john: i'm john heilemann. mark: and i'm mark halperin. and with all due respect to rick perry, this one's for free. ♪ mark: on the show tonight, clinton, perry, paul, and cruz, but first, trump. he is ahead in the new poll today as we have seen, he , dominates. the latest democratic strategy -- latest republican strategy is to talk about hillary clinton. jeb bush plans to hit the big front runner in excerpts. he is quoted as saying isis grew while the united states disengaged and ignored the threat. and where was secretary of state clinton in all of this?

yesterday, marco rubio hit back on hillary clinton on abortion, saying that she supports abortion even if an unborn child can feel pain. we look forward to exposing this view in the months to come. and scott walker avoided a question about trump into an answer about hillary. all of this clinton bashing and the audition to be the best at doing it actually got onto trump's radar at the debate. mr. trump: if hillary clinton is the candidate, which i doubt, that would be a dream come true. >> how is hillary clinton going to lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck? >> hillary clinton lies about benghazi, she lies about e-mails. she is still defending planned parenthood. and she still the front runner. mark: very little attention seemse of trump, but it

that voters would like the best hillary clinton attacker to be their nominee. so far in those examples, who is doing the best? john: undoubtedly, carly fiorina has been the strongest, most acerbic, most serrated edged attacker of hillary clinton. it has not made her a front runner, but it has put her in contention in a way. certainly the fact that bush has been that added is one of the problems -- has been bad at it that is one of the problems. mark: i think walker, you saw the one-liner. like with a lot of things in the walker arsenal, it is a little bit rote. it seems a bit canned. fiorina will talk about e-mails. certainly things like that. i think the rubio statement was actually strong. it is an issue on which republicans had been on offense because of planned parenthood and hillary clinton came back after rubio came out against exceptions on abortion. i think that means fight for the middle, don't fight for the base.

john: he wasn't strong. -- was strong. hillary clinton has been on her own offensive rampage this week. she targeted marco rubio on abortion yesterday. in a conference call with reporters today, her policy advisor preempt it that jeb bush apology speech by tying his brother's legacy to iraq. the opportunity to collect another 2016-er. ms. clinton: you take somebody like governor walker of wisconsin, who seems to be delighting in slashing the investment in higher education in his state and making it more difficult for students to get scholarships or to pay off their debt. john: it sometimes feels as though we are in the general election the way this thing is going. walker defended himself on twitter and shot back with this.

he said, "i have frozen in state tuition rates for four years while you charge colleges $225,000 just to show up." we thought hillary was strong taking on marco rubio the way she did. here she is taking on scott walker. can she keep doing this day after day? john: it is a conspiracy. clinton wants to talk about the leading republican candidate, not trump, not e-mails. she wants to inject energy into her campaign. i think we will see this on a regular basis for the foreseeable future. mark: what she also doesn't want to do is talk about bernie sanders. normally she would be taking on her strongest challenger, but she sees no upside in attacking bernie sanders. mark: romney talked about barack obama. john: it is fascinating of the two people that each party does not want to talk about, donald trump and bernie sanders.

mark: the good thing for clinton is that she agrees with bernie sanders on a lot of issues. it fires are up and puts her on offense. rick perry's campaign has stopped paying its staff, taking some of his team to volunteer status, because money is tight. not raising as much as he would like. rand paul has been fighting a lot of bad headlines himself. his debate performance not as strong as he had hoped, and that morale in parts of his campaign, not to mention the recent indictment of two of his campaign advisers. senate atg to run for the same time running for president. will we see anyone drop out before iowa? or will everybody stay in until the voting? john: two or three months ago i would have said no we will see , everyone straight through iowa. but now the presumption was that , all of these guys would be

able to raise enough money to get through iowa. but in the case of rick perry, he has not been able to necessarily. and for rand paul, money is really important. and there is not enough. there is not an infinite amount. mark: although perry's super pac has millions of dollars in it. all you need are some plane tickets, going back to john mccain in 2008, all you need is plane tickets to show up on television shows. perry and everybody else realizes that when or if donald clapp -- donald trump has some kind of collapse, there will be a lot of instability in the race. my hunch is still no. john: ted cruz has been on a roll since the republican debate last week in cleveland. the crowd loved him. a couple days later at the red state over the weekend. his campaign has been bragging about a crowd on a bus trip through the south/ and he has a new tv ad running in des moines, iowa.

