Special coverage: Post-debate analysis of the third Republican presidential primary debate 01:25:03

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Everybody okay? Everybody all right? Everybody make it through okay? Yes, we did. Good evening and welcome to our special coverage of the third Republican presidential primary debate, which was held tonight in downtown Miami, Florida. The debate just wrapped up seconds ago after two hours on the phone.

on stage. You can see there the debate hall. Some of the candidates, some of the five candidates who participated still milling there. People in the audience still milling there. They're just finishing up within the last minute.

few moments. I'm Rachel Maddow here at MSNBC headquarters with my colleagues, Nicole Wallace and Joy Reed and Ari Melber and Stephanie Ruhl and Lawrence O'Donnell. Tonight's debate in Miami was a home game for one of the candidates. Ron DeSantis, of course, is the governor of Florida, but heck of a lot of good that's doing him. A poll out just before this debate shows Governor DeSantis losing his home state, at least as far as the polling says.

By 39 points against his constituent, Florida man and former President Donald Trump, who, of course, was not at tonight's debate. Just like the first two debates, former President Donald Trump was a no show again tonight. He was about 10 miles away holding his own competing event, which was kind of a standard Trump event thing.

Tonight's event in downtown Miami was the first Republican debate not hosted by Fox News. It was hosted by our NBC News colleagues Lester Holt and Kristen Welker, along with conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Right out of the gate, the moderators asked the candidates a question that a lot of them have been either reluctant to answer or had a hard time coming up with an answer to. It's the very, very basic, simple question when the polling looks like this. Why should you be the nominee and not Donald Trump?

And Donald Trump's a lot different guy than he was in 2016. He owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance. He should explain why he didn't have Mexico pay for the border wall. He should explain why he racked up so much debt. He should explain why he didn't drain the swamp. And he said Republicans were going to get tired of winning. Well, we saw last night, I'm sick of Republicans losing.

That Republicans losing theme was a recurring one tonight, which was a little awkward for a Republican candidates debate. But Ron DeSantis there was referring to the fact that tonight's debate happened just 24 hours after a bang up election night for Democrats. Democrats and liberals effectively won all over the country last night. A Democrat won the governor's race in Ruby Red, Kentucky. Democrats took both houses of the legislature in Virginia. A

Ohioans voted resoundingly to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Abortion is a driving force behind Democratic victories across the country right now. And the candidates on stage tonight in Miami were asked what the path forward should be for the Republican Party on this issue as they keep getting bashed at the polls on this issue over and over again in blue states, in red states, every time and every way the question gets asked.

Some of the candidates were quite gymnastic in avoiding specific answers to that question. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott was not one of them. He just jumped right in and said he wants a national abortion ban.

Senator Scott, I'd like you to weigh in. How do you see the path forward? And what do you make of what Ambassador Haley just said? Do you see this as a consensus issue? Well, I'm 100 percent pro-life. I have a 100 percent pro-life voting record. I would certainly, as president of the United States, have a 15 week national limit. He has stopped saying ban. Now he says limit. But that's the only adaptation that we have seen yet.

on that issue. Another theme of tonight's debate, back for an encore from the last debate, was just the deep,

withering disgust that candidate Vivek Ramaswamy seems to inspire from his fellow candidates. He makes them say things you can't imagine they've ever said before in their lives. He makes them make facial expressions on the stage that you're quite sure they don't know they're making in public. He really brings out a side of them that makes news, frankly. Here he was with former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in a section of the debate about whether the Chinese-owned app TikTok

TikTok should be banned. I should just mention this back and forth ended with one of the candidates saying something I have never heard ever in any debate I have ever covered in all of my years on this earth.

I want to laugh at why Nikki Haley didn't answer your question, which is about looking at families in the eye. In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time. So you might want to take care of your family first. Leave my daughter out of your voice. The next generation of Americans are using it. And that's actually the point. You have her supporters propping her up. That's fine. Here's the truth. You're just easy answer. But she said there was you're just scum.

You know, I think if they all just said what they really meant in their cut to the chase, this could be a lot more clarifying. Wow, never seen that in any debate at any level, and I've covered some weird debates at weird levels. But for all that, the same question hangs over this debate as all the others. Do the fights between these five folks matter? Is this a real part of the Republican Party reckoning with who their nominee is going to be for president next year, when, in fact, the former president, Donald Trump, is running...

40 plus, at some cases, 50 points ahead of all of them in the polls. Nicole Wallace, I'm going to turn to you first. Because you are, I feel like you are more reserved than usual on this issue. Watching this debate, I feel like you are more contained, less voluble than I usually see you.

Do I have to answer? You don't have to be truthful. Okay, so I'm not going to say what I really think, but I'll answer your last question. They don't matter. They don't matter. I mean, this is... I said to Ari when I sat down, the most exciting part of these for me is seeing who's there, because I have no idea who's running second to tenth. So, like, for me, it's exciting to see who's running second, third, fourth. I had no idea who was going to be there, because it doesn't matter to the Republican primary voter, right? Take us out of it. Nikki Haley called...

The other guy, scum, okay. But the Republican primary voters have weighed in, and they're not into any of these people. They want Trump. And they want Trump by larger numbers than I think anyone has ever been ahead this many weeks before the first primary contest in either party. I don't know that in modern history anyone has ever been 50, 60, 39 points ahead of the next person ever.

at the November mark ahead of the first primary ever. Then why aren't any of them going for the jugular when it comes to him? The guy was sitting in a courtroom humiliating himself on Monday. He faces 91 counts. They just lost three times. You're right. He's far, far ahead. So for any one of them, their only shot is to go for him, and none of them did. Because they think they're probably not going to land that shot.

And their future in Republican politics is with this polity, with this group of voters that only likes that guy. And if they're seen as being against that guy, then they're toast. Then why did we waste 20 minutes having this substantive conversation about foreign policy where some of them actually made cogent arguments? And we're all forgetting the fact when it comes to foreign policy, at best, Donald Trump cozies up to Vladimir Putin, writes love letters to Kim Jong-un, and most recently said Hezbollah is really darn smart. Yeah.

I mean, two comments. One, if you could bottle the contempt that Nikki Haley feels for Vivek Ramaswamy, I feel like you could power a small town with the hate. She hate that guy. She hates him. Oh, my God. You can feel it through the screen. So that's one thing I will say. And I think they all don't like him, but she really don't like him. The second thing is I sort of felt like Nikki Haley and Chris Christie were

aren't running for president now, they're sort of almost beseeching the Republican Party at some point after Trump to come back into its body, right? To get their soul back in the body. Because their whole conversation is so disconnected from Trump's existence on this earth. They are almost normal. And so it's really jarring to hear them both sound like sort of normie Republicans,

in a world in which nobody wants that in that party. And so maybe they will someday in the future. I feel like Chris Christie is sort of, even his appearances, he's sort of begging the party to come back. I don't think he's succeeding at it. He's going nowhere in the polls. This is going nowhere. Maybe he and Nikki Haley could be like a ticket together on some other universe, but it can't be in this one. Lawrence O'Donnell. I must. It's my turn. This is

You can't say I'm not saying what I think. Here's a thing. Here's a thing that's not really what I think. You just have to say what you think. Let me check my notes of the debate. Where's my notes? Here's my notes.

It was really just that one word. That was my notes. It's easy to remember. And so it's this is, by the way, the first Republican debate I've watched. Luckily, I've been working at 10 p.m. during the previous Republican debates and I didn't have to participate in any of this. And I now see that Vivek is the MVP of the panel for this reason.

He makes everyone else look better than they were ever going to look because he's not just the most hated person by everyone on the stage.

He's the most hateable character who's ever had a role in presidential debating in either party. And so he's helping them by being up there. He's making Nikki Haley look better, look stronger. He's making everybody up there humanizing. All of them look better. But, you know, I mean, what this is the debate for is.

You know, in case Trump chokes on a cheeseburger. That's what this debate is. You know, if somehow Trump falls out, it's going to be, you know, DeSantis or Haley. But isn't the question, are they just waiting for him to die, go to jail or drop out? Well, so. So fame, fame is its own currency now in politics, especially in Republican politics, as Trump proved so.

Vivek obviously is running for nothing but fame. Christie needs to push up his fame to see if there might be more money in some sort of ABC contract, you know, after this. And I think Haley and DeSantis are the two who think maybe we have a future, you know, four years from now, maybe. And so we want to play credibly here. And Tim Scott is going to go back to a quiet life after this. But.

