i'm john heilemann. -- mark: and i'm mark halperin. " to"with all due respect ,ark: -- to john heilemann focus. ♪ ad today we're talking about presidential candidate -- in our ongoing attempt to understand

this phenomenon, we partnered with our colleagues and did a focus group last night with 12 donald backers. we are going to have extended excerpts a little later in the show. here's a piece on what they said about what they like about brand trump. >> i like his roughness and his reagan-esque style. >> trump is a threat. >> like you said, he won't be bought off. tactics that separate him from everybody else. he has money that everybody is wanting. john, you've got a piece running up right now on bloomberg.com. first, you say trumpet is, despite conventional wisdom, not just a summer fling. john: he is not herman cain, he

is not new to them. they have been following his career, they know about his name and celebrity, trump towers, trump golf course, he has every indication of being with them for the long haul. people know him good and bad and if you do something wrong, that is all what everybody knows about you. trump has a baseline with these people. what do you say about trump being the great americans assess -- american success? john: we talked about the brashness and the antiestablishment idea. he is the definition of american success. mark: there is no doubt that they love that but also in one of your takeaways, they also say he is a billionaire but he is a billionaire just like us. that is hard to figure that out

but that is exactly what they said. john: they said he is not one of them and he is part of a different group than the political class. they think he is more like them than a washington senator. mark: on opposite sides of the hee coin, he is teflon, but may cause his own undoing. you video ofed rick perry and jeb bush attacking donald trump, but these people rallied for donald trump. they defended him, and so it tells you how hard it is going to be for conventional attacks to stick. on the other side, you can tell that they do not know much about trump's political history. they're worried that he will shoot himself in the foot and ruin the republican prospects of taking back the white house. bek: it is not going to

effortless, even with a lot of negative ads, if they come, this will take people away from trump. i get a sense that the more he is attacked on some occasions, at least, the more they will rally around him. john: 20% may be his feeling. rick on "morning joe," perry says he is more ready for the debate stage that he was in 2012 and we remember his infamous hoops moment -- oops moment. parry wasw prepared -- perry was for this particular line of inquiry. rick perry: i think they are working towards getting some -- getting some -- getting some financial things headed in the right direction. i think there are reductions in a spending, i think there are

these agencies, but you know, the fact is, whether it is congress or whether it is the president addressing the solutions that are facing this country. boy, for any candidate who wasn't under the microscope, that would be fine, but if he debateking about the next week, it looks like he suffered from aphasia like that. the: if he did that in debate on thursday, i think his campaign would be over and i think a lot of his supporters at wednesday the -- would say the same thing. it shows you how little margin of error he had. john: that was bad, right? mark: and that was marco rubio or mike huckabee, no one would care, right? and hebad for him doesn't want to make a mistake and i thought today for the first time, the kind of pressure that he is laboring, you can't

make an mistake like that in a debate. i think his fundraising, which has not been gangbusters, could be freezing. john: he is under a lot of pressure because when you run for president you play the big game, but i've never seen you look like you are about to have a corner arc embolism in front of me and not be able to come up with a decent answer to my question. the question -- the answer he came up with was not the best answer, either. caught up with not wanting to blast republican leaders but not wanting to appear uncritical. but i do believe that rick perry has the chance to exceed expectations. i will say again, it is problematic. john: he is cooked, he is done if he does that again. in marco some donors rubio's senate campaign are not contribute into his presidential campaign and are contributing to

his rivals. there is also the idea that there is a deeper problem for marco rubio, saying that he must rely on several voting blocs instead of one. he doesn't have as much as others and he is not even as popular in his home state as florida. theo has objectively been hardest hit. the numbers in the national state polls don't lie. one national poll showed rubio's high at 18%. in mostets about 6% national polls. he is hovering around 5% in key early state polls, and that is down from double digits just a few months ago. john, is this a setback for marco rubio or is there something more fundamentally wrong with his campaign? john: fundamentally wrong, when marco rubio announced, we sat on this show and said, first year

