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tv   Inside Story  Al Jazeera  September 18, 2015 2:00am-2:31am EDT

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>> they come back bubbling and exciting. carla and stephanie mirror another trend. despite the challenges they face, according to a poll, african-americans are more likely to be optimistic than whites are. 18" of whites had faith in the blacks. >> i don't want anything to destroy my happiness, i want to keep the momentum going. >> that is our show for today, i'm >> millions at stake. shady investments. limited oversight. >> super pacs are part of the wild wild west of campaign finance. >> could actor daniel craig be the latest super pac scam victim? an ali velshi, on target, special investigation.
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♪ >> the stage was crowded, the debate was long, but it was all in all a useful tour of the political landscape, an expo situation of what the candidates believe the republican primary voters are interested in and what they want in the next president. g.o.p. debate night two, it's the inside story. ♪ >> welcome to "inside story," i'm ray suarez. sometimes not paying close attention to the details helps you out. in the midst of last night's g.o.p. presidential debate, i looked up at the clock and
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realized that nearly two and a half hours had gone by in a blink. now that it's over, did it accomplish any of the goals the campaigns might have set out for it. do you have a better idea what the candidates are for and against, what the really will do if they ever become president. whether they are cool, engaged, distant or easily rattled. david shuster watched from beginning to end just in case you were not among the more than 20 million people who tuned in. >> reporter: at the region library, the candidates mentioned the former president more than a dozen times. >> i think i actually flew on this plane with ronald reagan when i was a congressman. >> reporter: the political world though is far different than 30 years ago when reagan urged republicans not to attack each other, and this group, hit hard.
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>> first of all ranged paul shouldn't even be on this stage. >> they tangled from the start. >> his visceral response to attack people on their appearance, short, tall, fat, ugly. my goodness that happened in junior high. are we not way above that? would we not all be worried to have someone like that in charge of the nuclear arsenal. >> i never attacked him on his looks, and believe me there's plenty of subject matter right there. >> jeb bush hit wit to -- ties to the democrats. >> i got along with everybody. that was my job. >> but the simple fact is -- >> excuse me. >> no. >> more energy tonight that. >> trurp and carly fiorina
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argued over their business record. >> why should we trust you to manage the finances of this country any bitter than you casino. >> we don't want to hear about your careers. who did well, and who did poorly. you are both successful people, congratulations. you know who is not successful, the middle class who is getting plowed over by barack obama and hillary clinton. let's talk about those issues. >> reporter: carly fiorina asked if she believed trump was talking about her persona when he said her face would prevent her from getting elected. >> i think she has got a beautiful face, and i think she is a beautiful woman. >> reporter: a few candidates went out of their way to avoid presidential. >> if the united states military is going to be engaged by a
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commander in chief it should only be engaged in an endeavor to win. >> reporter: mike huckabee painted a grim picture of the iran nuclear deal. >> this is really about the survival of western sillization. >> reporter: towards the engineer the debate veered into lighter territory, and there were several funny moments. >> 40 years ago i smoked marijuana and i admit it. my mom is not happy that i just admitted it. >> reporter: the candidates were then asked what code name they service. energy, donald. [ laughter ] [ cheers and applause ] >> mr. trump? [ laughter ] >> david shuster, al jazeera. >> so what did the event at the reagan library tell us, show us
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about the republican field, it's strengths, it's weaknesses about the shape of the race going forward. one thing i won't be asking tonight is who one? because i think it's a pointless question. joining me is the executive director of the progress action fund, associate processor of political science at howard university, and political strategy, founding partner of purple strategy. bruce, right out of the gate, donald trump was making fun of rand paul's appearance. it was not exactly an auspicious first half hour with this new technique of trying to get them to take shots at each other instead of having the moderator exchange. >> yeah, it was almost like a box of cereal that we had to work our way through the cardboard to get to the good stuff inside.
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we did get there after we waited through some personality issues and a lot of these the opening four questions was about donald trump and some of the things he has about the other candidates. but we did get to some substantive exchange on foreign policy, immigration, on taxes. i think voters earned a lot. and 23 million people watched for a reason and i feel like they learned something. >> angela were there contrasts between these 11 candidates? significant ones? >> no, i think it was a blur of sound bites and not a lot of substance. i disagree, particularly on the question of immigration where they talked about repealing the 14th amendment, but not what they would do, all. >> not everybody said that. >> but they didn't put forward
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what they could do with the 11 million. i didn't hear a comprehensive strategy. marco rubio was assigning himself with legal immigration. that's because he is cuban and his family would automatically get a green card. they tried to go after each other. and i think carly fiorina did a good job and turned on trump very effectively, his insult of her. and a lot of women cheered as a result, me included, but i'm not sure at the end of the day that she frankly can stand up and emerge the candidate either. >> are these pitfalls that are almost inherent on trying to get anything. >> i think that is the case. these are not necessarily real debates. they are more like candidate's forums, and they are intended
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for purposes other than necessarily supporting the issues. and when you have 11 candidates on stage, it's like trying to herd cats. there's not a clean and neat way to present issues. so it is going to ebb and flow, and i think we saw some of that last night. >> bruce you run campaigns for a living in part. weren't there assignments that these campaigns would have had for themselves apart from trying to take down the man who is perceived as the front runner. >> there were assignments, and i'll give you a perfect example of one where it was a missed assignment. someone missed their block and got tackled, and it was scott walker. there are donors that are flirting with leaving, his poll lead in iowa evaporated.