And he's going to be a little more famous. And that might help him with a talk radio gig or something like that. I think the debate is probably irrelevant for the reasons stated unless something happens. Out of the three we've seen so far, it was the more serious debate. We heard some of the first policy criticisms of Trump, as mentioned, that maybe because

It's not so scary to say the debt is high and you can walk it back. They're certainly not dealing with the ethical and legal failings of Donald Trump, as alleged in so many forums. But we heard more of that. I thought the foreign policy was interesting as well. And this is funny because we think our colleagues are great and they did a great job. But even if I was trying to be as objective as possible, I think it's fair to say that there was kind of more space for a wider range of important issues, American and international, than the last two debates.

Full disclosure, though, we're also talking about our own colleagues. But I think that's true. And so we had this conversation that went across two important, very tense war zones. And I thought we also heard policy from Republicans there who clearly were still trying to figure out how do you sound tough, which is sort of this.

somewhat allegedly, you know, strong person style foreign policy lingo, while also saying, and DeSantis has his own background in here as a former military JAG lawyer, also saying we're not going to get involved. We're not going to get more involved overseas. And so there was a sort of this tough, tough sounding, but anti-interventionist mode. Now, I don't know what what what

that means to anyone or anyone cares or any of these people aren't going to be in a foreign policy role and they're not going to be president based on what we can tell two months out. But I thought that was striking. And then the last point, just the most obvious is, is

These five voices matter a lot less than the voices of so many voters who rejected everything that their party's offering yesterday. And I'm sure we'll have time to talk about that tonight. But that's what hung over it. Donald Trump had to lie and deny about what happened in 2020. And then a lot of people have burned up a lot of capital joining those lies. Some of them will be held in a trial, a coup trial in March.

They underperformed in the midterms. They got slammed yesterday in Ohio and Virginia. And so election denialism not only is false, but it has sort of had them getting high on their own supply. And I thought we saw even on the abortion discussion, I don't think there's credibility on the waffling. But the waffling says some of those people who've been for abortion bans tonight tried to play it another way. And so I thought that was also interesting. Again, it may not matter. I second Lawrence's blank notepad.

But we learned something about how they want to be perceived. But on your point, the Republican position on abortion is more unpopular than the Iraq war ever was. Just to just to throw out something universally agreed to have been very unpopular forever. The 85 percent of all Americans support abortion in certain or all instances. Not one of those people.

is speaking to 85% of all Americans. And the person that inched the closest was Nikki Haley. And she got a roaring, thunderous applause from a Republican primary debate crowd. Just from saying, I respect people who are for choice. I was going to say the same thing. The one person that seems to be at least trying

to drag the party towards something sane on abortion is Nikki Haley. She said that essentially, I don't judge how people vote. I'm not happy that people in some states decided to affirm abortion rights, but I don't judge them based on how they're voting. That was at least sounding like she's like, we need some sort of consensus. But you go all the way to the other end of it where Tim Scott is like, no, ban abortion right now. I'm not going to let Californians decide their own lives. You had Chris Christie make the very coherent point that

All of this time, conservatives have been yelling that it should be the states that decide on abortion. And that's why they wanted to overturn Roe. But now suddenly they're like, no, do a national ban. They were kind of all over the place. But I think, again, Christie and Haley at least sound like they hear what's happening. The rest of them seem completely tone deaf. OK, then I ask you as a veteran of Republican campaigns, when Roe versus Wade was in place.

It seems that the abortion issue in those primaries was more stable and there was a much closer set of agreed upon ways of talking about it. And and so was Roe versus Wade in effect stable?

protecting Republican nominees and Republican candidates from this kind of exposure that we see now. Of course. And I mean, look, they were they were straitjacketed because it was reprehensible to deny exceptions in cases of rape and incest. Yes. And life of the mother was never considered by the two Republican nominees I worked for. And on the other side was Roe, which was decided by justices appointed by Democratic and Republican

president. So it was never perceived as this wackadoo thing. I worked for a very pro-life president and a very pro-life candidate for president. But it was this policy and language straitjacket where you never, ever, ever contemplated denying the exceptions, which are on the table for Republicans. A lot of the state bans eliminate the exceptions for life and mother. Those are 93 percent opposition.

I mean, Republicans have put themselves on the other side of 93 percent of all Americans and they wonder why they lost everything. In terms of their political skill at talking about it, though, I think you're you're you're right, though, that they actually have no idea because of that, because the straitjackets were there. They have no idea how to talk about.

it. And so, you know, they're this proverbial dog catching the car. Now they have no idea what to do with it, no idea how to talk about it. And the position that the party has found itself at and that their state legislators are imposing in state after state after state is so wildly unpopular that this backlash is going to be knocking them back for a long time. It's going to be a long time before they figure out how to do it. The public sees through these lies. I mean, the whole lie was, oh, these people

justices who are going on to the court are saying super precedent. We're not going to do anything right away. They said it under oath. When Justice then Judge Kavanaugh wasn't crying, he was repeating under oath, we're not going to change anything right away on this precedent. Settled law, super precedent. Susan Collins said, yep, that's why I'm supporting it. We'll take you at your word. So that's a game in Washington. You don't need a law degree to understand what's going on with

the lies in your own body. And I think people see through it and they see through it in Kansas and Ohio. And so then when you, to echo Joy's point that came up in the debate, when people say, oh, well, even if we do this, it'll still be at the local level. So you'll have a second say at this. No, that was another lie. And we've seen that. And so Ohio, again, what happened yesterday is Ohio's voters in a state that's gone for Trump twice said, no thanks. We reject this entire Republican MAGA approach.

And we want row level protections enshrined in the state constitution for good. Right. That's a big breakthrough. And that's what they are on the heels about. It's a plus 20 issue. It's 20 percent more popular than Biden. So Biden's dealing with 20 percent on top of wherever he is, if you take that across the

And by the way, they're holding this debate in the state where Ron DeSantis, who I think was a non-entity again in this debate, barely made a dent. But, you know, he has pushed through in the dead of night. I mean, they saw he signed it at midnight. That's how proud he was of his six week abortion ban, which is a total ban and is also hurting the governor of Iowa.

Iowa, who has endorsed him, who also has a six week ban. Right. It's dragging both of their numbers down. So he didn't know how to address it. Glenn Youngkin yesterday. Look what it did to Glenn Youngkin yesterday. They're not learning from what the voters are telling them. So you know that they understand that it's bad because they keep telling one new big lie, which is that Democrats want abortion up until birth, which is not a thing. There is no such thing as abortion up until birth. That does not exist.

but they all say it. They keep repeating it. I think even Chris Christie said it. I don't like the fact that people have a boy who has a birth. In New Jersey, Chris Christie says it's happening in New Jersey every day. That's infanticide. No one gets to nine months pregnant. I have had three humans. You do not get to nine months pregnant and then decide, you know,

you know what? I've changed my mind. I don't want to be pregnant. That is absurd. It's actually libelous to women. It makes women sound stupid and craven and evil. And the idea that you think that women are a

having abortions at nine months means you don't understand science. You don't understand women's bodies. You don't understand physiology. And you think your voters are stupid. And you think your voters are stupid. I do think there is something interesting here in this politics, though, because we're all talking about the clarity with which the voters are speaking on this issue. And I think that what we're seeing tonight is that Republicans haven't figured out how to talk about it. The Republican who was trying on the stage tonight to speak about it in the way that was most relatable and less...

polarizing and offensive to most of the people listening to her was Nikki Haley. But then what was, after she said her sort of set piece on it, what's the very next thing she did? She attacked Tim Scott for not having supported a national 15-week ban. Right. So she's trying to say, oh, no, we're going to do this differently in all these states and everybody should get a say and we should stop.

being so divisive and don't try to impose your will on everybody else. And you, Tim Scott, you can't be president because you didn't sign on to a national band. She also, Nikki Haley, made a very important point that you never hear in presidential debates in either party. She raised the 60 vote threshold point, which was

It's hugely important that she's saying, listen, none of this abortion stuff can happen federally because you're never going to get 60 votes in the United States Senate for any of this crazy stuff that these people are talking about, which also protects her then from not saying that she's going to do one of these crazy federal laws.

And, you know, the others are all running for king and they're all saying, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And Haley's the only one who mentions, oh, yeah, there is a Senate and you need 60 votes for pretty much everything you're talking. You know what I think she may have figured out? I watching this all come in and watching all of you on there last night. It's clear that pro-life Trump voting Republicans are voting against Trump.

