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New Day

Remaining GOP Presidential Candidates Debate; Donald Trump's Debate Performance Examined; Cruz Stresses Two-Man Race At Debate. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 11, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] SAM CLOVIS, TRUMP NATIONAL CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIRMAN: I don't know that we've seen what you would call a pattern. I think that we've be had a couple of occasions to that, but how many rallies have we held? I mean, my goodness, hundreds. And we've seen millions of people. And so we're talking two or three incidents here that would probably in the course of human events.

And so, again, we're not condoning. We condemn this type of behavior, and you know we spent a lot of time telling people not to behave this way. And so this is a -- again, I think you know, it's -- we're out here picking pretty close to the -- to the issues here that frankly I don't think that they rise to this level of concern that you seem to project on it, Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, but here's why I'm doing it. Because I think it respects a mood. It respects a tone that we saw, then, we the notion of Islam and that Islam has a hatred for America. You know that that is painting with too broad a brush. You know this is about a radical movement within a faith the name of which means "peace." What is telling you guys that going all-in on all Muslims is the right way to go?

CLOVIS: I think last night I watched the debate myself. I watched your show this morning. I watched a lot of the pundits you have on there, and they are good people. I don't have any argument with any of that. And I answered this question for you directly yesterday, that we do have -- this is -- the thing that I heard over and over again. I heard it on the stage last night and I heard in your show this morning, is this conflation of a political movement with religion. And until people understand that this -- that radical Islam is a political movement with direct political intent, we are going to continue to trip over this political correctness as we go forward.

CUOMO: Sam Clovis, thank you very much for coming on NEW DAY. Appreciate it, as always.

CLOVIS: All right, we'll see you later, Chris. Thanks.

CUOMO: All right, let's talk about the implications of what Sam Clovis just said and all that transpired in this all-important GOP debate just last night, and let's do it right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BERNIE SANDERS, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A lot has happened in the last 10 months.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm a businessman and I have to do what I have to do.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Presidents can't just say anything they want.

SEN. TED CRUZ, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This debate is not about insults. It's not about attacks.

TRUMP: We're all in this together. I cannot believe how civil it's been up here.

CRUZ: Yes, I cannot way to say, Madam Secretary, you are asking for a third term of a failed administration.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hopefully we will all come to our senses.

TRUMP: There's two of us up here that can and two of us that cannot at this moment.

GOV. JOHN KASICH, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What's true today is not necessarily true tomorrow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CUOMO: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. Alisyn and I are live at the University of Miami. John Berman in New York. And last night, boy, oh, boy, the Republican rivals squared off, and in the right way. It was about substance in this crucial winner take all situation that they're in with Florida and Ohio. This debate was different. You're not going to see it be about insults. You're going to see substance. You're going to see contrast in what happened. Many saying even the frontrunner Donald Trump appeared presidential.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Ted Cruz, meanwhile, repeated a familiar theme, that he's the only one in the race who can actually beat Donald Trump. But many analysts are saying that Marco Rubio was the winner of the night. Was that enough for him to win Florida? Also, this morning, Trump is about to get a big endorsement from a one-time rival. Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Sara Murray. She's live in Palm Beach where Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson will appear together in the next hour. Hi, Sara.

SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Good morning, Alisyn. And everyone knew the stakes going into this debate last night. They knew this was the last pivotal moment before these winner-take-all states vote. And again, it showed us a different side. Instead of childish insults and taunts we actually got policy discussion.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I cannot believe how civil it's been up here.

MURRAY: A major shift in tone at last night's GOP debate, the rivals moving away from the personal attacks of the past.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Have you seen his hands? They're like this.

TRUMP: And little Marco spews this crap.

I call him lyin' Ted.

MURRAY: And towards more civil contrasts as Trump's competitors argue he doesn't have the details to back up campaign promises. From U.S. trade deals.

TRUMP: Trade deals are absolutely killing our country, and the only way we're going to be able to do it is we're going to have to do taxes unless they behave.

CRUZ: Donald is right, for example, talking about international trade. He's right about the problems, but his solutions don't work. The effect of a 45 percent tariff would be when you go to the store, when you go to Wal-Mart, when you're shopping for your kids, the prices you pay go up 45 percent.

[08:05:01] TRUMP: The 45 percent tax is a threat. It's not a tax. It was a threat. It will be a tax if they don't behave.

