john: with all due respect to my wife, i swear i was doing opposition research. happy national spume own a day. in our lineup tonight, joe biden versus hillary clinton, hillary clinton versus the media, and ted cruz versus the establishment. first, donald trump versus everyone. the city of mobile, alabama will play host to donald this evening in front of an expected crowd of

40,000 humans. josh green has a preview up on bloomberg politics.com. he reports that primary state -- that the primary state is key to locking down the gop nomination. it comes as the political world asks who in the field might try to take down trump before then. for which of those candidates is it most important to do that and what is the best way to go about it? al: 16 of them. nobody can get any traction. there is no oxygen. to come need for him down if they want to have any chance. it probably mostly affects jeb bush right now. how do you do it? they don't want to do it themselves because they have seen it backfire. they would love to find some outside groups to do it.

john: i think you have some candidates. jeb bush is ella bit -- jeb bush is elevated by this fight. the imperative is really strong. walker has some money. his super packs have some money. he has been affected negative lee -- negatively by the trump ride. he has seen his fortunes fall. a lot of these other candidates would like to take down trump but they don't have the means to do it. walker might, and i and they have a huge incentive to go after him and try to paint him as a closet liberal. al: i'm not sure that is going to work, but i do think they have an incentive. i sort of agree with the theory that i'm told karl rove holds, it is like a boxer who takes a

lot of body blows in the fourth and fifth round. it ultimately wears you down. parlayingffective in and creating anxiety. there is a dose of racism. i'm not sure how long it ultimately is. in a it concerns me to be situation where i'm not only disagreeing with you but karl rove. from one primary some --er -- ted cruz ted cruz summed up the memory of the gifford. : if you see a candidate who washington embraces, run and hide. it came from the american people and it turned this country around. from stagnation to booming economic growth. we went from hostages in iran to winning the cold war and telling

the berlin wall to the ground. -- tearing the berlin wall to the ground. why mess optimistic? because the same thing is happening today. john: you work for bloomberg view. you have a column of this week in which you argue that ted cruz "the most underestimated candidate in the field." make your case. al: i knew ronald reagan, i cut i covered ronald reagan. i think he is underrated for a lot of reasons. he is tough and incredibly smart. he has lots of money, he has the right message. every time he attacks mitch mcconnell they hated here in the beltway. whole lot of southern delegate -- southern delegates will be picked.

any right-wing candidate can coalesce that movement, it will be ted cruz. he has a shot. john: i think ted cruz gets as much love as he deserves. his strategy seems to be we are going to cozy up to trump. crumbles, he wants to be here with all of his boats. what if trump doesn't crumble? you are left standing there holding a big pot of money and with a lot fewer votes you need to win any primary. you are dead right about that but it will be curtains for the others. ted cruz anders everyone else suffers. john: to me that sets up a perfect race between john kasich withb bush one-on-one

donald trump. i know that is what they are counting on. i think ted cruz may be roadkill. it has been quite a week for hillary clinton. her campaign worked overtime on rolling out a "relatively aggressive" education process. first the candidate herself hold a widely panned press availability on tuesday. then communications director paul merry appeared on this program. they answered a lot of questions on wednesday. on wednesday a video was released in which brian fallon that checks tweets -- brian fallon fact checks tweets about benghazi. about --ing flagged flagged with potentially containing classified information, it is simple and marked unclassified. you can go to the state department website to this day, look it up, and printed out because it remains unclassified. because the state department

treats this e-mail is unclassified, it sent the committee a copy of the unredacted e-mail. by the same logic that the inspector general was holding hillary clinton to come of this means potentially members of congress who received this areil from the state permit trafficking in classified information, and anybody who goes to the state department website and prints out the e-mail is also trafficking classified information. afternoon thes clinton campaign was back at it again with their aggressive strategy. this into account, how effective has their strategy been so far? al: i'm not sure what they said in the conference call. a a scale of one to 10, about minus two. i think brian fallon is a smart fellow. that is not her test.

again, this hasn't been explained very well. john: i think that is exactly right, i think there are too many places where they don't have good answers to pertinent questions. if you ask the question, are they in a better place right now with less established skepticism about their position today than they were at the beginning of the week, i think the answer is obvious. there is more skepticism and the facts that the investigation -- the fact is the investigation has gotten worse, not better. coming up, steve shale, the obama allied now urging joe biden to run for resident.

john: barack obama won florida twice.

now part of the movement to joe biden in the 2016 race. figures toatest draft bidens super pac. thank you for coming on the show from tallahassee. you, you are a smart guy, a strategist. you are not a dreamer, not an idealist. do you know something we don't know? and the vice president is getting closer to getting into this race? steve: i know as much as you do. it looks like he is serious about considering it. i don't have any inside knowledge. for me this is a chasing rainbows sort of thing. i have a lot of affinity for the vice president, frankly after campaigns inial florida -- when it became clear the vice president was serious about this it was a chance for me to raise my hand and be part of a movement that encourages him to do it. john: why do you think it is imperative for him to get in? steve: i think he will raise the

game of everybody. first of all, his record is unparalleled in the field. 45 years of public service, he obviously has been involved in every major and domestic foreign-policy issue. i think he is coming at it with a very adult attitude towards things. i think it is the right time for a guy like joe biden to get into the race. john: i'm virtually certain you would have said it hillary clinton would get the coronation. how much on a scale of one to 10, as a political professional, how much do you think the e-mail congress he has heard her politically with democratic party and beyond? -- e-mail controversy has hurt her politically with the democratic party and beyond? she ends upe end if being the nominee, democrats

will unify behind her. it is a race of her vision of the world and what the republicans put up. for me it isn't about that. i think joe biden is a good man. i think he has the experience our country needs right now. i generally like the guy is a person. i'm happy to be a part of this. john: al hunt, jump on in. politically, what comparative advantage does he have over hillary clinton as a candidate? steve: if you look at the appeal of donald trump, part of what helped him take off is he is a straight talker. he is mr. authentic. joe biden is very much a brand. joe biden brings a 45 year public service record. lost that sort of edge.