>> for a century americans have helped heal and care for those millions in need. our values proposed -- propelled extraordinary innovation. how did america become a country that harvested organs from unborn children? and who has the courage to stop it? ted cruz will prosecute and defund planned parenthood. help ted cruz restorer of american values. >> i am ted cruz, and i approve this message. john: is ted cruz in the top tier candidates, and if not, what will you have to do to get there? mark: he has done well in three of the four states. he is one of the few candidates that has plausible victories in three of the early states. trip or the sec primary in march. he understands both the short-term momentum game and a long-term delegate game. very few are positioned as well

as he is in those key areas. john: because of fundraising, he is certainly in the top-tier as a fundraiser. that is super important, as we were discussing. the question is of how well super pac's will coordinate effectively with the campaign is still a huge question. of course those are those underlying dynamics of the campaign. mark: coming up next, donald trump advisor and friend, roger stone. right here after this word from our sponsors. ♪

♪ mark: our guest tonight is mr. roger stone, a longtime advisor with donald trump, who left regularly working with the campaign. not as much as a donald trump, but much so in the news. we don't want to talk all that much about that, but i want to clarify one thing.

you have said and others have said speaking on your behalf that one reason you wanted to go is you thought it was wrong for mr. trump to be engaged in a fight with megyn kelly and that he should be focusing on his message and that other people in , the campaign didn't see it that way. everyone i talked to in the campaign thinks the way you do, and that mr. trump is alone on that. were you the lone voice? roger: i didn't hear any other voices, but i will not divulge my internal conversations. i have a confidentiality agreement. i have no intention of violating it. my private advice to mr. trump will remain private. i has said that i thought the whole thing was a distraction the back and forth. , mark: from reporting, i have seen that the responsibility for that is with donald trump. not with any of the other advisors. roger: i'm not sure how i heard anyone else giving him advice on it being a good idea, let alone what my own advice was.

thetics, particularly at presidential level, is about big ideas that latch people onto with memorable phrases. i think that is what has gotten trump to where he is in the polls and what he needs to return to. i think he was ill-served by whoever leaked the fact that he had a conversation with former president bill clinton, which was a private conversation. i don't believe it was political, but i don't know. bill loves politics and cannot help but give you his two cents in, whether you want it or not. i do recall three years ago, when trump was contemplating a run, bill clinton was among those that told him he should run for an independent. he rejected that advice. he ultimately decided not to run and to endorse mitt romney. voters,publican primary bill clinton is the devil and he gives rise to all kinds of crazy

conspiracy theories. the clintons maneuvering a trump -- no one maneuvers trump, i assure you. you remain no longer an advisor but a , supporter. i know you are confident that there is a way in which he can win the republican nomination. can he win with the team he currently has? or does he need to change at the team and hire more people like you? roger: he needs to expand the team. he's got some very good people, like mike glassner. he gets unfairly classified as a palin guy, and he did work with the palin administration, but he guy, working for bob dole in capitol hill with the first job i had in washington dc. mike glassner is an example of the kind of person he needs. but you cannot run a presidential campaign on a skeletal asus. -- skeletal basis. but it's got to be a bigger

operation. just the challenge of getting on the ballot in all 50 states, so if you are lucky and you strike fire in one of the early primaries you are in a position , to capitalize on it. otherwise you end up like gary hart, you are hot my but no place to go. john: do you have specific recommendations? roger: if i did, they will be private between us. i nodded employment agency -- i'm not an employment agency. mark: you worked for ronald reagan and usually before we started that you flew up to petition mr. trump on his plane. roger: i didn't fly up myself, but he allowed us to use his plane. mark: you have been involved in politics for a long time. tell me the best case. let's say, mr. trump starts to do better or begins to be more solid in the polls, can he win iowa and new hampshire? roger: certainly he can win all those places, but he needs a campaign to do it. he needs to stick to the message that has already gotten him where he is in the polls.

he has already made history in his campaign. most pundits said, he will not really run, this is all publicity stunt to build the brand. they have been proven wrong. then they said he would never file his financials, no way, he will keep filing for extensions but never fiele it. it turns out that jeb bush files for extension and trump files on time in full disclosure. the pundits have been consistently wrong about him. he is a larger-than-life figure. his greatest strength is the ability is to get everyone's attention. the question is what he does with that attention when he gets it. john: whatever his net worth is, he claims about $10 billion. others say about $5 billion. whatever it is, let's say he is milliono the tune of $3 or so. is he willing to spend all of that money, that's liquid cash on this campaign? roger: you could argue on the

one hand that you have to spend $100 million or you cannot do this as a free media exercise. on the other hand, conventional wisdom proves again that is exactly what he is doing. he has not spent that much based on the last report i saw, but he's leading in the polls. there will come a day when he is facing paid television advertising. if you look at the survey research in all of these polls , where he has performed extremely well, his greatest gains were among those between 59-70. particularly in the south. those are the people in the house in the summer time watching television. so when jeb bush unloads his $100 million of dirty wall street money in negative advertising, or one of the other candidates, who knows, he will have to compete at that level. mark: you mentioned jeb bush. besides mr. trump who could win , the nomination? could huckabee? could cruz?