MURRAY: To Social Security.

TRUMP: It's my absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is. Not increase the age and to leave it as-is. We're going to get rid of waste, fraud, abuse and brig back business.

RUBIO: The numbers don't add up. The bottom line we can't just continue to tiptoe around this and throw out things like I'm going to get rid of fraud and abuse but you still have hundreds of billions of dollars of deficit that you are going to have to make up.

MURRAY: And Mideast peace.

TRUMP: If I go in, I'll say I'm pro-Israel, and I've told that to anybody and everybody that would listen. But I would like to at least have the other side think I'm somewhat neutral as to them so that we can maybe get a deal done.

RUBIO: The policy that Donald has outlined, I don't know if he realizes, is an anti-Israeli policy. Maybe that's not your intent. But here's why it is an anti-Israeli policy. There is no peace deal possible with the Palestinians at this moment. There just isn't, because there's no one to negotiate with.

MURRAY: The audience chuckling at Trumps seemingly simple response about whether he would close the U.S. embassy in Cuba. TRUMP: I would probably have the embassy closed until such time as a

really good deal was made and struck by the United States.

(LAUGHTER)

MURRAY: As Rubio jumped at the chance to weigh in on an issue that might give him a boost here in Florida.

RUBIO: Here's a good deal. Cuba has free elections. Cuba stops putting people in jail for speaking out.

(APPLAUSE)

RUBIO: Cuba has freedom of the press. Cuba kicks out the Russians and kicks out of the Chinese listening station. Cuba stops helping North Korea evade U.S. sanctions.

MURRAY: The sunshine state senator looking for any opportunity to go after Trump in this do or die debate for his campaign.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Last night you told CNN, quote, "Islam hates us." Did you mean all 1.6 billion Muslims?

TRUMP: I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them.

There's tremendous hatred and I will stick with exactly what I said to Anderson Cooper.

RUBIO: The problem is presidents can't just say anything they want. It has consequences here and around the world.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: You can be politically correct if you want. I don't want to be so politically correct. I like to solve problems. We have a serious, serious problem of hate.

RUBIO: I'm not interested in being politically correct. I'm interested in being correct. We are going to have to work with people in the Muslim faith even as Islam itself faces a serious crisis within it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY: Now, we're just about an hour away from Donald Trump's press conference here in Mar-a-Lago where he's expected to pick up that Ben Carson endorsement. And this just gives him another moment to point to. After Chris Christie, now Ben Carson, Trump's leading in the delegate count, leading in many of these polls. And it's a way for him to say, look, it's time for the rest of the party to rally behind me. Chris?

CUOMO: All right, Sara, thank you very much.

So after the debate, Donald Trump, we got him to talk about the big points of contrast that happened, and what he thought of the night in general. Here's what he said --

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: I thought it was a very elegant debate. I thought it was very substantive. And I think your folks did a great job. I thought it was very fair. And we needed this kind of a debate. We needed this kind of a tone, and I'm glad it took place tonight.

CUOMO: Do you think it played to your advantage?

TRUMP: I think so. I mean, look, the other is the other. If somebody hits, you hit back. And I think that's true in life. That's true in running countries. That's true in running businesses. But I just found this to be a very elegant evening, and everyday did a very good job.

CUOMO: One of the questions is, what would happen if it were you versus Ted Cruz one on one? When you're up there on the debate stage listening to him make the case you making your own, how is your confidence level how that would do, you versus him?

TRUMP: Well, I think it would go very well. We're doing very well against Ted right now, as you know. We're leading, and we have a lot more people voting for Trump than voting for ted. But I like Ted and I thought we all did a very good job tonight. I thought it was actually terrific and very different because it has really been harsh. And I like that also, but I think there was something -- we were ready for this kind of an evening.

CUOMO: There were a couple points of contrast up there on the stage tonight. One was I guess you could basically call it the "all versus some" argument against Islam. You remember, you spoke to Anderson and said there's a hatred coming from Islam towards the United States.

TRUMP: No doubt about it.

CUOMO: The criticism, but not from all Muslims but from some. And you understand the sensitivity to it. You call it political correctness.

TRUMP: Always some, but, look --

CUOMO: The counter is that it's just correctness. What do you want to say now?

