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CNN Poll: Trump & Clinton Expected to be Nominees; Trump Waivers on Disavowing Former KKK Leader; Bernie Sanders Faces Test on Super Tuesday; Chris Rock Takes on Diversity at Academy Awards. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired February 29, 2016 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

PEREIRA: We're following a whole lot of news this morning that could really shake up the 2016 race. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[07:00:15] SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He doesn't sweat, because his pores are clogged from the spray tan that he uses.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm running against little Marco Rubio. Total featherweight.

RUBIO: Donald Trump refused to criticize the Ku Klux Klan.

TRUMP: I don't know anything about white supremacists. I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We do not defend American democracy as citizens if we do not vote.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers.

PEREIRA: Chris Rock's highly-anticipated monologue.

CHRIS ROCK, COMEDIAN: Is Hollywood racist? You're damn right Hollywood is racist.

PEREIRA: He took the Oscar's so white controversy head on.

ROCK: If they nominated host, I wouldn't even get this job. You'd all be watching Neil Patrick Harris right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. We do have a lot of news for you this morning. Chris is off today. John Berman joins me. Great to have you here. Michaela is in L.A., covering everything from the Oscars.

But we begin with breaking news. A new CNN poll in the 2016 race shows Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton pulling way ahead of their challengers heading into Super Tuesday. Trump and Clinton now widely expected to become their party's nominees. Trump expanding his commanding lead, with roughly half of Republican voters supporting him. If you add up all of Trump's competitors, they still do not match his numbers.

Marco Rubio is in second with 16 percent. That's more than 30 points behind Donald Trump, challenging the notion that the party would consolidate behind any other candidate.

BERMAN: What consolidation? What ceiling? On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton opening up a wider margin against Bernie Sanders. She now has a 17-point lead. Both frontrunners, Clinton and Trump, charging full-steam ahead as they head into Super Tuesday, the biggest voting day of the primary season.

Let us begin our coverage with Chris Frates, live in Alabama, where Donald Trump, Chris, picked up another big endorsement.

CHRIS FRATES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, John.

So the GOP presidential campaign starting to look more like a middle- school spat than a race for the highest office in the land, with Donald Trump and Marco Rubio trading personal insults over their looks and with just hours to go until Super Tuesday, Marco Rubio arguing Donald Trump is a con man, and Donald Trump arguing Marco Rubio is a choker.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUBIO: He doesn't sweat, because his pores are clogged from the spray tan that he uses.

FRATES: Marco Rubio unleashing an onslaught of insults and put-downs Sunday night in his latest string of personal attacks on Donald Trump.

RUBIO: Donald is not going to make America great. He's going to make America orange.

FRATES: Only hours after Trump took jabs at the freshman senator at a rally in Alabama.

TRUMP: Little Marco Rubio. A total, total featherweight.

RUBIO: He's always calling me "Little Marco." And I'll admit, he's taller than me. He's, like, 6'2", which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who's 5'2". Have you seen his hands? They're like this.

And you know what they say about men with small hands. You can't trust them.

FRATES: This as Trump stirs up controversy for what he didn't say.

RUBIO: Donald Trump refused, refused to criticize the Ku Klux Klan.

FRATES: The billionaire refusing to disavow support from former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.

TRUMP: I don't know anything about David Duke. OK?

FRATES: Trump deflecting questions by CNN's Jake Tapper.

TRUMP: I don't know anything about what you're even talking about, with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Did he endorse me? Or what's going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke.

FRATES: But on Friday...

TRUMP: Did David Duke endorse me? All right. I disavow. OK?

FRATES: And Trump does know of the Klansman. Back in 2000, the billionaire ended his brief flirtation with a presidential bid with the Reform Party, who had ties to the former KKK leader, saying in a statement reported by "The New York Times," "This is not company I wish to keep."

And Trump took to Twitter Sunday to once again disavow Duke's support, but only after he was attacked by some rivals.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRATES: Now, Donald Trump got another boost from the establishment yesterday when Senator -- Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions endorsed his candidacy at a big rally here in the state, the immigration hardliner, the first sitting senator to endorse Donald Trump's run as the billionaire continues to coalesce establishment support around his run -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Chris, thanks so much for all of that.

We want to talk more about these numbers. Let's bring in Ron Brownstein. He's our CNN senior political analyst and senior editor at "The Atlantic" and Michael Smerconish, CNN political commentator, host of CNN's "SMERCONISH."

Gentlemen, thanks for being here.

So these polls out exactly one hour ago are fascinating.