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he needed to find a way to stand out in the crowd. you don't standing out by scoring the least amount of talking time. campaign. >> isn't that some of that the though? >> some of it is, but some of it is showing your strength. carly fiorina was going to stand down for no one, if she had a point she felt like she needed to interject, she stepped forward, and that's why a lot of pundits said they thought she won last night. donald trump has been classic for using that kind of maneuver, and marco rubio found ways to standing out. in a field of 11, you are right, it is a big challenge. how can you stand out and let your brand distinguish itself from the other political brands on the stage last night. >> stay with us, we're going to pick this up in a moment.
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the candidates talked a lot about foreign affairs and the united states military, and placing off with vladimir putin's russia, and the nuclear deal with iran. they all promised a tougher america, and bigger military to the approval of the audience at the reagan library. is that where republican voters are in 2014, and voters as a whole are?
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♪ welcome back to "inside story." i'm ray suarez. the 11 republican candidates on the main debate stage last night, and the four in the earlier candidate's forum all agree, the american military is underfunded and in decline. that. >> and what i would do immediately is begin rebuilding the six fleet, rebuilding the program in
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poland, conduct regular military exercises in the baltic. >> so that we don't deploy over and over again without the necessary equipment to keep them safe to send a message to the world that we're serious. >> republican candidates for president last night in southern california were looking at g.o.p. debate night two. professor, as i was watching this roll out, i thought this -- this is the real different -- this is one of those moments where you can really see the difference between a primary strategy and a general election strategy. >> without question, and the military build-up conversation is one of the best examples you can find. primarily because as a public policy person one of the first questions i want to ask is how long is it going to take and how much does it cost. and that is dealt with in a
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primary debate circumstance. because candidates are trying to throw out red meat to their supporters. who doesn't want a strong military? but there's a cost associated with that. and unfortunately whether it's on the republican or democratic side, too often public policy proposals aren't followed up with conversations about cost them. >> angela kelly, i'm wondering if there is a trap inherit there. because the way to stand out was to listen to what the guy before you said and try to be tougher than him. point. >> it seemed to go on forever, but probably none of them thought they had enough time, so they had to talk about canceling dinners and tearing up deals so they sounded more like upset brides than people who really day. it didn't make sense in terms of
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is this really your strategy. carly fiorina you wouldn't sit down with putin. the irony is that this was in the reagan library, and the man worked very effectively with the russians. and you are probably right, it's because of the format. >> a woman who worked and lousent, a woman who worked at hp, was talking about not talking to the president of russia but having military exercises like in latvia, and lithuania on the russia border. does it matter that she is not a full blooded foreign policy expert? is that the kind of thing that you just have to do in these early debates to show that you can hold your own in the crowd? >> i -- i think you are trying to establish your brand. i think michael is right about the format. there are two things voters can learn about a debate.
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who are you and what makes you tick, and what are your priorities. we're not going to find out how much it will cost to rebuilt the six fleet. but she is telling us what our priorities are. now if i'm interested, if i like her, and i think her priority is in alignment with mine, i have the opportunity to follow her campaign and listen to her and learn more about her. and i think that's a good thing. i think that's where our politics are supposed to work. >> is it a question of getting fewer people on the stage down the road before we find out what it is going to cost to rebuilt the six fleet. >> we're not even getting the question. that's part of the issue. but bruce has used the word brand, and that's a good point to underscore. because a lot of these debates are about marketing. and sometimes facts get lost.
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sometimes actual -- the actual process of policy making gets lost in all of that. you can rebuild the fleet all you want, but that has to be done in concert with congress. and congress would have to take away other things to put up the money to make that happen. >> we'll break here. when we return, whether you managed to score a memorable moment or not, was it apparent that the assignment was to take down donald trump, and did it work? and do facts matter very much? or it is other things, energy, tone, humor, that end up >> millions at stake. shady investments. limited oversight. >> super pacs are part of the wild wild west of campaign finance. >> could actor daniel craig be the latest super pac scam victim?