TRUMP: I don't want to say anything now. I've answered the questions. I've answered it many times. There is a great hatred and we have to get to the bottom of it.

CUOMO: The concern is that you wind up painting with too broad a brush. You said in the past you hire Muslims, you have Muslim friends.

TRUMP: I do.

CUOMO: You're not saying there's a part of the hatred, right?

TRUMP: I do, but there's a lot of -- you look at the mosques, and you go to various places and you look at what's going on there and it's virtually 100 percent. And certainly you could say radical Islam is a disaster right now. It's causing tremendous problems worldwide, not just here. But the question was asked about Islam and there is a great hatred. There's no question about it.

[08:10:07] CUOMO: One of the people up on the stage with you tonight said, it makes an environment around the world where Muslims feel that the United States has antipathy towards them, has negativity towards them.

TRUMP: Well, we're just going to have to run our own place. We have a country with a lot of problems, a lot of debt, a weakened military. We have so many different problems right now we're just going to have to do our thing. But the question was asked of me, and you probably heard the audience. The audience -- and I don't do it in terms of for the audience. I don't care in terms of doing it for the audience, and I'm not doing it to be incorrect politically. But there is animosity like I've never seen before, and hopefully we can straighten it out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: All right, let's discuss. We have CNN political commentator and former Reagan White House political director Jeffrey Lord, a Donald Trump, a Tim Miller, communications director for an anti-Trump super PAC and the former communications director for the Jeb Bush campaign.

Let's pick up on this point that we were just making in the interview here. Jeffrey Lord, make the case for why it's OK to say Islam has a hatred towards America, and not deal with radical Islamism, not deal with the radical slice, but deal with the whole? Why do that?

JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think one of the problems we have, frankly, is when President Obama refuses to go there with radical Islam, you get a sensation here that, well, maybe it's everybody.

CAMEROTA: Then why is Donald Trump doing the same thing and not drawing a distinction?

LORD: Right, right. To be perfectly candid, I think he looks at this as a problem coming, and he's not alone. There are a lot of people out there, distinguished people who say there is a problem with sharia law and all of this kind of thing. So I think to some degree we'll dealing with semantics.

But most assuredly there is a problem and we have to figure out what to do, how to deal with it. This gets to the issue of fixing the immigration system. When we talked about Malik and coming into the country, and banning Muslims temporarily until we can figure out what's going on with the immigration system.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Tim, did the other people do enough to counter that last night? TIM MILLER, COMMUNICATIONS ADVISER, OUR PRINCIPLES PAC: Yes. I

thought Marco's answer was perfect last night. I don't know why it's so hard to say, yes, there's some Muslims that don't hate us. It's a pretty easy thing to say. I don't know why that's so hard for Donald Trump to admit. And it's just as easy to say, "most" Muslims don't hate us.

CUOMO: There is a fraction of them part of a radical movement. The question is why you want to play to the general, and who does that pander to?

MILLER: Yes. And Marco last night was clear when it came to, think out our missionaries overseas in Muslim countries. Think about our soldiers, our Muslim soldiers. Why won't Donald Trump have respect for them? I thought it was similar to one other point. If Ronald Reagan was listening last night when Donald Trump was asked about the Tiananmen Square violence, and Donald Trump could not clearly say that that is evil. That is wrong. What he said that the communist leaders were strong. That there was strength in the way that they killed unarmed protestors.

LORD: Not as a positive asset, though. Just strong as a neutral description.

MILLER: Here's the thing, Jeffrey. You know who was strong in that exchange? The protestors. That is who were strong, unarmed protestors standing up for democracy and freedom. It is not strong to murder unarmed protestors.

LORD: No, no, no. No.

MILLER: That is a communist dictatorship and Donald Trump's view of the world is so warped that he complimented it.

LORD: There we go.

MILLER: The Chinese leaders. He complimented Vladimir Putin. He did.

LORD: No, no.

MILLER: He said there's no more --

LORD: Let me ask you, do you think Vladimir Putin is a weak leader?

MILLER: Yes. I think he's a weak person.

LORD: Do you think he's a weak leader?

MILLER: He's a weak person who is overcompensating. I would never compliment Vladimir Putin.

LORD: It's an objective term. It is not something -- you're not saying strength in a positive -- no, no.