candidate. he is still in the first year in terms of fundraising, but there is no way that he is a first-year candidate and any other way. he has no clear hook in a race that you need a hug. mark: a lot of people and the party are still worried about the whole think of it trump is crowding out his chest to get better known. i still believe it is early and his strength of his canvas he could make him the antiestablishment candidate without a doubt. the problem that i have in the stalling of these polls is that i don't see, and i have said this before, but i don't see it is strong in the early states. he has to try in all of them and that means he is not focused on just one or two co. -- two. john: i read the story in "the new york times" and the story was supposed to make them look good. now marco rubio is

not doing as well as his supporters would like. did onep next, what trumpet supporters say to the other trump supporter -- trump supporter say to the other trump supporter? find out when we come back. ♪

john: classy. reaganesque. one of us. those are all of the words and phrases i heard it described by trump supporters last night. i met with a group of trump's in manchester, new hampshire. i asked him what a hypothetical trump presidency would look like -- them what a hypothetical trump presidency would like. >> he speaks the truth. john: and what truth is that? >> when he talks about especially immigration control and the border, he really says -- he doesn't care what people think. he says what we need to do. john: john? john supporter: yes, i think he

says what he feels. washington-itis, but i don't think he will. >> the way i see it, the political rhetoric from most of the politicians is in pastel colors. they talk for two hours and then you go away saying, what did they say of substance? probably nothing. but they haven't offended anybody and they have tried to make everybody their friend. they are pastel but donald trump is in vivid colors because he says things the way they are. >> i like his roughness and his ideas come tosque mind. he is tough. he is just tough. john: how many people in this room consider yourselves a member of the tea party? all of those hands up so i can see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

so five. if you didn't put your hand up, do you feel the tea party is a good thing or the tea party doesn't have anything to do with that? cruz, so out of that, i didn't know much about and after seeing trump, it maybe look into it a little bit more. but i am not a full-fledged, but it is interesting. they do raise some really good points. john: i'm going to gore in the about any candidate who has struck you as interesting a little bit. >> ben carson. john: ben carson. >> no one. john: no one? >> ben carson. john: ben carson. >> i can't think of anyone. john: you can't think of anyone? >> ted cruz. john: ted cruz. i don't want to vote in the

primary for somebody i know that can't make it. >> sure. john: you? >> ben carson. john: fred? fred: don't know. john: you don't know? anybody jump in here had? -- thereare a number are couple that interest me. i am not sure. john: do you see romney and trump as being a sort of similar? >> no. >> successful business people? >> a little bit. >> i guess in the business aspect. , maybe youas his could call it his see thatity, you could after his first of may, romney completely fell apart and everybody was wondering what happened to romney. i don't see that happening with donald trump. what is in touch with

everybody is thinking and what everybody wants. he will do with america what is needed and not what america wants to hear. he is like one of us. he may be a millionaire which separates him from everybody else, but he is still doing what everybody is wanting. john: what is the thing that you like least about him or the thing that you can say concerns you most about him as a president of candidate? aiken's -- it could be something or it could be nothing. i think he could cross over with an inappropriate comment and it would very much concern me at that point if you were the nominee and we were down to two people. john: is or anything about donald trump that worries you? that you don't like? hishat hurt romney was success and was his money and i think that could be trump's downfall as much as his asset as well as his weakness is some people perceive wealth.

some people see it as success and some people see it as read. somehow in america, profit motive has somehow equaled greed in the media. when you see a man who is wealthy, he is a target for people to hate. john: john, what about you? could shoote himself in the foot. but if he did, he could make money out of it. [laughter] >> good point. john: i am just curious about fans of you have been him. he has obviously not run for president before but he is obviously someone that americans know because he is a celebrity. does anyone in this room, do room, whenho in this the first time when donald trump came to your awareness was "the apprentice?" that television show. just go about telling when you

started notice about -- noticing trump in real life. >> we all know about him building casinos in atlantic city and going bankrupt and having all of these deals with banks and everything and trying to get his fortune back. so i knew of him. "the apprentice," i thought him , butrogant and abrasive that is a tv show. so his personality had to be that way or his famous statement "you're fired" wouldn't have any teeth in it. but those are the only two opinions that i had to reference when he started running. >> even before "the apprentice." i was a little girl. know what trump

towers were, but i knew he was a wealthy, successful man. i remember asking my mother about writing a letter to ask him how he made his money so i could do it. john: did you do it? >> i never wrote the letter but i remember asking more about him and finding out he was in real estate. but i didn't even know what trump towers were. so so just the word -- john: just the word, even as a kid, the word trump meant success. >> it did. john: tell me what you think a trump presidency would look like? >> a better america. >> it would be cleaned up. you wouldn't have always departments and government withd away with e-mail -- secret e-mail accounts and servers. he would clean house and ensure that america is on the path to prosperity again. >> he would get rid of the bureaucracy and the department of this and the department of that. >> i think it would be exciting. i really do.