[07:05:06] Let's start, Ron. Let's just look again at the numbers, because Donald Trump gets 49 percent. If you add the totals of all of his competitors up, they still do not reach 49 percent. What does this mean for Super Tuesday and beyond, Ron?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, on Super Tuesday Donald Trump is poised to do something that neither Mitt Romney nor John McCain could do. He is posited to win on both sides of the Republicans' geographic and demographic divide.

On the one hand, he is in a very strong position across a swath of southern states that are heavily evangelical and heavily blue-collar. Places like Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, where at least 60 percent of the voters last time were evangelical.

On the other side, he is also right now ahead in more white-collar and less evangelical states, and in the border states in the north, which is Virginia, Massachusetts, Vermont. If he can win on both sides of that divide, he will, I think, send an enormous statement about the breadth of his support on the party.

On the other hand, Alisyn, consistently now your poll is different here. Because in the exit polls and other state polling, he is not running as well among the college as the non-college Republicans. And the question is whether Rubio in particular or anyone can consolidate them against them in this kind of 11th hour.

CAMEROTA: And Michael, you know, there's another question, and that is that there is still a large chunk of people who are the sort of anybody but Trump contingent. And the polls sort of reflect that. One of the questions, at least. This is among non-Trump supporters. They ask, if Trump wins the nomination, would you support him? "Definitely" and "probably" match. Probably not and definitely not. Is that a problem, Michael, or has he passed that?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR/HOST: Well, I think it's a significant problem. I mean, what's at odds within this poll is that he's winning in two categories that you've already referenced that are in conflict.

One category is the category you want to win. Are you voting for him? Forty-nine percent say, "I'm voting for him"; 35 percent, as you just pointed out, say, "Definitely not," which I find to be a staggering number. What really is motivating these numbers is passion. That Trump constituency is hard-core, Alisyn. Seventy-eight percent of them say, "We are locked in."

And so you look at a weekend like we've just had. You look at the interview that he had with Jake and the refusal, you know, to disavow white supremacy. You say, my God, how could someone running for president take that position, take the position with regard to David Duke and still be leading? It's because his constituency at this stage, they really don't care what he says. They're for him.

CAMEROTA: Let's play that again right now, Ron. Because it was stunning. He -- Jake Tapper gave Donald Trump three opportunities to disavow the KKK and David Duke. And he demurred at every opportunity. So watch this again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don't want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election?

TRUMP: Well, just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke. OK?

TAPPER: Would you just say unequivocally you condemn them and you don't want their support? TRUMP: Well, I have to look at the group. I mean, I don't know what

group you're talking about.

TAPPER: I mean, I'm just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here, but...

TRUMP: I don't know any -- honestly, I don't know David Duke. I don't believe I've ever met him. I'm pretty sure I didn't meet him, and I just don't know anything about him.

CAMEROTA: It wasn't just that, by the way, Ron.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: He also retweeted a quote from Mussolini, and when it was pointed out that it was a quote from Mussolini, Donald Trump said something to the effect of, "Well, it was still a good quote. I mean, Mussolini or not, it was still a good quote. I like the quote."

Is that where we are now? After all of the incendiary comments of this campaign cycle, now we're at the point of the KKK and Mussolini, not so bad after all.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Look, as I've said before, I think Donald Trump is drawing primarily -- not exclusively, but primarily -- on a constituency in the Republican Party that is the most alienated from the cultural and demographic changes reshaping America.

And these are voters who feel that the America they have known, the country they have known, is fundamentally slipping away from them. And the more outrageous Trump gets, the more he seems to them someone who will fight by whatever means necessary to reverse the trends that they decry.

On the other hand, the kinds of things he has said over the weekend are exactly the sort of things that lead others in the party, particularly that kind of mainstream conservative, white-collar part of the party, to question whether this is someone they really can envision as president, who has the temperament, the background and even the inclinations.

And I think what -- you know, this is the core question, Alisyn, heading into Super Tuesday and then, even more important, on March 15. Can anyone consolidate those voters?

We've seen -- we've seen Senator Ben Sasse, we've seen Joe Scarborough, we've seen others, who have been, you know, going further than they have in the past, saying they could not under any circumstance support Donald Trump. And the question is whether Rubio or Kasich, the most likely ones, can consolidate that vote. Virginia is probably the place to watch, because those voters, white-collar votes, about 60 percent of the electorate there.

[07:10:04] So if it can't happen there, it's very unlikely Republicans are going to be on this trip into the electoral unknown with a candidate who has shown that he can say and do almost anything. CAMEROTA: Michael, in terms of establishment Republicans, Karl Rove,

the architect, of course, of George W. Bush's campaign, is one of those. And he, 10 days ago said, "If Republican voters hand such an unstable individual their party's nomination, they will do immeasurable harm to it. Fortunately, there is still time to stop him."