walker? pataki? could he be nominated? roger: well, was not a carried away. john: so you would say 9-10 people could be nominated. is trump the favorite? roger: he is the favorite today. if donald trump were hit by a bus today, who among those people you just mentioned would be in the best position to inherit his support? roger: if you look at both public and private surveys, the second choice of the trump supporters tends to be ted cruz, rand paul. very little crossover with those establishment candidate like chris christie or jeb bush. i think it redistributes among the conservatives. what is interesting is that trump the non-politician, a lot , of his second choice voters go to ben carson, the non-politician. those are the two standouts in two guys thate

are not the career politicians. john: the businessman and surgeon. we will have more after this word from our sponsors. ♪

mark: we are back with roger stone. formerly of the trump campaign. we wanted you to take us in the mind of donald j. trump. let me ask you this first question. who does he listen to? does he listen to his family, his wife? who does he turn to when he has to make the big decisions? roger: i think he definitely listens to his wife. she is a terrific mother, seven languages and a strong supporter , and very much in favor of this candidacy. i think it was a deciding factor. she finally said donald, you , talk about saving the country and the direction of the country, maybe you should run. john: when was that? roger: the beginning of the year. she is very solid. she is a great woman. -- does he's he take

take political advice from ivanka? roger: i can't speak to that. he respects her and she respect him. john: how is he different than the other candidates you have worked with? roger: he is a reader, a studier, he thinks about things. but he doesn't have a bunch of cronies. does he like rudy giuliani? are they close? yes. does rudy's up in matter to them? yes, but trump is very much his own man. he is unscripted, uncoached, unhandled. he makes the decisions. he will consider anything you want to tell him. he's very accessible, but very much his own man. mark: i'm just try to understand him. i'm not asking you to criticize him or explain him because , you've known him for so long.

i have people describe him as the nicest person they've ever met. very interested in people. and at times, he lashes out at at people with a ferocity and a negativity that is quite striking. how do you explain begin and -- the yin and yang of that? roger: first, he loves people. unlike jeb bush, who seems like he is slogging through things. mark: how do you go from that to "you are a jerk"? roger: it is a dog eat dog world. one of his maxims, that i agree with if someone hits you hard, , you hit back harder. that works if you are a celebrity tv host, but this is a different realm, and i think he will realize that over time. john: he is prone to ebulience and he sometimes says things that are not true.

like you said you cannot find a chevy in china. he said the gdp was below zero. [laughter] in the other thing he does is he exaggerates a little bit. if there were 5000 people in the room, it was 15,000. and there is always the biggest crowd that has ever been in any given place. for most politicians, they would be called out for that and it would be a problem for their credibility. can he just keep doing that, and if so, how long will he get away with it? roger: first of all, he is a great salesman. part of that is salesmanship. does anyone care if they were 800 people at the rally, or 1500? john: people cared when al gore said things like that. roger: donald trump has never said he invented the internet. the assessment of the crowd size versus, "i invented the internet," i don't see a correlation. he is a promoter. john: will it ever become a time

where you think that will be coming problem for him? or will he just skate past it? roger: newlyweds trying to play a gotcha game is that the media. -- the only ones trying to play a gotcha game. the country needs somebody who will lead. that is the problem with jeb bush. the guys a stiff. the country needs a cheerleader. mark: one of the times i heard him expressed doubt about anything is when john and i interviewed him a couple of months ago and we asked if he , would stay in the race until the end and he says, if i'm not doing well, maybe i will get out. does he think now that he will be the next president of the u.s., or maybe that it will not work out? roger: he is not a fool. he will go in and see how it is going. well, he got in, and it is going well. mark: others say, eh, we'll

see. where is he? roger: prior to my resignation, he was optimistic. he is an optimist in a major, just like reagan. i think he is very optimistic. by anybody's measure, this is going exceedingly well. he has yet to spend on paid one dollar media. i said it is possible that your free media coverage will drop off. mark: dumbest thing i ever heard you say. roger: i was completely wrong about that. the conventional rules of politics, so far at least, do not apply to donald trump. and is an exciting thing. john: i know you think he should threaten to possibly run as an independent candidate in order to keep leverage against the republican establishment. he said he will not do that. roger: the new york times reported that the other three candidates considered boycotting this debate if mr. trump was there.

having studied the ballot access rules in many states, the canblican establishment change the ballot with a stroke of the pen. if he's given a fair shot and has a level playing field and the establishment doesn't try to gang up on him, of course he wants to run as a republican. he is the front-runner for the republican nomination as of this moment. but i wouldn't give up on that leverage, because i think there is a war within the rnc. there are a bunch of guys that sit around saying, what can we do to derail donald trump? the ruling class is picking their pants here. this guy is a challenge to the two-party duopoly that is running the government. john: now that we have you stroking your chin and talking about urination, that brings this interview to a close. thank you, roger stone. we will be right back. ♪

john: when i was talking about donald trump's misstatement, i

made a misstatement of my own. he said there was no chevys in china, but i meant tokyo. mark: thanks for watching. sayonara. ♪

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