The pro life movement stuff. I mean, you don't get to Bashir's numbers in Kentucky without some of Bashir's voters who saw the ads from a rape survivor voting who had voted for Trump for president. It's a plus 26 state voting for a Democrat who supports abortion access. What Republicans have done, what they have said to the electorate is is not just we're going to outlaw. We're going to make it a crime. Yeah.

And what the what even Republican voters are voting against the abortion law. I mean, Ohio went down again, 20 points ahead of the Biden number voted to enshrine abortion rights in the Constitution.

I mean, I not only was I not sure that would pass, I never thought it would pass with 20 percent more support than supports Biden. I mean, what the voters have heard and their problem is they have now branded themselves as criminalizing health care. Yeah. And criminalizing women and having women arrested. And by the way, I would argue that Mississippi, which, you know, has been written off by Democrats for decades,

That race, Brandon Presley came within, what, four or five points? Five points, yeah. He is a staunchly anti-abortion Democrat. He's very conservative. I would argue, had you combined that last name, him being Elvis' kin, with a different policy idea, if he was more like...

The Kentucky governor in his views on abortion and if abortion had been an issue, given the turnout that was so strong out of Jackson, despite all of the voter suppression and weird problems that happened in Jackson, there was a surge of voting in Mississippi, which is not easy to do. Turnout there is usually abysmally low among Democrats.

Had Presley had a different position on abortion, I would argue that state, that would have been much closer. It might have been. It would have been closer. And of course, the Dobbs case that overturned the Mississippi case. All right. We've got much more ahead here tonight in our special coverage of the third Republican presidential debate. Yes, it happened. We'll talk about last night's big Democratic wins in several states as well. We've got lots still to come. Stay with us.

Let's find consensus. Let's agree on how we can ban late-term abortions. Let's make sure we encourage adoptions and good quality adoptions. Let's make sure we make contraception accessible. Let's make sure that none of these state laws put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty for getting an abortion. Let's focus on how to save as many babies as we can and support as many moms as we can and stop the judgment. We don't need to divide America over this issue anymore. ♪♪

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I think you owe it to the American people, Nikki, to at least this one time at least condemn... Mr. Ramaswamy, thank you. That's time. At least to condemn their banning of Christians. Mr. Ramaswamy, thank you. Or else we're talking out of both sides. Mr. Ramaswamy, I am telling you, Putin and President Xi are salivating at the thought that someone like that could become president. They would love to see that. The fact of the matter is she doesn't answer the question. So this is what I will tell you. We're driving Russia into China's hands because of these foolish policies. Mr. Ramaswamy, you had your time to talk. The ambassador has the floor. Ambassador, please. The first thing I'll tell you is...

We all remember what that thug did when he invaded Ukraine. We all know that half a million people have died because of Putin. And here is a freedom-loving, pro-American country that is fighting for its survival and its democracy. No, I don't think we should give them cash. I think we should give them the equipment and the ammunition to win.

Nikki Haley, one of the five candidates on stage tonight at the third Republican debate in downtown Miami. Former Governor Haley, former U.N. Ambassador Haley, they're making a strong case for U.S. support for Ukraine and also advocating that we stop funding them at the same time.

That was one of the repeated sharp interactions, though, between her and Vivek Ramaswamy. I was just looking at my notes ahead of the debate and noting that Mr. Ramaswamy had actually publicly promised that in this debate he would be unhinged. That was his promise ahead of time. So he came right out of the gate at the very top, attacking Kristen Welker and then attacked

Nikki Haley called her Dick Cheney in three and she'll shout out and then Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, like those are his homeboys. That was so terribly cringy after he shouted out those guys and then insulted the female moderator and then insulted the one female candidate on the stage. I thought, what is he? He's already he's just bowed.

to Joe Rogan and then insulted the first woman that he could see and then insulted the second woman. I actually wrote in my notes, he has run out of women. What is he going to do next? But yet he pulled around

pulled a rabbit out of the bag. He decided to attack Nikki Haley's daughter who wasn't on stage or in the room as far as we know. But I mean, I kind of wondered who he was going to hit next. I kind of feel like he is not running for president. He's running to replace Ben Shapiro. I think he wants to hit podcast. Podcast king. Yeah, I think it's clear that he really feels that he can challenge that, you know, the far right wing podcast crew and he thinks he can get one. The problem is he's so

Oh, annoying. No one's going to want to listen to a podcast for an hour listening to that man speak. I think he's going to be a debate club TikTok influencer. Yes. You know how there's like. But not TikTok. He hates the TikTok. Oh, no. He's on TikTok. He's on TikTok. But he'll be an influencer for debate club boys. Yeah. Like his range. I feel like his age range is targeted age range is like kind of 10 to 13. Yeah. Maybe. And then he starts aging out because you think like, oh, this is not going to help my social life at all.

But, you know, he kind of pretends to be I'm the business guy. He keeps bringing up this CEO label. And I can tell you, because Nikki Haley has a lot of Wall Street donors, they detest him. They detest his brand. They detest how he presents himself. So when you look at her rage against him, she feels it personally, but she's got a lot of donors behind her telling her keep pushing. Tonight, a former CFO of a Fortune 500 company texted me during the Vex comments, and he said...

I can't even look at this guy for one more minute. He said he's like a Russian spy who worked at McKinsey as a consultant for three years. That's how he presents himself. And you just wonder, who are his voters? I think his whole shtick, which is extremely thirsty and very obviously trolling, also is an echo of other problems that Trump has caused that may outlast him in this Republican Party. Like after the cheeseburger thing.

And who would have predicted or really seen, if you look back six or eight years ago, that being Donald Trump's loyal vice president for four years on everything except actually joining a coup that is now a federal trial would not help you last as long as being the kind of chief content officer wannabe that Trump and the reality show and the Internet thing is.

Because that's what Vivek is. So Pence is Pence is Pence is gone. And Vivek is here shopping. Yes. As you said, a tick tock podcast fusion project. But the other piece of it is I think it does demonstrate the thing to your point, Ari, that what Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party is he's turned it into pure performance. Like there's just a performative difference.

version of mini-Trump that other than Haley and Christie are trying to be. With him, it is the idea that he says that he is this great billionaire, or this great businessman, the way that Donald Trump does. But in reality, when you really look at his business, the thing that he built after getting George Soros' big brother's grant—which

which he accepted willingly, even though he had money. It looks more like a pump and dump than it does like a successful pharmaceutical company. And so it's a it's a it's less than what it appears like Trump's wealth is less than what it appears. It's all arguments. But this whole argument that America wants a big, successful CEO. The last time a truly successful businessman ran for president, his name was Mitt Romney. And he was a really successful businessman. And he lost. Yeah. Can I say something, though? I have

I actually think that Ramaswamy is a symptom of something else. The weakness of the rest of them. In old times, he'd be gone because he was a clown. And it actually speaks to the weakness of the other people on the stage that he's still there. We're going to be right back. Up next, more on the Democrats' big wins in Ohio and Kentucky and Virginia. The great Steve Kornacki is going to join us here. Chris Hayes is going to be here with us in just a moment. We've got a lot to get to. Stay with us. ♪♪♪

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The third Republican presidential debate has just wrapped tonight in Miami. At least one candidate declared war on Iran. At least two declared war on Mexico. That kind of thing doesn't even make news anymore. It remains to be seen whether any of these candidates will see a change in their overall fortunes based on their performance in this debate. To the extent that there's

Any emerging consensus view in the initial response? It may be that people think Nikki Haley has done herself the most favors of any of the five candidates. I don't know. That also was the consensus view after the last debate. And the candidate who actually got the largest polling bump out of the last debate was one who was not there. It was Donald Trump. So make of this what you will. Heading into tonight, though, let's just have a look at where they are in the standings polling wise tonight.

vis-a-vis the all but prohibitive frontrunner, the former president. Joining us now from the big board is NBC's Steve Kornacki. Steve, can you help us rationalize this conundrum? I mean, yeah, I was going to say this has been the subplot of the debate season, but really this has been the main plot of the debate season. You have the overwhelming frontrunner in national and early state polling who has refused to participate in

now in three debates and all sorts of predictions when Donald Trump started skipping debates back in August that he was going to pay a price. So let's take a look here. This is the national polling average on the morning of August 23rd. That was the day of the first Republican presidential debate. And of course, Donald Trump was not there. This is the one that was in Milwaukee. Trump was polling 55 percent nationally, towering above the rest of the field. But you heard

All sorts of, you know, his critics, his opponents say if he doesn't show up, the voters will take that as a sign of disrespect. He'll be giving free airtime to all his opponents to define themselves, to define him. He's going to regret this. He regretted it before by skipping a debate in 2016.