Well, that was 10 days ago, Michael. Is there still time?

SMERCONISH: With every passing day, there's less time to stop him. And what I think Karl Rove and others are concerned about is the damage that's being done to the GOP brand.

I mean, you just played sound of Marco Rubio questioning whether Donald Trump's manhood is sufficiently large to be president of the United States. Are you kidding? Is this how far we have now stooped? And are these -- are these thoughts and comments and images going to linger beyond the nomination process? I would think so. I mean, do you not think that Secretary Clinton is saving all of this archival footage, to be able to roll out against whichever of them emerges?

The Republican Party tried to rein in the debates in that autopsy after the last cycle, because they knew that the debates and all the back and forth had wounded the eventual candidate. I think the same thing could be happening right now.

SMERCONISH: We have reached a fascinating point with this primary. Michael, Ron, thank you very much. Great to talk to both of you.

Coming up in the next hour, we'll speak with Republican presidential candidate Governor John Kasich. He's run a positive campaign. How does he think that's working out?

Also, an interview you don't want to miss: Melania Trump speaks with Anderson Cooper. What does she think of her husband's unconventional and controversial campaign. Melania Trump on "AC 360" tonight at 8 p.m., only here on CNN.

BERMAN: ON the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders vowing to fight for the nomination until the convention in July. This despite this new poll from CNN showing Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead around the country after her big win in South Carolina this weekend.

CNN senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns, live in Minneapolis, where Bernie Sanders' campaign is today -- Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Bernie Sanders is expected to appear here at a rally at the Minneapolis Convention Center later today, making the last best case to the people of Minnesota before the caucuses, despite the fact that he had that big loss in South Carolina over the weekend. He's doing all he can to pick up delegates in the handful of states where he think he can do best.

And, in a sign of things to come, he, like Hillary Clinton, is talking about Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, on the campaign trail. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There would be nothing that would give me more pleasure than to defeat Donald Trump.

I know some of his supporters say, "We like Mr. Trump because he tells it like it is." Bigotry is not telling it like it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: The Clinton team is trying to manage expectations but also make her appear as much as possible as the inevitable nominee. They do not see a way to deliver a knockout punch to Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday. But they are hoping to rack up delegates and a lead over the next 14 days or so and through the month of March.

Both of these candidates have a very busy schedule over the next 24 hours. Hillary Clinton in Massachusetts, Springfield, and then Boston. Then down to Fairfax, Virginia, and also to Norfolk. Bernie Sanders also headed to Massachusetts, as well, and he's going to end up in Vermont. So just a lot of travel coming up in the next 24 hours, Joe.

BERMAN: Putting the miles on. This is what a campaign looks like as it moves on. Gets big, gets national. Thank you so much, Joe Johns.

CNN is your home for the most comprehensive Super Tuesday coverage anywhere. Join us tomorrow as voters head to the polls for Super Tuesday and for the results late into the night. In fact, into the wee hours of the morning.

CAMEROTA: All right. One of us had a very glamorous night, and it was not you, John Berman. It was Michaela Pereira. She's live in Beverly Hills at the Montage Hotel. She had a fantastic night covering the Oscars. Michaela, tell us everything.

PEREIRA: I'm calling it Fantastic Monday, to your Super Tuesday. Chris Rock giving Hollywood and the nation plenty to chew on, Alisyn, ignoring calls to bow out of Oscar-hosting duties. Instead, tackling the Academy's diversity issue among Oscar nominees. It wasn't the only political issue taking focus at Hollywood's biggest night.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS ROCK, COMEDIAN: Well, I'm here at the Academy Awards, otherwise known as the white People's Choice Awards.

PEREIRA (voice-over): Chris Rock's highly anticipated monologue took the Oscars so white controversy head on.

ROCK: No black nominees, you know? And people are like, "Chris, you should boycott. Chris, you should quit. You should quit." You know, how come it's only unemployed people that tell you to quit something? You know?

PEREIRA: Rock holding nothing back.

ROCK: It's the 88th Academy Awards, which means this whole "no black nominees" thing has happened at least 71 other times. Black people did not protest. Why? Because we had real things to protest at the time. You know? We had other things to protest. Too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won Best Cinematographer.

PEREIRA: Dedicating his entire open to this year's lack of diversity, Rock this moment to put it all into perspective.

ROCK: It's not about boycott anything. It's just we want opportunity. We want the black actors to get the same opportunities. And that's it.

PEREIRA: Vice President Joe Biden was met with a standing ovation for taking a stand against sexual assault.

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Take the pledge. A pledge that says "I will intervene in situations when consent has not or cannot be given." Let's change the culture.