MILLER: When Donald Trump says somebody is strong, that's a compliment. I think we can all agree on that. Donald Trump loves talking about strength. He's never criticizing anybody. And Ronald Reagan, he saw the Soviet Union for what it was, the evil empire. And he had moral clarity. There was no moral clarity from Donald Trump last night when he said Vladimir Putin is strong. No. I'm sorry, cracking down on journalists.

LORD: You're making that up.

MILLER: That's not strong. The journalists are the strong ones, and I thought Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio last night stood up for freedom- loving people everywhere, and Donald Trump every time did not.

CUOMO: Make this case of strong as a neutral and not as a compliment.

LORD: Look, look, I can say that Vladimir Putin is indubitably a strong leader.

CAMEROTA: Would Ronald Reagan have called him a strong leader.

LORD: But what you're saying is, you're using the term to imply approval. I don't do that. Donald Trump isn't doing that. He's just simply saying objectively speaking --

(CROSSTALK)

LORD: No, no, no. What do we call the third world dictators? We call them a strongman. Yes. We do.

[08:15:02] CUOMO: Oh, a strongman.

LORD: A strongman. As one word.

MILLER: Why doesn't he do that? Why doesn't he call him a thug? That's a pejorative.

LORD: Guys, guys, you're trying --

MILLER: You're trying to be cute, Jeffrey.

LORD: No, I'm not --

MILLER: Everybody watches knows Donald Trump loves strength and talks about strength. That's like the highest complement Donald Trump can give somebody that you're strong.

Guess what? He is totally wrong on this, the fact he's sucked up to Putin, because Vladimir Putin said something nice to him, it's embarrassing. That goes against Republican principles and American principles.

LORD: So, when President Bush 43 said I looked him in the eyes and saw his soul he was -- that was a good thing?

MILLER: No. I think he was wrong on that.

LORD: Holy cow! You didn't say that which working for Jeb Bush. MILLER: Sure, yes, sure I did. Jeb Bush was very clear about

Vladimir Putin. Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: Getting back to protestors for a second.

LORD: Yes.

CAMEROTA: There's one closer to home. That's what happened. There's violent episodes at Donald Trump's rallies.

LORD: Right.

CAMEROTA: And some say that it's engendered by Donald Trump's rhetoric. He says, I punched somebody in the nose. This protestors isn't getting away, let's punch him in the noses.

LORD: First of all, everybody's responsible for their own personal actions.

CAMEROTA: It is personal responsibility. But does he have some personal responsibility in toning it down?

LORD: Look, I think, you know, he expresses his thought in a moment here. But let me just say something about this, and I -- you know, as you can imagine, I've gone back and looked and certainly some of us are old enough to remember this. The American left has a taste for violence, a long and well-documented taste for violence.

CAMEROTA: What about the rallies now, Jeffrey? What we're talking about now.

LORD: I'm not, because I'm saying this is the pattern. They go to incite violence. This is what they do.

MILLER: He sucker punched the guy.

LORD: Yes.

MILLER: He sucker punched him out of nowhere.

LORD: Look, these people show up.

MILLER: Just say it's wrong. How hard is that?

LORD: Of course, it's wrong. There's no place, Tim --

MILLER: Why are you trying to justify it?

LORD: I'm not trying to justify it. I'm saying, let's not play games here with people who show up at rallies with the intent of inciting violence.

CUOMO: Here's the question --

LORD: If you're that naive, you shouldn't be in the White House. CUOMO: I don't want you getting piled on, although you invite. We

talk about people who incite this stuff you do it how you cleverly depict what's brought your way.

Let me ask you, you are getting a reflection of the different analysis between the primary and the general.

LORD: Right.

CUOMO: When you get into the general, if you are so fortunate as to do so.

LORD: Right.

CUOMO: The idea of who we are as a country and tolerance is going to loom large.

LORD: Right.

CUOMO: You cannot believe what he said about Islam is going to work in his favor?

LORD: Yes.

CUOMO: That's what I'm asking, how do you translate this then?

LORD: I don't buy the premise, Chris. If we're going to go down that road, if we are, if -- we are going down that road, we are going to talk about Hillary Clinton, right?

CUOMO: Yes, if she gets the nomination.

LORD: If she gets the nomination.

MILLER: She's crushing him right now in the polls.

LORD: If she -- right. When she tried to play the sexism card on him the other week, he wheeled around and went after her, as he should.