That was what you heard, a loud chorus of that day. Debate went off that night. Another one went off in September. Now we've had this morning, coming into the debate this morning, what price has Trump paid? As you just said, none, none whatsoever. In the national polling average this morning, he sat at almost 61% of the vote. Ron DeSantis, now participating in his third debate, has ticked up by eight-tenths of a point.

You do see Nikki Haley has gotten good reviews for her debate performance as she was 2.8 at the start of these debates, 7.9 this morning. That's the biggest jump you see from anyone, biggest positive jump you see from anyone who's participated in these debates. We'll see if she continues to get traction here. But what I think is just most striking is Trump at 60.8 percent right now. If you combine

The five people you just saw on stage tonight, their combined support is 32.5%. So you saw a lot of squabbling between those candidates on the stage tonight, a lot of attempts by them to differentiate themselves from one another. But I think honestly, all of them, what they really need, and they may not get, it certainly doesn't look like they're going to get, they need an opportunity to get Trump on the stage with them to make contrast, to make definition with him present.

Trump seems to recognize that he's strategically staying away. I think the question tonight is, did anybody do anything or will there be any polling fallout from this debate tonight that would get Trump to reconsider that posture? Because really, you talk about what it would take to win a debate for any of these candidates. That would be a win for these candidates, getting Trump to participate in the next one.

And literally, Steve Kornacki, while we have been on the air tonight, we just got news that Donald Trump has said he will not participate in the next one. And so this is one of those moments where you're, you know, your lips to God's ears. For a second, I thought you were going to say that he would participate. We're going to have a moment. But now our lives don't get that simple without deep, deep payment. Steve, thank you very much.

for that. Our colleague Chris Hayes joins us now. Chris, what's your overall reaction to how these guys... Oh, okay. I can read it in your face. All right. Well, no, I mean, look, what can you say? It's like watching a preseason football game. You know, it's like, yeah, there's a risk of injury. That guy played okay, I guess. I don't know, like...

It's there were helmets. Yeah, there was. It is like prison is it's like all of the everyone's making the motions of the thing without the stakes of the thing, basically. So, yeah, I think, look, in an alternate universe in which it's Nikki Haley versus Donald Trump, maybe even from the beginning.

I could kind of come up with a colorable claim in which like maybe that's a race. Like, I think she's like a fairly adept politician. I think she's got some ability to sort of draw from kind of the some of the folks who have been disaffected that we see coming up in election after election, particularly in the suburbs and the Republican Party and particularly from Trump and MAGA. I can see that being a universe. But we just live in that we live in that universe. And so, you know, and they've all made the strategic decision not to actually really go after him.

And so I think they're all just hoping that some comet falls from the sky. So, but that is the point that Steph made at the beginning of our conversation, that they're not, for that polling universe to be the world in which, the real world in which we are living, that is Earth One. Why is it that none of them are going after them directly? I said, I think it's because in that universe, you can't afford to be an anti-Trump person. Correct. Because you'll never have another day of success in Republican politics. But

But, I mean, what other choice do they have? Well, I think also about, like, you know, I think about the SAG strike got resolved tonight and there's that old labor, which side are you on question, right? And the sort of elemental logic of which side are you on is as a labor organizer, you want to polarize an issue. You don't want people in the middle. You're on one side or the other. And one of the things you do as an effective organizer is drive that wedge to polarize people. Like, which side are you on? You're on the side of us or them, right? True.

Trump has effectively done that in the Republican Party. There's just no he has driven that wedge. He has understood that that's his role in the party in some ways is to is to draw the line between anti-Trump or pro-Trump. That's the only dividing line. That's the line to polarize on. And he has so successfully done it that there's just no evading it. And if you're on the wrong side of it, you're dead.

Then why wouldn't Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who are both young, just sit it out until 2028 instead of putting themselves in the mouth of the lion doing absolutely nothing, running in circles? Why are they even in this game until he's done? Because maybe he has a heart attack. I don't know.

know. He's 77 years old. OK, but I mean, honestly, I think that they're just waiting around for something, some exogenous event to happen. This is an understudy. But also that problem of getting in, that decision has to be made before you know how vulnerable or strong Trump is going to be. Right. So if someone were to say to you, you know, there's a candidate who could be the front runner, but there's a very strong likelihood he's going to be indicted four times.

You might want to get a campaign ready to run against him. These decisions to run were all made before he was indicted once. And so they had good reason to think this could be a frail candidacy for Donald Trump as the indictments mounted up. They now have information that they didn't have at the beginning. That 60 percent thing didn't exist in their calculations at the beginning. It does now. So all you're looking at now is

is the planning of their exits and when they get out. And a guy like Pence is old enough and wise enough to know, I'm getting out before I have one penny of campaign debt. That's the key, is that he didn't want presidential campaign debt following him around for the rest of his life. And so, you know, these other candidacies, it's really all they need is a bus ticket to the next town. So these are pretty cheap candidacies to keep running. But by the way,

By that standard, what makes it so interesting to watch Jack Smith is that Jack Smith is what campaigns used to be. He's rapidly responding to events as they transpire. These campaigns seem totally incapable of responding to events as they actually are because they certainly got in exactly

in the way that you describe it, but he's now been indicted four times. Their candidacies, and if they had any ability to coordinate, could be about taking him out. He was take out a bull at the beginning and certainly after he was indicted one, two, three, four times, they could have reoriented their candidacies at least as quickly as an

as a prosecutor's reorienting his way. They all decided, in effect, because Christie stepped forward, they said, all right, he wants to run that experiment? Go ahead, run that experiment. And you saw what happened with Christie. He went from, you know, 2.5% to 1.5%. So they're looking at the 60% Trump voter and saying,

at any future point in my Republican life, I have to get those votes. Therefore, I can never attack that guy because I may someday ask for those votes of the people who love that guy. Much more of our special coverage still to come. Stay with us. We'll be right back. ♪♪♪

I am asking for your vote. I'll be a nominee that will be able to win the election. I will be a leader you can be proud of. And as your president, I will not let you down. God bless you. Governor Sanders, thank you.

Governor Ron DeSantis has been hit, at least in the online commentariat, for his physical awkwardness, clearly working on some of his kind of his his tics and affects tonight, but just kind of picking up some new ones that are getting just as much negative attention as his old ones.

Joining us now from the site of tonight's debate is former Congressman from Florida, Carlos Curbelo. Congressman Curbelo, it's great to see you. We're so happy that you were able to be there on site tonight. Thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you, Rachel. It's good to be with you. So our general take from watching here through the TV screen is that none of these guys has done enough to change the basic course of this race and being behind 40 points. That's a pretty steep climb. But I think that we generally felt like Governor Haley is the person who probably comported herself the best and did herself the most favors. Did it feel that way in the room to you watching in person? Yeah.

Yeah, definitely, Rachel. I agree. I don't think there was any major shift in the dynamics, not even in this race for second place. But Nikki Haley came across as competent. She was able to fend off a lot of these attacks. Obviously, the big Rameshwami overstepped and kind of crossed the line when he mentioned her daughter. The whole debate hall booed him, whereas before

you know, for most of the debate, people who supported each candidate were clapping or booing. But in this case, Ramaswamy managed to unite everyone against him for that. But other than that, it was a race that's going to kind of stay as it is right now. It's an important race for second place because, look, on the surface, this is a very stable Trump versus Biden rematch. But there's a lot going on underneath the surface in both parties. So this isn't irrelevant. And certainly, you know,

our friends at NBC News did a wonderful job of moderating this debate. It was not a circus-like atmosphere like the previous two. In terms of whose sort of stakes...

Here were the highest and the different kinds of dynamics that are happening beneath the surface here. This is a different kind of debate for Governor DeSantis than it is for anybody, if only because this is on his home turf. He is in this like particularly humiliating situation in which Donald Trump is beating him by 39 points in his home state. And this was a home state debate.

But you can sort of see the DeSantis machine running new software, like trying new ways of speaking, trying new ways of carrying himself, trying new, I think, more humanizing ways of addressing some policy issues. Do you feel like you're seeing him improve just in terms of what it takes technically to be a candidate? Yes.