PEREIRA: Presenting Lady Gaga's performance of "Til It Happens to You," nominated for Best Song. Dozens of survivors joining Gaga on stage for her emotional tribute.

JULIANNE MOORE, ACTRESS: Leonardo DiCaprio.

PEREIRA: And Leonardo DiCaprio, winning his first Academy Award for his leading role in "The Revenant," using his acceptance speech to address climate change.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO, ACTOR: Climate change is real. It is happening now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted. Thank you so very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Leo wasn't the only winner from "The Revenant" last night to take his moment onstage to make a statement. Best Director winner Alejandro Inarritu addressed the prejudice and the importance of diversity in his speech, saying that this generation has the opportunity to make it the color of a person's skin as irrelevant as the length of our hair. What a powerful statement.

Alisyn and John, you know, it was interesting. They were trying to speed up the show last night. They had this idea to have a scroll along the bottom of shout-outs and thank-yous, in the idea that it would truncate the show. Didn't work. It clocked in at over three and a half hours. You only saw the scroll at the bottom sort of sporadically.

CAMEROTA: So that did not work. The music -- playing the music often does not work, as well. What did you think about "Spotlight"? I saw it. I really enjoyed it.

BERMAN: Journalists always win. Journalists win. Do not mess with us, because we will report the heck out of you.

PEREIRA: It was sort of seen as a three-way race. Right? "The Revenant," "Spotlight" and "The Big Short." You know, you could ask three different people and have three different ideas. But "Spotlight" came out ahead.

CAMEROTA: There you go. Thanks so much, Michaela. We'll check back in with you later in the program.

Back to politics. Donald Trump's commanding lead causing panic among some GOP leaders. So why aren't any of the attacks on Trump slowing him down? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:22:25] BERMAN: All right. There is deep concern within the Republican Party right now, some bordering on panic as Donald Trump gains momentum ahead of Super Tuesday. Right now, many there trying to envision a general election with Trump as the face of the party. What does that mean as the party heads to elections in November?

Joining us now, Geoffrey Lord, a CNN political commentator, former White House political director for Ronald Reagan. He is a Donald Trump supporter. And Margaret Hoover, a CNN political commentator, former White House staffer for President George W. Bush.

And Geoffrey, you know, I want to start with you here. You have been a Donald Trump supporter for a long time. You were very vocal. And so we often put statements that he makes to you and ask you to justify them. But I just want to know your reaction when you watched his interview with Jake Tapper, when not once, not twice, three times he was given an opportunity, a simple opportunity just to say, "You know what? I disavow David Duke. David Duke's not a good guy. I don't want him. KKK, bad."

GEOFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Here's the deal. I think he stumbled a bit there. But the fact of the matter is he said the other day with Chris Christie that he disavowed David Duke's support. He said it again yesterday afternoon.

I mean, this is -- if I can, this is respectfully typical of what Rush Limbaugh calls the drive-by media. They make up some sort of, quote unquote, "controversy" about something that isn't really a controversy at all and then drive off and pick up some other time.

BERMAN: But Geoffrey, there is no limit -- there's no limit to how many times you disavow the KKK. You're allowed to do it every day, if you want. I think people who are saying this draws questions about his character.

LORD: John, with all due respect, the sort of undercurrent is that Donald Trump is playing for the white supremacy vote, which is just B.S. I mean, it simply isn't true.

I mean, I don't know what to say, but if we're going to have a conversation put up about race, that we should turn it back on the Democratic Party. They still haven't apologized for slavery after 151 years. I think that's pretty basic. Why don't we ask them that? Where is Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Where is President Obama? Hello?

BERMAN: Geoffrey, I know I appreciate it. Right now, we're talking about an exchange that happened on CNN between Donald Trump and Jake Tapper. Margaret, I want it put it to you here. I want to put it to you, Margaret? Because Republicans, the other Republicans in this race obviously are jumping all over this.

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I respect Geoffrey. I think Geoffrey has the terrible task of defending what is completely indefensible.

We all know the easiest thing in American politics is to denounce hate groups, domestic terror groups, the KKK being sort of the lead among them. This is not a hard call. It is easy. Very, very easy.

And it's not like Donald Trump hasn't denounced them in the past. So it does beg the question, why didn't he denounce them with Jake yesterday? This is, again, not difficult. And it is -- Ronald Reagan, Geoffrey Lord's boss, easily denounced the KKK in 1984. I mean, this is -- begs the question, is he not courting white supremacists' votes? Does he not know that these are people...

[07:25:20] LORD: No. No.