they understand what working-class families go through. it will be good for the democratic party. al: does he identify more with the working-class voters and have more authenticity and secretary clinton? steve: to me. i think joe biden comes from a working-class background and in his entire career at the senate he was a stay-at-home dad. can talk about what our party has been struggling with. al: what about money? people think he may have a great deal of difficulty raising the money, which is at a premium. steve: these primary cases are all about momentum. do i think joe biden can put together a competent team and compete in every state?

absolutely paid if he can compete in the early states and pick up the early wins, can he compete in the later states? absolutely. he may be able to build the operation that clinton has a matter of four months? no. but that is not the goal. we are going to start talking to volunteers in places like iowa and new hampshire about things they can to prepare for joe biden getting a race. gets in thisbiden race, do you think he takes of votes away from hillary clinton? maybe he helps bernie sanders or takes of votes away from sanders from the anti-clinton vote? where does he get most of his votes from? steve: i think he pulls from all the candidates. -- at this point we seeing him pulling at 20% in the early states. he has the ability to talk to working-class families in a way

we haven't seen from a serious contender in a while. i think he will do well in places like iowa, new hampshire, and self airliner. john: you are a florida guy, can you imagine -- and south carolina. john: you are a florida guy, and you imagine hillary clinton winning in florida? steve: most my friends are in clinton world down here. that being said joe biden has spent a lot of time in florida. john: let me ask you real quick, if you had joe biden on the phone, he is a smart fan -- smart man, but he worries she would still be in -- she would -- stillamroller steamroll over him. what which convince -- what would you say to convince biden?

steve: -- john: that is a strong, short, brief, concise, compelling point. thank you for doing this. when we come back, talking trump. ♪

>> the government is broken, the system is broken, the democratic answer is let's fix big government, get new programs and issues and solutions like that. i think our answer is some he has to invent government in the garage again like you did with the apple computer. john: you have to love vintage c-span. that handsome devil is our next guest, way back in 1991. he was a pre-strong skeptic of john old -- of donald trump -- a

pretty's -- a pretty strong skeptic of donald trump. he is calling him a threat to the party that must be stopped. i asked him about his change of heart. alex: i was misinformed. he has grown. he started off as the anti-washington candidate, the angry man's candidate. now he is not only becoming an anti-them vote but a pro him. that gives him room for growth. john: he is doing this event in alabama. they say 40,000 people might come. a lot of people dismiss crowd size. should we look at that and say is -- say it is a serious thing? alex: people know this is a rare phenomenon and it may not last.

let's go see elvis while he is here. i think there is some of that, but anyone who discounts donald trump, that he is going to be around through the convention is making a mistake. there's a lot of political discussion about who might try to take trump down, how they might try to do it. he is talking about himself. in your view, as a former for whom is it most important, most imperative to try to take trump down a pay -- down a peg? alex: he sitting on a bunch of people on the conservative side. i doubt then carson is going to do anything about that. at some point ted cruz is going to wake up and figure this race is going to end and i'm never going to catch up. on the establishment side you

can wait a little longer. don't stand in front of the synonymy right now and just coalesce. become a better and stronger candidate so you can be -- you can be in the lead. john: what would be the best angle to do that? alex: the best way is the way brutus killed caesar. hug the message but not the messenger. we know why you hate washington. your country is on the verge of decline. and nobody is doing anything about it. we get it. donald trump and i agree on that. take his energy, take his heat and use it to fuel your engine.

turn his heat into your action. be there when voters get actually serious about this and say i agree with him, but he is not a president. john: jeb bush called it a , some people bush called it a tirade. what do you think about the way bush decided to take it on? alex: trump really isn't a republican. he is a unicorn. he is something you have never seen. republican,g as a but he is comfortable with more power for donald trump. i think that is where he is vulnerable. you are a business guy and you blow a deal, maybe donald trump doesn't get the country club.

when you are running for president and you blow a deal, your relationship with the soviet union, that may be world war iii. at the end of the day it may be hard or the republican party to marry trump. these strong. these are alpha dog contests. the gladiators in the coliseum. who is strong enough to rescue this country right now. kind of pale compared to what trump is doing. john: how do you think he is doing on balance? alex: the good news is the campaigns don't pick candidates as much as they make candidates. shaken off some

of the rest. he stood his ground when he was there with the press. i think he is getting better at it. now campaigns have changed. world it is a communications campaign. andf has to be big important for us to demand all our attention. you have to be big bright colors otherwise media won't work for you in today's world. that is something that has changed. john: he is glamorous, he is a celebrity, he is ubiquitous. obama hasird way paved the way for trump.

alex: if he doesn't have some thickness and substance we are not going to do that. that has been a big change. john: thank you. we will be right back to find out how it is hanging with deez nuts. ♪

john: deez nuts is getting huge. he picked up two endorsements. appellee they can start a revocable -- start a resolution and now 60 people have registered bogus campaigns. on monday, former u.s. attorney general is with us.

, from me and my friend albert reinhold hunt junior, have a good weekend. ♪

alix: we are moments away from the closing bell. i am alix steele. joe: and i'm joe weisenthal. alix: turbulence through the markets, investors pile into safe havens. joe: "what'd you miss?" more terminal for emerging markets, how far and fast willie contagion spread? alix: stocks falling further and the dow off at one point from 500 points.