Rachel, I mean, he's still got some room to grow, but I think this was Ron DeSantis' best performance. Maybe it's because it's a little warmer here in Miami. He seemed more at ease than he has in the past. Look, DeSantis really needed to try to separate himself from Haley in this debate, try to gain some ground, try to establish himself academically.

as the number one Trump alternative. That didn't happen. Having said that, I think both him and Haley turned in adequate performances. They addressed the issues fairly substantively. I think Nikki Haley is the only one who understands the peril that the abortion issue represents for Republicans nationwide. Well, her and Donald Trump, who sidesteps the issue every time he gets asked.

But, yeah, I think these candidates did what they had to do tonight. Some of the lower tier candidates really didn't do anything to break through to kind of catch up to Haley and DeSantis. So it looks like it's DeSantis and Haley in this race for second place, which, again, given the dynamics beneath the surface, isn't irrelevant. Former Congressman Carlos Curbelo, who is at the site of tonight's debate in Miami. Congressman, it's great to have you with us tonight. Really invaluable to have you there. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right. We've got much more ahead here tonight. Our friend Jen Psaki is going to be joining us in the next hour. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to our coverage of tonight's Republican presidential debate, a debate that, again, was a Republican debate. But the candidates themselves nevertheless kept coming back to the topic of Republicans losing. They kept bringing it up themselves, unprompted.

We have lost 2018, 2020, 2022. No red wave that never came. We got trounced last night in 2023. I'm sick of Republicans losing. Look, the people there are cheering for losing in the Republican Party. We've become a party of losers at the end of the day.

And yet the man who has been the leader of the Republican Party in the period in question through all of that losing. This is pretty much as close as anyone came to out and out criticizing former president and current presidential frontrunner Donald Trump tonight.

I can talk about President Trump. I can tell you that I think he was the right president at the right time. I don't think he's the right president now. I think that he put us $8 trillion in debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for that. I think the fact that he used to be right on Ukraine and foreign issues, now he's getting weak in the knees and trying to be friendly again. I think that we've got to go back to the fact that we can't live in the past. We can't live

in other headlines, we've got to start focusing on what's going to make America strong and proud. And that's what I'm focused on doing.

That's as much of criticism that we saw against Donald Trump tonight. He, again, is ahead of these candidates by 30, 40, 50 points in the polls. I'm Rachel Maddow. I'm here with Joy Reid and Nicole Wallace and Stephanie Ruhle and Lawrence O'Donnell and Chris Hayes. We've been talking about the fact that the polling here precludes any of us ascribing any real importance to the

performance of these candidates. I will say, and I think this will be an unpopular position at this table, I think Ron DeSantis is getting better. I thought that he was the worst supposedly potentially viable candidate I had ever seen in a presidential debate in debate one, and now I feel like this new beta version of his software is churning out some new things. He spoke in a way that I actually think

the fact that he's been working on it. And he talked in ways that were sort of human. And he got what seemed to be legitimate applause. And that means that he's a candidate who can change. There, that's my positive thing. If you're suggesting that he has gone from an F to a C minus, I

I think I'm with you. His problem isn't that he's awkward. I think most people have awkward people in their lives and they're the most endearing people in their lives. The problem is that he's peddling hate and he's doing it in a less compelling way than Donald Trump. Not in my opinion, in the opinion of the Republican primary voter. That's his problem. He's peddling this very extreme agenda in a way that Republican primary voters, even the ones that live in Florida, view as foolish.

Far inferior to the way Trump does the same thing. Well, and also because no one wants to buy a substitute when they can get the real thing. I mean, to me, he was the biggest loser because he's on his home turf. Everything that he's done to get to this place has been to pass and force through legislation that have made Republicans in Tallahassee resent him.

They are now stuck with a six week abortion ban that's deeply unpopular. He has picked fights with Disney that's led to lawsuits. He picked fights with the cruise industry. He's picked fights, essentially pushed labor, you know, Latino workers out of the state, which is hurting the construction industry and the agricultural industry. They are screaming in pain because their workers are leaving because of his immigration bill. He's stuck all of them, all of the state with that. And then he's not even getting anywhere in the polls.

And so I think there are a lot of Republicans who will tell you in Florida who resent him. So there really isn't a future for him if he doesn't get the and he ain't getting the nomination again unless the cheeseburger thing happens to me. He's the biggest loser to me. The two winners are Nikki Haley and Chris Christie. So my real question is to no labels, no labels who has been out there for months, you know, raising money, peddling this idea that we've got to have somebody other than Trump.

other than Biden. Well, Chris Christie and Nikki Haley made all the arguments tonight that you hear no labels make. So my question tomorrow morning when I pick up the phone and say, hey, Nancy Jacobson, do you want to come on TV? And her answer again is going to be no. Why do you guys exist? Because you've got two people on that stage right now who could challenge Donald Trump with all your dollars behind them. What exactly are you doing? Yeah, the whole no labels thing is by people who are hoping that Donald Trump is going to get elected and that they can peel off

seemingly moderate voters from voting for a Democratic incumbent president by instead saying it's this magic third way. That's all it is, because the sort of magic third way that you're talking about is completely embodied by those two who are not going to win anything. Yes, I know. Can I take the debate seriously just for one minute? And it's one it's it's one thing that DeSantis said.

And what is serious about it is it's an injection of poison into the body politic and into American society. And it is a breathtaking insult to the intelligence of Republican voters and their human decency. And that is that Ron DeSantis is going to shoot and kill drug smugglers at the southern border. And my question is when?

When will you determine that that's a drug smuggler who you're going to shoot and kill? Is it going to be someone who has a backpack who's swimming across the river? Do you shoot and kill him or her then? Do you wait to find out what's in the backpack? How do you do this? And of course, to do it,

You'd have to pass a new federal law that legalizes that particular murder, which you can't do because it's going to be 60 votes in the Senate, all that stuff. But this very concept that that's how we'll handle it. And no one's had the courage to do this before for no good reason. But I, Ron DeSantis, will set up the machine gun turrets along that border and I will have them shot.

There won't be trials. There won't be apprehensions. There won't be anything. They'll be shot and they will be dead. And then we'll find out what was in the backpack. That's his insult to the intelligence and the decency of Republican voters in the country at large.

We had Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy both talk about using military force inside Mexico. We also saw Tim Scott say that he was going to literally declare war on Iran. Yeah, I would say that the less grim partner to that. But my favorite moment was Vivek, Vivek Ramaswamy describing building a border on the totality of the northern border.

as, quote, skating to where the puck is going, not where it is, which I thought was a nice play for the Canadian vote, I guess, in some weird way. But I guess sort of like equal opportunity, insane paranoia and unworkability. He also said he's the only candidate who has been brave enough to go to the northern border. Oh, yes. Without a jacket on. But I mean, you

I mean, it is. I think to your point, though, Lawrence, it is a symptom of Ron DeSantis's other core problem, which is that because he had a super majority in the state House and Senate, he could pass anything he wanted. And he gave him a list and they did everything on the list. And he's now trying to convince

voters, Republican voters, that he can work the same magic in Washington, which is a completely different system in which, as Nikki Haley keeps pointing out, you need 60 votes in the Senate to do anything. If anyone really, truly believes that he can do any of the things he's saying based on what he did in Florida, which he keeps citing, then they're not paying attention to the world because it doesn't work that way in Washington at all. He also literally said, aside from like the wildly reckless and morally indefensible glib talk about

basically starting a war with Mexico, which is just like heinous in every way and heinous in the casualness with which they all talk about it. He literally said, I'm going to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it tonight. It's like, bro, why am I going to go with you instead of the last guy who said he was going to do that? Like, literally, what's the point? We all know that's his line. Like, why would I vote for you? He was

was the one who said he was going to do that and then obviously didn't. Why would I vote for another person who said they're going to do it and obviously didn't? The thing, though, we've been talking about what level of criticism Trump came in from. That was kind of the one thing other than Trump added a lot of debt. That was one thing they criticized him for. Really, the other specific thing he was criticized for was not getting Mexico to pay for the wall. And so Ron DeSantis, as if you could look at the four years of the Trump administration and say, hmm,

That was the problem. That was the one big one. That was the one thing that really went wrong. And we can all agree, let's bring America together. Mexico didn't pay one peso. And so clearly that's the unfinished business that we should, you know, use to put the Republican Party back in the White House. And not mention the coup or...