So, if we're talking about positive things answers positive attributes and not going after people, there's a lot of women out there that are already out there supporting Donald Trump because of Juanita Broderick, Kathleen Willy, et cetera, who are going to say --

MILLER: You're naming individual people, he's getting crushed in the polls among women. You're saying this Hillary jujitsu, if it's so great, so effective, why is he losing to her in all the polls?

(CROSSTALK)

LORD: I'm saying the willingness to fight back, what you're asking is in terms of general election, I'm saying you have to have a nominee who fights back.

MILLER: Sure. LORD: When we had Mitt Romney they were calling Mitt Romney in

essence a murderer because he killed the steel worker's wife because he didn't provide health care. Where was the response from the Romney campaign?

MILLER: I don't think there's any doubt that Ted Cruz is going to fight back against Hillary Clinton and we cannot have a nominee that has these kinds of problems with minority, with women, these stories are beginning to come out that Trump modeling story --

CUOMO: Did anybody step over him on that stage? Seemed they were bowing down?

MILLER: We'll find out on Tuesday.

LORD: If this is all true, why is he the front-runner? Why is Jeb Bush out of the race.

MILLER: He's the answer, because Donald Trump now is getting crushed in the general election.

LORD: Why is Jeb bush out of the race?

MILLER: The objective is to win the White House. Jeb Bush was running a race to win the election.

(CROSSTALK)

LORD: Exactly. Yes, and he didn't get the vote.

MILLER: Donald Trump 33 percent, one-third of the vote within the Republican primary. Kudos for him for his success in maintaining that one-third but hasn't expanded that.

LORD: He got more than Jeb Bush. Yes?

MILLER: Jeffrey, you're not even listening, you're trying to play games.

The reality in the general election, Donald Trump's favorable rating is 67 percent. Two-thirds of the country says, I don't like this guy. They've seen plenty of him. He's been all over TV.

They've rendered a judgment, and people haven't even heard about all, about his record of taking advantage of people to enrich himself in the private sector. He has no chance in the general election.

CAMEROTA: Tim --

MILLER: No. It's going to be a disaster for the party.

LORD: That's the establishment. Tim, this --

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: -- saying conservatives across the country are standing up to him.

[08:20:00] CAMEROTA: Tim, you're running an anti-Trump PAC.

MILLER: Yes.

CAMEROTA: It was a tense moment when you encountered Donald Trump, your very target, last night in the spin room after the debate. This was the first time sort of that you two had come face to face. So we have that moment. Let's play that.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

CAMEROTA: Hard to know exactly what you were saying.

CUOMO: I think you just took a swing at Donald Trump, though.

CAMEROTA: That was your moment. So what was your question to him?

MILLER: Just walked past me. I asked if his Trump was made in America? A Trump tie made in America.

CAMEROTA: And what was his response?

MILLER: He wouldn't respond to the question. And this is, because, look, every Trump product, we have ads in Ohio, was made overseas. And this is the deal.

Donald Trump throughout his entire life has never cared about the American worker, always cared about himself and had plenty of opportunities to create jobs here in America, he's chosen to create them overseas. He went past me last night and I asked him about that and he couldn't answer.

CUOMO: Turnabout is fair play. One, you know what you were trying to do.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: You're like a baby Jorge Ramos right there --

LORD: Yes, yes.

CUOMO: Let me ask you this. He's making a case. I know how it works in campaign finance because I've been one of these guys who gives them money. I know how to fix it.

I've built things, I know how to get things done, that's why I'm the guy -- it is working. People believe him, and you have to deal with his success.

MILLER: It's not working. I don't know how many times -- I have to say this. Two-thirds of the electorate do not like him. Two-thirds. This is his -- he would have historically bad poll numbers, historically bad --

LORD: Tim -- Tim -- you have to win. You're not winning. You're not winning. You have to win.

MILLER: Cruz has beaten him in eight races, already. This is going to be a long primary. There's plenty of opportunities to beat him. He right now hasn't even gained half of the delegates. If he thinks Mitt Romney was such a loser, at this time last time, Mitt Romney was swamping the field.

(CROSSTALK)

LORD: How did President Romney make out anyway? He was supposed to be a winner. He was electable. How did President Romney's administration make out?

MILLER: You know, look, George W. Bush became elected president.