HOOVER: OK, good. Well, then let's hear it from him, Geoffrey, not you. And you know what? Again, it's not your -- this isn't the drive-by media. This isn't the drive-by media. This is...

BERMAN: All right, guys. Actually, both hang on one second. Because we do have something new to play right now. Just moments ago, Donald Trump did address this issue, did address the interview. And I think tried to explain what the heck was going on during that interview. He was just on "The Today Show." Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, first of all, he talked about David and other groups. He talked about other groups.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But you said three times, "I don't know who David Duke is."

TRUMP: Excuse me. No, no. Well, I know who he is but I never met David Duke. So when you talk about it, I never met David Duke

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But in 2000, you refused to run on the Reform Platform, because David Duke was a member of it.

TRUMP: ... Duke a day before at a major press conference, and I'm saying to myself, how many times do I have to continue to disavow people?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. We just heard it. The sound stopped right there. Geoffrey, you heard him say, "How many times can I disavow him?"

LORD: You know, Margaret mentioned Ronald Reagan. When Ronald Reagan ran for governor of California, the press keep trying to get him to denounce the Birch Society. And finally, Reagan's answer was, "I am not endorsing them. They are endorsing me. I have nothing to do with them. He didn't play the game."

In other words, David Duke is a hard-core left -- he's an anti-Semite. Yes, Margaret, the Ku Klux Klan is a function of the left. It was the military arm of the Democratic Party. Hello?

I mean, Donald Trump's daughter and son-in-law are Jewish. David Duke is an anti-Semite, for heaven's sakes. I mean, this is ridiculous.

HOOVER: When William -- when William F. Buckley was starting the conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the John Birch Society did the same thing. They were trying to be part of the conservative movement.

And what Williams F. Buckley said is, no, you have to stand for something. You have to have principles. He said, "You are not going to be part of this movement." Where is the moral courage on behalf of Donald Trump, who aspires to be the leader of the free world, to say on some level, at some point, we do not need the voice and the support of bigotry.

LORD: Margaret, the Ku Klux Klan is a leftist group.

HOOVER: It is a hate group. It is a hate group, Geoffrey Lord.

LORD: It's a leftist group.

HOOVER: I don't care what side they're on. They're on the side of hate. They are on the side of murder. They have blood on their hands. This is not -- to blame them on the left, this is a scourge on humanity. It is a scourge on American politics. And to suggest that it's part of the Democratic Party is missing the point.

And your guy would not denounce it yesterday. And that is bad for America, and it is bad for the Republican Party.

BERMAN: Go ahead, Geoffrey.

LORD: Margaret, it is a racist hate group from the left. And that counts. That is important to understand. It is not conservative. It has nothing to do with conservatism. All these Klan members who have been elected to congress and U.S. Senate, in governorships over the years, supporting Franklin Roosevelt because they like Social Security. I mean, let's get our history straight.

BERMAN: Geoffrey, if all that is true, if all that's true, shouldn't it have been even easier for a guy running for the Republican nomination?

LORD: He has done it. He has done it. I mean, you just heard his explanation. I mean, he did this the other day with Chris Christie. This is why -- this is exactly the kind of thing why people are voting for Donald Trump. Because they think the media is making something out of nothing. Nothing. This is crazy.

BERMAN: Well, let me say -- let me say, you know, Geoffrey has got a point, according to the new CNN poll that's out just an hour ago. Donald Trump leads with 49 percent of the vote right now. This is a national poll.

LORD: Those folks are not white supremacists.

BERMAN: Forty-nine percent of the vote. You add up every other Republican running for office right now, it doesn't equal Donald Trump. The idea of a winnowed field, the idea of a Donald Trump ceiling, Margaret, those seem to be just a fallacy. Not true. There's no winnowed -- you know winnowed field doesn't lead to consolidation against Donald Trump. There's no ceiling for Donald Trump right here. He's running away with this.

HOOVER: Yes, he is. A couple points on this poll. One: they haven't taken into account all of the days after the debate, where you saw a huge change in strategy from Republicans, both from Marco Rubio and Trump. Outside money, frankly, getting into the race and finally taking on Donald Trump head on, putting negative ads and real resources into negative campaigning against him, which by the way, nobody likes negative campaigning. But by the way, it also works.

I mean, the reason Donald Trump has run away with this so far is partly because he has legitimately hit on concerns of Republican primary voters who have been ignored by the party for many, many years. And, you know, nobody is taking that away from Donald Trump. But also, what we know about politics is, you hit somebody negatively, that negative sticks way more than a positive. And until now, for Marco Rubio, for Chris -- for Ted Cruz and for any of these sort of outside support sitting on the sidelines to decide to go after Donald Trump. Maybe it was too little too late.