I mean, like, if you really because it was a million Americans dead from COVID. Correct. You know, footnote, one reason Mexico didn't pay for the wall is we didn't build the wall. Correct. There's that. And also all the water. There's the water that makes the wall not possible because there's the water. It's water. But again, like this is so ludicrous to us. I think the big thing watching this is.

wow, Republican primary voters don't like any of them. Like Trump is ahead, again, 30 to 50 points more popular than everybody on the stage. And he's running to take down our trusted institutions. He's running for revenge. He gets on the podium and says, I'm your retribution. Yeah. And I mean, the core one of the core driving aspects that produced 2016 and Trump was like genuine and unbridled contempt on the part of Republican voters for the Republican Party.

Ramaswamy has tried to sort of channel that in certain ways. We've seen it again and again with how it is manifested. Trump being like all these people are losers, which was his shtick in 2016, like really worked with them. And I think it just remains the case that for a variety of complicated reasons, like Republican voters still kind of hate the Republican Party and don't put Trump in the same category.

And by the way, I would say the person who came closest to kind of making this point is Nikki Haley, where she did say that, you know, Republicans need a new generation. You know, Trump was right for that right time. We need a new generation. No one is really talking about it. People talk about it with Biden.

But Trump thinks that he ran against Barack Obama. Trump is not always sure where he is. He's warning us that we might get into World War II. World War II might happen. I have a book for him. And it's not clear. I mean, he might be non-corpus mentis and no one says anything. There is this sort of

The Biden conversation about his age isn't had about Trump. Trump's only three years younger. And Trump is arguably not all there, not there the way he was even in 2016. His lack of ability to sort of get through a sentence. He slurs his words. There's a lot there. If one of these candidates wanted to try to take him down.

And they had the political skill. I don't know if any of them has the political skill. There's so much there that it actually is political malpractice that they're not even trying. Well, and the Biden-Harris campaign put out a press release about that this week, really calling out us, calling out the media for not covering a lot of these gaffes. I mean, they're... And I think...

it's good that his rallies aren't taken live anymore, but you do miss a lot of the gas. You have to go looking for them. And he was on the stage. He didn't know where he was. Someone came up and told him where he was and corrected him. I mean, this is happening and it's largely going on this week. Yeah. The judge was asking him a question about his business. And he's like, well, I was busy running the country. And they were like, sir, you weren't in office that year. Yeah.

That happened three days ago. There is. I mean, there's a good faith criticism to be made that like, oh, we shouldn't elect somebody who's 80 to be president. There's nothing inherently wrong with making that kind of an argument categorically. But the answer to that cannot be, you're right, we should definitely put a 77 in the list.

In office. That's what we need. And who would be 80 during his presence? And, you know, the there is a way in which these candidacies, particularly the Christie candidacy, might actually in the end do Trump in. When I look at that board, I'm wondering that Steve had up there. How many of those Christie voters, how many of those Nikki Haley voters?

Will not vote for Donald Trump in a general election They've had plenty of time to make up everyone who's not voting for Trump, you know that 30% whatever Everyone who's not voting for him in the Republican primary has thought about him a lot And they've decided as of today. No, I don't want to vote for Donald Trump he will surely if he's the nominee get most of them going into a general election against Joe Biden and

But he is unlikely to get all of them because there must be some pretty strong feelings to define themselves against Donald Trump at this stage of this election. And Donald Trump needs every single one of them. He cannot lose a single Republican vote. Yeah.

he's on his way to. And I mean, let's just be real about this, too. I mean, freed of the need to run in a Democratic primary, Joe Biden does not have to run to the left ahead of the general election in a way that's going to be having him stake out positions that he's going to find hard

to defend in the general election. He can run as bipartisan Joe Biden from now all the way through next November in a way that is going to provide him maximum opportunity for peeling off any persuadable independent voters, independent leaning or Republican leaning independents and anybody else who's in the Republican Party but can't stand Trump. I mean, Biden is perfectly positioned to be able to do that.

because he has governed in a bipartisan way. He does have a legislative record of accomplishment. He's not a partisan bomb thrower and he doesn't have to run in the primary. And by the way, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who nobody talks a lot about him because he's odd, but he is running. And the polls that I have seen show that the bigger risk

It's to Trump. Yeah. Because the people who love RFK Jr. the most are anti-vaxxers. Yes, it's the COVID stuff. Exactly. So that's not taking from Biden's voters. Potentially, RFK Jr.

RFK Jr. is a bigger threat to Trump. So Trump really does need every single voter. And Rachel, to your point, I mean, the first people that Joe Biden can go look for in that effort are the plus 20 who voted to enshrine abortion in the Constitution in Ohio. There's a 20 percent cushion for Joe Biden to say, I see this issue the way you see this issue. And that guy over there, he's the reason Roe was overturned. He's the reason Roe was overturned. And you've got a new speaker of

House, who is the co-sponsor of a federal abortion ban and a lifelong anti-abortion activist. You sure you want to give the Republicans the White House right now? Or when we look at Nikki Haley and Chris Christie's fundraising dollars in the next week off of this debate, think about the point that Lawrence just made. The people who write her big checks tonight and Chris Christie, are they really two months from now going to say, well, I guess I'm going to go for Trump? They're not. No, they've had every opportunity. That's right.

All right, we've got much more to come tonight. Jen Psaki is going to be joining us in just a minute. Stay with us.

Welcome back to MSNBC's special coverage of the third Republican primary debate. I'm Jen Psaki, alongside some of my absolutely favorite people to talk politics with, especially late at night. Joining me here at the table are former Democratic senator from Missouri, Claire McCaskill. She's also the co-host of the podcast How to Win in 2024. Great podcast. Everybody should listen. Former RNC chairman Michael Steele, who always holds back. So we're looking forward to bringing him out of his shell tonight.

former chief spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris and the host of Simone on MSNBC, Simone Sanders Townsend, and former senior advisor for Mitt Romney, Kevin Madden. So, okay, this was a bit of a wild, toad, crazy night ride, a bit.

but very substantive on foreign policy and some other issues. I just want to start with you, Michael. What's your big takeaway from tonight? In one sense, it was the typical night in the jungle. You know, all the animals braided the moon and, you know, tried to, you know, mark their territory. I still say this was Nikki Haley's night.

As the last few nights have been, she she showed poise in the face of the craziness of Vivek Swami. Vivek, as he showed the kind of determination and steely, I think, strength it needs to go up against foreign adversaries like Putin. And she laid out, I thought, a very reasonable, cogent, conservative decision.

discussion, if you will, around abortion. And I know people will likely deal with deal or disagree with that because it's sort of a hot issue. But within the Republican ecosystem, what she said probably hurt her with some folks. But she took that risk

putting out there. So I thought it was a good night for her. I won't even get into Vivek. We will get into Vivek. Don't worry. I did think she had a good night, but I also think she said absolutely nothing on abortion. But Claire, what did you think? Yeah, I know I would. I kind of am with you. I listened really carefully to what Nikki Haley actually said about abortion and came away with the conclusion that she succeeded in talking for about three or four minutes and said absolutely nothing.

She didn't say what she was for, what she was against. She said, oh, we all have to get along. We have to have 60 votes. And this is a difficult issue. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sounded very much like a politician. I wouldn't disagree, though, that she had a good night. I think Chris Christie had a good night. If you if you tuned in and you've never seen any of these candidates before, I think he was really good. Yeah, he was.

Now, you know, you have to filter in everything we know about Chris Christie. And at the end of the day, I can't decide which I have a stronger opinion about. That Vivek Ramaswamy is the biggest jerk who's ever run for president.

Does running as a jerk win? You've won before. Well, I hope I was never as big a jerk as he was. No, never. I was going to say, the way you phrased that question. That was bad phrasing. I don't think you run as a jerk and win. That's my point, Claire. You would never be a jerk. You know, it is late. I have had my moments, I will admit. But I think the funniest thing he may have said all night, which just shows how out of touch he is, because all the women listening said,

spit whatever they were drinking out when he said, well, you know, what we really need to do on abortion is we have to have male sexual responsibility. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Like, how is that going to happen? Just in case anyone didn't see it, she just threw her pen when she said that. Let's see that piece of legislation. Women of America are going, yeah, like, hold my beer. I know. Ain't going to happen. You know, Claire brought up brought up Chris Christie. And I also think

think he had-- watching him, he seemed the least overly poll tested or overly practiced in some way. I mean that in a slight compliment. But he also seemed a little deflated. I mean, he did not go nuclear on Donald Trump, which has been his strategy in the past. But what did you think, Kevin, of his performance? KEVIN MCGOWAN: Well, I mean, I still think that Christie has probably the hardest path right now to the nomination.

