I think most people were not familiar with that line. So it didn't work. And Cruz went with the, you know, "I'm just saying," which is what got some laughs.
But I do think Trump was not just sort of sounding humble, emotional and eloquent. That's not something we usually equate with Donald Trump. So I do think it was strong. I think Cruz looked like a typical politician, which was in contrast to what we had seen earlier in the debate when he really, really turned a fight against Trump pretty effectively.
CAMEROTA: Here's the cover of "The Daily News" from New York this morning. John, let me show you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(IMAGE OF NEWSPAPER WITH HEADLINE "DROP DEAD, TED")
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: There you go. Your thoughts?
BERMAN: My thoughts are the New York primary is not very important in the Republican race right now. And, you know, it's a risk that Ted Cruz clearly thinks is worth taking.
He walked into this last night. Donald Trump said exactly what he has said over the last two days last night on that stage. Those were not new lines.
HABERMAN: No, no.
BERMAN: Ted Cruz, who makes a lot of calculations -- this guy doesn't do anything accidentally -- calculated before last night that he was going to continue hitting New York like he had been, and it was worth it in Iowa and South Carolina.
HABERMAN: Part of the reason I think it was worth it for him, and this is an important moment, one of the first questions out of the gate to him last night was about these loans he got from Goldman Sachs and Citibank. So to talk about and distance from himself and New York was another effective way to deal with that question down the road, too.
CUOMO: And I'll tell you what. You'll find plenty conservatives on Wall Street. And they're in Manhattan last time I checked.
Matt, in terms of looking at the field now, right, John was talking earlier about "The Wall Street Journal" coming out and saying, you know, the problem with the other four is that they were the other four last night. You had Cruz and Trump.
I think they all looked their strongest last night that we've seen in a debate. Do you think the field is now set, that it's Trump versus Cruz and then everybody else?
LEWIS: No. I think it's a three-man race. I think it's Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.
And if you watched the debate last night, it reminded me a lot of a boxing match. I think you had Cruz and Trump, the two heavyweights in the middle of the ring, punching it out. But I think at the end you had Marco Rubio come in there with a flurry of punches against Ted Cruz, jabs, upper cuts. It was -- the funny thing is, Cruz said there were 11 attacks, and at least half of them were wrong. Well, that still means 5 or 6 of Marco Rubio's attacks were right.
CUOMO: So you're saying I've got a chance.
CAMEROTA: Matt, let's watch this. Let's watch the moment where Rubio hit Cruz on his flip-flopping and his Senate record. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUBIO: Ted Cruz, you used to say you supported doubling the number of green cards. Now you say that you're against it. You used to support a 500 percent increase in the number of guest workers. Now you say that you're against it. You used to support -- you used to support legalizing people that were here illegally. Now you say you're against it. You used to say that you were in favor of birthright citizenship. Now you say that you are against it.
And by the way, it's not just on immigration. You used to support TPA. Now you say you're against it. I saw you on the Senate floor flip your vote on crop insurance, because they told you it would help you in Iowa. And last week, we all saw you flip your vote on ethanol in Iowa for the same reason.
That is not consistent conservatism. That is political calculation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: All right. Maggie, let's start with you. That was -- that was an effective laundry list there. How did you think that played out with Cruz's retort, as well?
HABERMAN: I actually -- I thought Rubio by far got the better of that exchange. And it was interesting, because to Matt's point about the boxing match, you saw different people score points throughout the night.
Rubio had not had a great night before that. Chris Christie, I thought, had really got the better of him at key moments.
But Rubio was very well-prepared for that moment. One of the things about Rubio where he is done well in these debates is when his rivals have telegraphed the punch for, like, two weeks ahead of time. Ted Cruz made very clear where he was going for a long time, and Marco Rubio has been trying for a while to make Ted Cruz look like just another politician who conservatives can't rely on. I thought he did well there.
CAMEROTA: John, what was Cruz's response to that?
BERMAN: It was what Matt just said. He said right there that half of those things weren't true.
No, this was a case where the Princeton debate champ got bested by the kid from Florida. I mean, tactically, Rubio waited until the end of the debate. I mean, we all thought that it was over.
CAMEROTA: Absolutely.
BERMAN: Really. They were in overtime at that point. Rubio unleashes when there's no time for Cruz to respond. Cruz was left, you know, almost just staggered there.
And one other thing about what Rubio did on immigration: he showed us, I think, where he's going to take the immigration discussion in the coming weeks. He said the discussion we've had for the last two years, when he supported the Schumer bill, when he was part of the Gang of Eight, it's different than things are now, because now we have ISIS. Now we have security issues. "This is why my position on immigration is different now" and will be different, I think, for the rest of this campaign.
[06:15:06] CUOMO: Now the only extension of the metaphor, Matt, will probably be that it wasn't a boxing match. It was more like a WWE event. Right? Because you can't have more than two people in a boxing match.