LORD: And he left --

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: -- won the primary in a way that let us win the general. That's the whole point here, Jeffrey.

LORD: With the help of the Supreme Court.

CAMEROTA: Jeffrey, Tim, thank you for illustrating both sides so well. We appreciate you both being here on NEW DAY. Great to see you.

CUOMO: And relatively civil!

LORD: Yes.

CUOMO: I'm glad it's wearing off from last night. Relatively.

All right. We hope you stay with CNN. We have Donald Trump's big news conference with Ben Carson expected to announce his endorsement of Mr. Trump, 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

CAMEROTA: Ted Cruz trying to sell himself as the only alternative to Donald Trump. Did he make the case effectively last night? We ask team Cruz, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:26:45] CAMEROTA: Ted Cruz trying to overtake Donald Trump. Cruz insists it is now a two-man race but Marco Rubio and John Kasich disagree.

Joining me to discuss all of this is Ted Cruz's national spokesperson, Ron Nehring.

Ron, great to have you here on NEW DAY.

RON NEHRING, TED CRUZ CAMPAIGN: You bet.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about what's going to happen a half hour from now. Why isn't Ben Carson endorsing Ted Cruz?

NEHRING: Well, you know, I think very, very good people can make mistakes. We'd love to have Ben Carson's endorsement, but he's going to do what he's going to do and we're going to continue to move forward.

We have great endorsements. Just yesterday, we have much energy coming into the campaign with enforcements from Carly Fiorina, from Senator Mike Lee, from Marc Levin this week. So, those endorsements wind up behind Senator Cruz very well, with more to come and we're pretty excited.

CAMEROTA: Do you find it peculiar that Dr. Carson is going to endorse Donald Trump after they sparred certainly on the campaign trail. In fact, Donald Trump said that he thought there was something sort of psychologically wrong with Dr. Carson. If his autobiography was true, he likened him to a child molester, you're never cured from that level of anger.

How do you explain what's happening?

NEHRING: Like so many things Donald Trump says, many of the things he said about Ben Carson were truly bizarre and I suspect that many of Ben Carson's supporters remember that and therefore the endorsement won't have that much of an effect, because people made their judgment about Donald Trump. Look, Donald Trump is the highest negatives of any candidate not only running for president now but running for president's in recent memory.

Two-thirds of Americans have a negative view of him that is sky high, it's why he's not electable in November, and it's why he's going to have continuing problems -- he's going to have growing problems as this Republican field narrows.

CAMEROTA: And yet, he's won the most primaries, he is winning in polls. How do you explain the people who are voting for him?

NEHRING: Well, I think that you look at a multicandidate field, right? We started with 17 candidates and we were down to -- now we're down to four, right? And as that field has narrowed to a small number of candidates, we've seen Ted Cruz move up, because most people don't want Donald Trump to be the nominee at the end of the day.

Look, Donald Trump clearly taps into a certain amount of frustration with the status quo. But now, it's not only about frustration but who has solutions?

That's why I thought the debate last night worked well for Senator Cruz, because the longer format that you put together meant that there was more time to go into greater depth of policy, which Donald Trump does have the knowledge on policy matters necessary in order to be the commander-in-chief or the president of the United States. And I think that's why Ted Cruz really did a good job.

CAMEROTA: What did you think was his strongest issue or his strongest point last night? Ted Cruz? NEHRING: Well, I think, several different areas. On the issue of

foreign policy, with respect to Israel, with respect to Cuba, with respect to Social Security, and how we preserve Social Security for the future. I think he did really, really well, because he's demonstrated that he understands that issue -- not only identifying the problem, but identifying the solution.

And that I think stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump who really reverted to just repeating himself in order to run out of the clock because of the longer segment. I think that was really clear.

CAMEROTA: Many pundits thought that Marco Rubio had the best night, and that he won the debate if there is such a thing, and I know that Ted Cruz has been trying to make the point that it's now a two-man race between he and Donald Trump. Obviously, Marco Rubio disagrees, particularly here in Florida. Let me play for you what he has said about that.

NEHRING: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I feel good about our work here. One of the things happening in Florida is, you know, Ted Cruz has some supporters here but he's not going to win, and so does John Kasich, and he's not going to win Florida. And so, there's a majority of Florida Republicans that do not want Donald Trump to win Florida or be the nominee.