I would say that, first of all, the three big takeaways that I have on this would first is that, look, let's give credit to the moderators. This was a very well-moderated debate. And I think, particularly as you contrast it to the last two debates, it was probably the most substantive. We saw really good, strong policy debates. There's probably a lot of differences about how substantive or a lot of the positions, but it was a good issue-focused debate. The second thing is, and this is to your direct question, Jen,

The subprimary here, which is who's going to emerge as the alternative that is going to take Trump on directly, that race has been basically reduced down to Haley, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Those are the only two real viable options right now that are going to emerge out of the early 2020s.

primary contest. And you can see it in the debate, the way that everybody sort of went after Nikki Haley. Why? She's the one that's probably most ascendant right now in the polls and has the most momentum. And all the other candidates are trying to stop that. And then the third thing, I think, is still the elephant in the room, right?

Donald Trump was literally talked about for the first five minutes and then disappeared. Yeah, he didn't come up. And he went largely unscathed during this debate. Nobody really drew a hard contrast with him. They didn't have a broad sustained assault. And as we get closer and closer to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida,

somebody is going to have to take him on directly. And we have yet to really see it in a broad and sustained way. Yeah, that's the absence of Trump has been like kind of a theme. I do want to play this back and forth between Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. And get your thoughts, Simone. I'm sure you have many. I have thoughts.

I want to laugh at why Nikki Haley didn't answer your question, which is about looking at families in the eye. In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time. So you might want to take care of your family first. Leave my daughter out of your voice. The next generation of Americans are using it. And that's actually the point. You have her supporters propping her up. That's fine. Here's the truth. You're just scum.

First of all, if anyone brought up my daughter, I would mama bear claw them. I would have stronger words than Nikki Haley. She exercised some restraint on the stage that I don't think I would have had. That was

That was a low moment for Vivek Ramaswamy. I think he's annoying. He is a jerk. I think he's absolutely annoying. I think the candidates felt that from the very first debate on that stage and every single debate since then. I think that they have all just worked to flick him away like a little fly. I do think that the moderators had a very, had a command of the candidates today and they did not allow Vivek Ramaswamy to run away with the conversation that I do think that happened in the last two debates.

All in all, though, I do think that the candidates on the stage, I did not see a president on that stage tonight. I don't even think I saw a vice president. I don't think Republican primary voters saw a president on the stage either. I don't think there was a president. Not that you're one of them. Well, you know, I talked, I texted with some. I didn't see a president on the stage. And there were a lot of just extreme comments that were made. I thought the exchange about college campuses, similar like the exchange about the border,

was very jarring in some of the comments that were made. I thought that Tim Scott was very underwhelming. He had a lot, I was texting with folks during the debate and he had a lot to say about college campuses, but had nothing to say when HBCUs were under attack. And so it's like this faux outrage. I think he was trying to have a moment and the moment never materialized. But his girlfriend did come on stage at the end. We did certainly see that. Mindy. I'll give you a moment on the stage.

Mindy is her name. There you go. Well, one of the most interesting things, and I know we're going to have to take a quick break in a moment here, that I thought was how everybody went after Nikki Haley. And Nikki Haley became not only did she have a pretty good night of the candidates on the stage, but she also was the prime target. So that, I thought, was kind of an interesting tell about where things stand in the primary at this point in time. Yeah, she is the ascendant one, as Kevin noted. And she's the one who's kind of...

Galvanize the energy of the money in the first instance that's moved off of Rhonda Sanders. They've moved towards her. Here's the problem, and it really goes to what Kevin was saying real quick.

We talk about this as if it really matters because it doesn't, because the base has decided who they want and they weren't on that stage. That person wasn't on the stage. It's Donald Trump. The money interest plays out on that stage. They're dropping, you know, flopping back and forth between Scott and Haley and so forth. But at the end of the day,

This is going to be determined at a ballot box. And none of those folks gave that base a reason to vote for them. Well, that's a key thing. We do have to sneak in a very quick break, but we are just getting started this hour. We're back with much more on the third Republican primary debate to primary debate tonight. Sorry for this quick break. Stay with us.

Unlike the first two Republican primary debates, Donald Trump came up very early on tonight. Here's what some of the candidates had to say about the four times indicted frontrunner.

Donald Trump's a lot different guy than he was in 2016. He owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance. He should explain why he didn't have Mexico pay for the border wall. He should explain why he racked up so much debt. We need a president and a candidate who will actually...

Help our base solidify and attract independent voters into our party. Anybody who's going to be spending the next year and a half of their life focusing on keeping themselves out of jail and courtrooms cannot lead this party or this country. And it needs to be said plainly.

OK, so he was very present early on, and then he kind of disappeared, right? We were talking about this a little bit earlier. But Kevin, what's the strategy there? You're on these Republican-- you've worked on a lot of Republican presidential campaigns.

What are they talking about? Why aren't they going after Trump? Yeah, well, I think there's the technical strategy, right, which is many of these consultants inside the campaign or the strategists inside the campaign are saying, like, we have to still get these voters. Like, if we want to win the nomination, if we want to find our way to 1,236 delegates at the convention, that we're going to have to appeal to these voters. And so they just don't want to draw a hard contrast on them. But here's where I think that's a flawed strategy is that

Voters don't like hope is not a strategy. Right. You can't just hope that these voters start to migrate your way or that that that Trump self-destructs or that somebody else does the hard work for you. You have to go and make that case in the court of public opinion with those voters on your own.

And so the biggest mistake that campaigns also make is that they think they have time. Here we are and we're in November. The first contests are in January. They have to make that case now. They have to make it in a relentless fashion versus let's take a couple of jabs in the first five minutes of the campaign and then pivot away or in the first five minutes of a debate and then pivot away. I think Kevin is absolutely right. I mean, they're looking, they're waiting on the opportunity to stand on the stage next to Donald Trump and make their contract. And it may never happen. I don't think it's ever going to happen. If I were

advising Donald Trump, which I never would be ever in my former life. But there's no reason for Donald Trump to stand on the stage with them. There's no reason. He might like what you're saying now. Maybe he'll call me. I just don't want him to tweet about me. But the campaigns have made a gross miscalculation. And because of that, they're not going to see any traction. And I do think that, you know, Mr. Chairman, I don't know, but the Republican Party apparatus has to have a conversation because how are you

How are you going to move past this terrible moment if no one is willing to take a swing, if nobody is willing to go out and make their case? I mean, what can I one thing I would just want to inject here, because the other piece I think they have not really thought about somehow or haven't had some sort of like meetings in the basement over is what the heck they're going to say about abortion and what their policy is. And Claire brought up earlier Nikki Haley's word salad or maybe I did or we both talked about it. So I do want to play that and talk a little bit about the abortion issue, too.

Let's find consensus. Let's agree on how we can ban late-term abortions. Let's make sure we encourage adoptions and good quality adoptions. Let's make sure we make contraception accessible. Let's make sure that none of these state laws put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty for getting an abortion. Let's focus on how to save as many babies as we can and support as many moms as we can and stop the judgment. We don't need to divide America over this issue anymore.

So is this I'm going to ask both of you this question. I mean, is that a general election strategy or position that you think the Republican Party thinks will work? What she just said? I do. I think I thought it was a very sound case for her to make when you consider.

the externalities and the politics around that issue, both inside and outside the party. She's talking to two audiences at the same time, and she's trying to craft a message that will allow her to hold position with her base, right? I'm pro-life.

But understand that outside of that base, there are women and including Republican women who do not like the criminalization of abortion, who do not like the fact that the party espouses pro-life values, but then does not care for, as Chris Christie said, the whole life of the individual. So it is a tough argument.

for a Republican to make today because they've so backed themselves in the corner with Dobbs. They've so backed themselves in the corner over 50 years, not acknowledging a lot of the things that she stated there. And I know for a lot of my friends on the Democratic side, they want something that's a little bit stronger and a little bit more, as Claire noted, with some teeth to it.

We'll see if that comes, if she's the nominee in a presidential, because she's going to have to confront that issue more head on that way. But for purposes of this primary, on this debate, on that stage, I thought that she kind of weaved herself pretty nicely into a space that she can survive to fight another day on this issue. Sometimes when you say everything, you say nothing. That is kind of the challenge. But I do think, Claire, because one of

the things that we haven't talked about a lot, and they didn't talk about a ton tonight, is the results from last night and what the lessons are that you would learn from that. So, Claire, what do you think is kind of a workable, you won in a red state message on abortion? Well, here's the thing. There's two ways to win an election. And one is you can't win an election without attacking the person you're running against.