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an ali velshi, on target, special investigation.
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♪ welcome back to "inside story." i'm ray suarez. between the first republican debate on fox, to last night's on cnn, they had to add another lectern for carly fiorina, the former hewlett-packard ceo and unsuccessful republican
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candidate for u.s. senate seat. since the format, crowded stage and television itself doesn't lend itself to lengthy explanations of policy ideas, a serious or deep explanation of much, campaigns and candidates look for moments, because debates have an after life only as moments as the three hours of give and take gets chopped up into little pieces like these. >> i think mr. trump is a wonderful entertainer. business. >> and i'm also aware that california has a drought, so that's why i made sure i brought [ laughter ] >> you are both successful people, congratulations. you know who is not successful, the middle class in this country who is getting plowed over by clinton. >> honestly, mr. trump i find it quite rich that you would talk about this. you know, there are a lot of us americans who believe that we are going to have trouble some day paying back the interest on our debt. because politicians have run up mountains of debt using other
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people's money. in that is in fact precisely the way you ran your casinos. you ran up mountains of debt as well as losses using other people's money and you were forced to file for bankruptcy, not once, not twice, four times, a record four times. >> you know what? as it relates to my brother there's one thing i know for sure, he kept us safe. [ cheers and applause ] donald -- [ cheers and applause ] >> you remember the -- the rubble, do you remember the firefighter, he sent a clear signal that the united states would be strong and fight islamic terrorism and he did keep us safe. >> do you feel safe right now? i don't feel so safe. >> more than 20 million watched. the moments and analysis will take much longer. angela that's part of what a
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debate is, isn't it? these days, now that most people don't watch, but most people see excerpts down the road and they can create their own excerpts and tweet it out -- >> yeah, all of that. they were each reaching for their moments. i think having a woman on stage did affect the dynamic. the guys talked about their wives a lot. when asked what woman would go on the $10 bill, they could only thing about the women they lived with, but i thought was fascinating. it felt to me like they weren't so much about the three hours there, but they were really about the ten, the 20, the 30 seconds down the road. that's what they wanted to be remembered by. >> but in this game, do you now have to already have that in stage? >> i think they have always been rehearsing in that regard. you can go back years and
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years -- remember in the 1980 debate between ronald reagan and jimmy carter, where reagan said there you go again. that has always been rehearsed and something that they could say. and now with candidates having their own social media apparatus it's incumbent on them to push out the message. so where there's vine or -- snap chat it makes sense to go to the stage and drop one liners to be used for their own purposes. >> and i saw them all day, and candidates use those moments at points during the three hours to neutralize their own bad moments or their own problems, but i'm wondering whether there comes a point in the next debate or the one after that, where there's
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going to have to be an eventual reckoning, was hewlett-packard run poorly or badly? did trump's business fail or didn't fail. last night it was very hard to tease out whether any of those things were true or not, and then we just moved on to the next thing before we ever knew. >> there will come a point, and it will come in two points. first of all the debates will get smaller. rick perry is out of the race. the rnc is talking about dropping the undercard debate, as it ease called. and as there are fewer candidates we'll have more follow up. the other thing that is going to happen is these things are going to be challenged by the other campaigns. carly fiorina give an example
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about defending her tenure. but when she ran against barber boxer, 30-second tv commercials eviscerated that argument. bush's tenure in florida might be challenged. the claims that trump makes on issues that he doesn't provide a lot of substance for will be challenged on television. and that's where a lot of this back and forth will occur. >> is that going to happen before the first votes are cast? >> i think by the time you get to january, we'll be in the eight to ten candidate range. still a lot, but -- but certainly a more manageable operation than what you have right now. >> when are the first democratic debates? >> the first one is in colorado next month. >> october. >> next month. that's right. a lot fewer people on stage. >> well, we didn't -- we didn't, you know, program it purposely this way, but it turned out
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everybody on stage tonight was beautiful. angela kelly, at the center for american progress, michael, social at it profess or, and bruce haines. great to see you all. i'll be back in just a moment. send us your thoughts on twitter, or follow me and get in touch, or visit our facebook page, tell us what you thought of the republican's second presidential debate. we would love to hear it. ♪ >> as the global refugee crisis intensifies... >> they have travelled for weeks, sometimes months. >> and the e.u. struggles to cope...
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>> we don't know, they stop us here. >> what's being done while lives hang in the balance? >> we need help now.
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on "america tonight" - in the heat of a mississippi night. >> what could you do so bad to make a person choke you for at least 20 minutes. >> correspondent sara hoy with a death and the latest flashpoint between a community and the officers meant to protect it. and the promise lands.

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