And here, you did have moments where it was more than two. But at the end of the night, when you think about governors Christie and Kasich, when you have Marco Rubio and you do have Jeb Bush, someone we haven't mentioned yet, do you see after last night an opportunity, pre-vote, pre-vote because once the vote happens, everything starts to change, where there's a chance to distinguish yourself from that group?
LEWIS: I think it's called the royal rumble when they're all in the ring.
CUOMO: Yes.
BERMAN: You know too much about this.
CAMEROTA: Really.
LEWIS: You know, I really think it's now becoming a three-man race. I think it's Trump, Rubio and Cruz. I really felt like Kasich and Jeb Bush were superfluous last night. Christie did have some shots. I guess he's still in the mix.
But you know, really, it's increasingly -- we always thought there was going to be, like, a libertarian lane and all these different lanes. And it looks like it's an outsider lane that Trump has, sort of a mainstream conservative lane that Cruz has, and then, you know, a governing establishment lane that I think Marco Rubio is going to win. I think that's how it's shaking out right now.
BERMAN: Can I say one thing about that, Matt? I mean, you may be right. But I think the thing that is definitely true is that people like you -- and I'm not going negative on you -- but establishment Republicans desperately want it to be a three-man race. It's very important for a huge part of the Republican Party right now, for Marco Rubio to be a viable alternative to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
And I think that will put a lot of pressure on him to perform well in the coming days, and maybe that's what's part of the step up at the end of the debate.
CAMEROTA: All right.
LEWIS: Absolutely.
CAMEROTA: Matt, Maggie, John, thank you very much. Stick around. We have many more questions for you, including what happens next in Iowa.
CUOMO: Here's a name we haven't mentioned yet today, because Carly Fiorina was put on the undercard last night. But she's going to be here in the 8 a.m. hour, because she had a strong performance. Does she think that Trump or Cruz is the only game in town? You can guess the answer is no, but let's find out why.
CAMEROTA: All right. So the first GOP debate of 2016 is now in the books. Ted Cruz's citizenship getting a lot of play. But do Iowans care where Cruz was born, and does Trump have the ground game to overcome Cruz in Iowa? Seventeen days to go. We'll take a closer look at all hat, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[06:21:12] CRUZ: Back in September, my friend Donald said that he had had his lawyers look at this from every which way. And there was no issue there. There was nothing to this birther issue. Now, since September the Constitution hasn't changed. But the poll numbers have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Ted Cruz unleashing a fierce defense of his citizenship last night in a heated exchange with Donald Trump. The two are in a dead heat for Iowa. Did this debate move the needle?
We're joined again by Maggie Haberman, John Berman and Matt Lewis.
Let me just bring up the latest polls so that we can see what we're talking about in Iowa. Ted Cruz is ahead. He's at 25 percent to Donald Trump's 22 percent. And Maggie, of course, the question is, can he turn out people -- can Trump or Cruz turn out people to caucus? It's what they call the ground game.
Here's some reporting from your newspaper, "The New York Times" that calls into question if Donald Trump can do it. It says, "One volunteer leader enlisted by Donald Trump to turn out Iowa voters has yet to knock on a single door or make a phone call. Another is a 9/11 truther with a website claiming that the 9/11 attacks were a government conspiracy."
What do we know about his ground game?
HABERMAN: The beliefs of the people who should be door knocking matter less than whether they're door knocking at all. And so Trip Gabriel, my colleague, has come up with a lot of instances where people at rallies have their e-mail harvested by the campaign for later use. Several said later they'd never heard from the campaign. That is a problem.
I mean, one of the ways that you do -- now there's two issues with getting out the vote. There's persuasion. Trump has actually done pretty well with that argument. His supporters are pretty committed. And then there's get out the vote. Getting out the vote is not just what takes place on the day of the caucuses.
CAMEROTA: This is experience. And this is where experience comes in.
HABERMAN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: That you have to know how to get them there.
HABERMAN: It's also not a primary. It's caucuses. So there are complicated rules. It's very different. You have to train people in how this works: showing up at the right time, what the process is. There has been some of that.
We're not going to know until election day. History is rife with stories about ground games. And generally speaking, they often have no bearing on what actually comes out. In 2012, Mitt Romney's team very famously bluffed about how great their ground game was. And then we found out on election day that was not quite the case. So we won't know for a couple more weeks.
CUOMO: But an immutable truth is you do not win without a strong ground game.
Now, interestingly, John Berman, when it comes to Ted Cruz, if you talk to his people, you don't hear what you hear from a lot of media, about, "Well, his interest is that he's a real conservative. That's why people like him."
They'll talk to you about their ground game, specifically in Iowa, all day long. They'll draw comparisons with Hillary Clinton and say the only reason she's a prohibitive favorite is because of all the money they put into constituencies all across this country. It's boring for people at home to hear this.