And then none of them did that. So I don't get the feeling any of them are trying to win anything. I don't know what they're running for because they're not going to be as vice president.

And I don't know what she thought she was accomplishing by doing that tonight, because if she was ever really a nominee, she would have to have an answer. She'd have to have an answer for the pro-life base. I shouldn't say pro-life, the anti-choice base in the Republican Party. She would have to have an answer for women who see this as a highly emotional issue. And that's the other thing you have to have to win election. You have to have emotion that drives turnout.

And what the Democrats have right now, and I don't care what all these consultants say. Some Republican consultant in Virginia was quoted in The Wall Street Journal this morning saying, well, this issue will fade by November of next year. No, no, it won't. This issue, once they did what was always theoretical, an overturned row, they have now a situation where women have lost an important right to determine their own health care.

sometimes risking their lives. In my state, that 12-year-old girl that Bashir put on TV that was raped by her stepfather. Such a powerful ad and story. She's mandated by the government in my state to have birth to that child. And

And 80 percent of America disagrees with that. And so if Nikki Haley can't say that out loud tonight, that I'm for rape and incest exceptions. Nobody even said that tonight. I know not one person said a position that 80 percent of America agrees with. So I think they have missed the boat in terms of capping the emotion that is driving more politics,

more positive activity on the Democratic side of the equation than I've seen in a long, long time. Can I just say real quick, I hear you and I feel you and the chairman in me is gone, but I'm not running that race right now.

I'm not running the race you're talking about. When I get to that race, then we'll have that conversation. I'll be prepared for that conversation. At least I hope and think she would be. But right now, that's not her race. She's running to become the Republican nominee, not the Democratic nominee. But you need to understand, folks, in politics, you're talking to your audience. And unless you're going to be a real risk taker and talk to two audiences at once, you're

Understand what's going on. So you can't I get what you're saying, but please don't box it in as if, well, you're completely blown it. No, she hasn't, because if she comes out in January, March and April of next year as the nominee, then I bet you she'll be prepared to answer that question. What I'm saying is she's setting up the argument a lot better than the fellow. Hold all of your thoughts.

We've got to get to Clinton and lots more to talk to you about this. But I do want to turn to one of the most bizarre moments of the night, which is saying a lot because it was kind of a bizarre night. Here's Vivek Ramaswamy in his closing statement.

End this farce that Joe Biden is going to be your nominee. We know he's not even the president of the United States. He's a puppet for the managerial class. So have the guts to step up and be honest about who you're actually going to put up so we can have an honest debate. Biden should step aside, end his candidacy now so we can see whether it's Newsom or Michelle Obama or whoever else. Just tell us the truth so we can have an honest debate.

This feels like a perfect time to bring in my next guest. Joining us now is Quentin Folks. He's the principal deputy campaign manager for President Biden. Quentin, thank you so much for staying up late with us tonight. So I just first of all, do you want to respond to what Vivek Ramaswamy just had to say about President Biden? Well, thank you for having me, Jen. Look, that's a funny clip from from Ramaswamy. It actually sounds like he's interviewing to be the anchor of Newsmax.

than he is to be president of the United States, and I hope he's okay. I also do agree—

I do. I do. I do agree with him, though, when he said that the Republican Party is a party of losers. And I agree with that. So, you know, what happened tonight is that normally after you lose an election, you take a moment to self-reflect and try to course correct. But what we saw is Donald Trump and Republicans gather in Florida and double down on the same issues that cost them the election last night. And so put point blankly,

you know, the MAGA agenda failed, uh, and Republicans gathered in Florida to double down on the same things that caused them the election. So again, I just think it's very comical comment from, from Amaswami. Quinn, we've been talking a lot tonight about abortion and the politics of abortion. Everybody at this table does not a hundred percent agree, which is okay. Uh,

I wanted to ask you, when you were sitting in the campaign tonight texting with everybody, what stuck out to you guys? What are we going to see in an ad? I'm wondering maybe about Social Security and some of their answers on that. But what else stuck out to you as problematic?

I mean, their whole agenda is problematic. I mean, on abortion, were they not paying attention to voters in Ohio? Were they not paying attention to voters in Kentucky? And I also—I mean, if you'll indulge me, I heard the panel talking about Nikki Haley. In fact, I think Nikki Haley was quite clear on her position on abortion. She said she would sign anything that comes across her desk. She's using, you know—

cute language. But at the end of the day, to say that you would sign anything that comes across your desk when it comes to a national abortion ban, when you pass an abortion ban in your state with no exceptions, is a pretty clear position on the issue to me. And so, again, they're completely out of touch with the American public. And on Social Security and Medicare,

care, they're going after the same thing about gutting these issues, which Donald Trump tried to do year after year in his budget. So, again, I think it's just more of them doubling down on an issue that is completely out of touch with the American public and in stark contrast with what President Biden is bringing to the table.

Quinn, since I have the luxury of having you here, I know you have a lot of Georgia experience. So I do want to ask you about Georgia because, you know, a lot of people are freaking out about some recent polls. So tell us a little bit what's going on on the ground in Georgia. Are you concerned? What needs to happen there for President Biden to win Georgia again?

Look, I think we have to engage voters. And we're up right now on television with ads. We're up trying to figure out the best way to communicate with voters in a very fractured media environment. And that's what this campaign is going to do. We're really excited to continue to dig in and do the work in Georgia.

But, you know, the polls saying that we're down in Georgia, I just came out of that cycle after running Senator Warnock's campaign. We were down the entire time to a Trump endorsed candidate, which is also not going good for the candidates that Trump has decided to endorse in 2023. So I think that we're going to stay the course and we'll be just fine in Georgia.

Quentin, folks, thank you so much for staying out late with us tonight. I know you have to be up early tomorrow morning. And the panel is coming right back. They're staying with us after a quick break. We'll talk more.

We are back with Claire McCaskill, Michael Steele, Simone Sanders Townsend and Kevin Madden. We're having such a good time on this panel. So I just want to before we wrap up, I want to ask each of you, what do you think we should be still talking about a week or two from now? And Claire, I'm going to start with you.

I think we'll be talking about the choice America has between Donald Trump and what he represents in terms of a threat to this country versus the competent leadership of Joe Biden. I think this thing is a sideshow. So no one on this stage. It's a sideshow. We won't still be talking about it in two weeks.

OK, Michael, I got nothing. So that's never true. We're going to be talking about everything. No, I think really the reality of I think a little bit of what Claire is saying is true. We're going to be talking about how this table has still not been reset.

And so everybody is going to be narrowed down, narrowed down on the Republican side. And quite honestly, on the Democratic side, I just need to stop all your belly aching. Your man is named Biden. Get your stuff together and get behind him and get the train moving. Because if you don't, you're going to wind up at the wrong station because.

because the country is going to be down the road a piece and you're going to be sitting there waiting for people to get on. So I think that's going to be a part of the conversation now because the reality of it is the table's been set. Lots of analogies with the train there. I like it. OK, Simone. I think we'll be talking about it

I really do. I think the issue of reproductive freedom is something that women and men, people across the country in red places, purple places and blue places, it has motivated them. And the fact that a day after the Republican Party apparatus was trounced on this very issue in many places across the country, and it barely got it got 20 minutes of a kind of conversation, but no one was pushed on what it is that they believe. I think that

It begs more conversation. Yeah. I mean, the lesson from yesterday is abortion is a winning issue for Democrats to run on. So that definitely will be Kevin. That's for sure. So. So to that point, I think two weeks from now and all the way through the campaign, we're going to be looking at abortion as the backdrop of shaping our politics right now. So that's that's definitely the case. But I also think two weeks from now, we're going to be saying, like, this didn't change anything. I don't think this debate changed the momentum.

But in that sense, there was a couple of candidates up there who really needed to change the momentum, who needed to have a huge breakout moment. Tim Scott, Chris Christie, they're not getting it. This is going to come down. It's been narrowed down to a

subprimary of who's going to be the alternative to take on Trump. And that is, I think, firmly right now between DeSantis and Nikki Haley. Next debate could just be three on that statement. We will see. We'll be back. Claire McCaskill, Michael Steele, Simone Sanders Townsend, Kevin Madden, thank you all for staying up late with me. That does it for me tonight. I'll be back here at noon this Sunday and every Sunday on MSNBC and Mondays, too, at 8 p.m. Eastern. But stay right where you are because MSNBC's coverage of the third Republican debate starts after a quick break.

Break. Okay.