i am looking forward to it. it will be an interesting thing every day. >> we will have a more transparent government. >> it will be nice to see that debt clock go the other way. he will be classy and i think he will bring a lot of companies back to our country and be a lot more promising. >> to the american people, it would be a presidency of hope. come back, we show trump supporters what other republicans are saying about their guy. their reaction is, as they say, a little trumpy. stay tuned. ♪

mark: as the republican field prepares for its first debate in cleveland next week, the candidates are trying to figure [no audio] how

so we saw attacks against the real estate mogul and they rose to donald's defense. i don't think he represents the republican party in his -- of the view our way out mainstream on what the public thinks. he is not a stupid guy, so he thinks that every mexican person who crosses the border is a rapist. he is doing this to inflame and insight. john: what you guys take about this? >> what are these fringe ideas that he is putting out there that the conservatives don't agree with? what is he talking about? >> i don't think he likes how trump is doing right now and i inc. he is trying to discredit him and make himself feel better. >> just take aim off my list. [laughter]

rick perry: donald trump's candidacy is a cancer and it must be excised and discarded. >> i liked rick perry until this came out. [laughter] makes him look like a teddy bear. [laughter] sees trump as a threat because he doesn't fit into the same box of that all of the other republicans are in. that is why we are hearing stuff from bush now, stuff from rick perry. they haven't exactly been thriving. [laughter] >> he is using the word as illegal immigrants and rapists, word john: he is using the to describe illegal immigrants as rapist, what do you think about that? >> i think it is too generalized. i think that is a concern.

some of the people coming in do this and do that, but he said in general, they are this and they are that, and i think that is where he got the criticism. it is not that he is wrong, it is the way that he said it and it is in too much of a generalized way. >> but also some of it was good. i was going to bring up, he said not all of them are bad, that some are bad. he now says he has second thoughts about being pro-choice and being for abortion rights. years he wasy pro-choice. does that bother anybody in the room? >> being pro-choice, yep, that bothers me. john: did you know that before this? >> no. him, toves my view of know that now that he has taken the pro-life stance. john: ok. >> i would say he has seen the

light. he was a democrat at one point, that is true, but not only that but he also gave thousands candidates of dollars permit does that bother anybody that he was a democratic donor? >> that was the past. >> i don't hold that against him and all of a sudden he has decided that he is more aligned in his thoughts with the republican party than with the democrats. >> seems like he is more independent. john: for many years, donald trump would say that he is very conservative on issues and he was liberal on health care. for a long time, he said he was a supporter of a single-payer health care plan. >> that could be an issue. john: how long ago was that? not that long ago. there has been talk recently that if he doesn't get the

republican nomination, he might run as an independent candidate or be a third-party independent candidate. would you guys be open to considering an open to supporting donald trump's independent candidacy and why? >> the only thing that i can think of that would force him out would be the republican establishment and the rnc doing something and actually forcing him out. if that is the case, if that motivates trump to be independent, then we can vote for him. john: for those of you who wouldn't support trump if he ran as an independent, why would you not support him? >> ross perot. the method doesn't line. -- math doesn't line. mark: all very interesting. we will be right back. ♪

mark: more from the trump focus groups on tamara's show.

until then, we are live all the time on bloomberg.com. john: until tomorrow, we say to you sayonara. ♪

anchor: we are moments away from the closing bell. i'm alix steel. >> and i am joe weisenthal. ♪ alix: u.s. stocks fluctuating throughout the day with the s&p closing slightly higher and the dollar rose. joe: the question is, what did you miss? the u.s. economy expands gently. what does it mean for the markets? such a gap why between the performance of the stock market and americans' social mood?