But he's got a super PAC, Ted Cruz. They hired more people than anybody else who are on the ground in Iowa. At the end of the day, for all the flash and all the birther and all the -- you know, the back and forth, does that matter most?
BERMAN: It matters. It certainly matters. And you're right. I mean, his ground game in Iowa is substantial, and it is what people were talking about on the ground there. I was in July -- I was there in July, and people are talking about what kind of game they were seeing from Ted Cruz.
So it can make a difference if it's close.
HABERMAN: Right.
BERMAN: If for some reason there's a Trump wave...
HABERMAN: That's right.
BERMAN: ... or a Cruz collapse even -- and I'm not saying there will be either one of those things -- it matters less. Also matters in this race, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, they're still persistently at 10, 12 percent. Can they hold on with their ground games and their persuasion? Can they hold onto their people, or could Trump or Cruz chip away at that?
CAMEROTA: Now, we've been trying to figure out if Donald Trump's birther arguments are having any impact on the voters in Iowa. So last night Cruz tried to hit back on this -- these birther claims that he might not have actual citizenship or be qualified to -- I mean, obviously he's a citizen. But be qualified to be president.
Here was how he explained it last night in the debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[06:25:09] CRUZ: The end of the day, the legal issue is quite straightforward. But I would note that the birther theories that Donald has been relying on, some of the more extreme ones insist that you must not only be born on U.S. soil but have two parents born on U.S. soil. Under that theory, not only would I be disqualified, Marco Rubio would be disqualified, Bobby Jindal would be disqualified, and interestingly enough, Donald J. Trump would be disqualified.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Matt, what was he talking about there, and was that effective?
LEWIS: Well, look, Ted Cruz is a great debater. And that was a strawman argument. Maybe there are some fringe people out there who are saying that both parents had to be born in America. But the real question is, do you yourself have to have been born in America to be considered a, quote, natural-born citizen?
CAMEROTA: Right. And I mean, the further question is do Iowa voters care about it? Because here's the latest poll that we have. This is from Wednesday. "The Des Moines Register" asked about this: "Are you bothered by Cruz's birth outside of the U.S.?" Fifteen percent said yes, 83 percent said no. So will that change what happens in the caucus?
LEWIS: Well, it's interesting. I wonder if Barack Obama's birth was -- got the same polling, if the numbers would be similar. I suspect they wouldn't.
Look, I think that you could make an argument that, if you're talking about the birther issue, if you're reminding people that Ted Cruz was born in Canada, that hurts him. But once you get past that and we actually go to the debate, I think Ted Cruz won that exchange. And I think he did it by using humor. You know, he had that line about the Constitution hasn't changed, but the polls have.
CUOMO: Right.
LEWIS: To sort of point out that Donald Trump, of course, has an agenda here by bringing it up.
I think Cruz marginally probably won the debate. And I think that was a good exchange for him.
CUOMO: Well, it's interesting. You bring up the president, Matt. You know, the reason that Cruz is having effectiveness in dealing with this is because there's nothing to it, as there was when people went after the president. You could argue there was a lot less to it when people went after President Obama about this.
So he does well with that. He's got a brilliant legal mind. And this is going to be about the law after all. You can file a lawsuit. Doesn't mean you're going to win it.
But then, on the politics point, you said something earlier I want you to double down on. It's a three-man race, Trump, Cruz, Rubio. And yet, you had governors Christie and Kasich there last night. You had Jeb Bush. You had Carson who nobody is talking about, right or wrong. You don't believe that there's somebody who can challenge Rubio in a real way? Because they tried last night, and it seemed like people were landing blows.
LEWIS: Well, and you're right. It's interesting that I earlier forgot to mention Ben Carson, which I -- which I think tells you a lot about -- about this race and the state of it, although he definitely could impact Iowa by taking, you know, whatever percent presumably from Ted Cruz.
Yes, I think there's a fight to own the, quote, unquote, "governing establishment lane." I think that Marco Rubio eventually emerges, if anybody does. But the big story about this race is that that lane is crowded. And nobody has really completely dominated.
And Rubio, I think, is the guy who's going to get there. But you know, who knows? And Christie, I think, you know, is giving him -- giving him a run for his money. And it happened last night, as well.
CAMEROTA: All right. Matt, Maggie, John, thanks so much for all of the analysis. Great to have you guys on.
Coming up, Donald Trump talks to NEW DAY about his battle to win Iowa and how he thinks he fared last night. I'll give you one guess how he thinks he fared last night. I'll give you one guess how he thinks he fared. That's at the top of the hour -- Michaela.
PEREIRA: All right, guys. You know how we play pranks on each other sometimes? This is a prank that went way too far. A wild celebration after a California nurse was told that she won the Powerball jackpot. Sounded too good to be true, and it was. Wait until you hear who played this prank on her.
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