Major Garrett: Donald Trump’s Campaign ‘Kinda Like a Summer Blockbuster Movie’
ROSE: “Donald Trump supporters are sticking with him despite the fireworks from the first presidential debate. A new Reuters poll shows nearly one quarter of Republican voters still support Trump, that is twice as many as Jeb Bush, his closest competitor.”
O’DONNELL: “This morning, Trump is trying to lower the volume of his dispute with Fox News, but he is trading new jabs with other candidates. Major Garrett is here with us in Studio 57. Major, good morning.”
GARRETT: “Good morning. Donald Trump's campaign is kind of like a summer blockbuster movie. It has mass appeal, the central character takes on long odds and he fights with almost everyone standing in his way and occasionally makes up with them. Lot of twists and turns and feels like we are still in act one.”
[clip starts]
GARRETT (voice-over): “Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker complain that Donald Trump was ‘drowning him out’ and the media was fixated on only one candidate.”
WALKER: “For a lot of us, it's like watching a car accident instead of focusing on the direction we should be headed.”
GARRETT (voice-over): “Kentucky Senator Rand Paul agreed calling Trump ‘a fake conservative’.”
PAUL: “All this sort of false bravado and all of this bluster, I mean, aren't people eventually going to say does the emperor have any clothes or does the emperor have a brain, frankly?”
GARRETT (voice-over): “Last night, Trump took another hit at Paul, tweeting, ‘Truly weird Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain. He was terrible at DEBATE!’ As for Trump's blood feud with Fox Debate Moderator Megyn Kelly. The real estate mogul continued his attacks Monday.”
TRUMP: “She asked me very inappropriate question, she asked -- she should really be apologizing to me if you want to know the truth.”
GARRETT (voice-over): “Kelly was equally defiant.”
KELLY: “Trump who is the front-runner will not apologize and I certainly will not apologize for doing good journalism.”
GARRETT (voice-over): “The dispute caused Trump's top political adviser Roger Stone to quit the campaign over the weekend and take his grievances public last night.”
STONE: “I was frustrated. I frankly think that Trump is much better than this.”
GARRETT (voice-over): “And yet another bizarre turn, Trump and Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, spoke Monday and declared the truth. Ailes said, he supported Kelly 100 percent but after a blunt but cordial conversation, the air has been cleared. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton branded Trump's attack on Kelly offensive but declared Florida Senator Marco Rubio's position on abortion more troubling.”
CLINTON: “When one of their major candidates, a much younger man, the senator from Florida, says there should be no exceptions for rape and incest, that is as offensive and as troubling a comment as you can hear from a major candidate running for the presidency.”
[clip ends]
GARRETT: “Rubio said it was Clinton support for abortion under almost all circumstances that was, in his opinion, extreme. Tonight, at the Reagan President Library former Florida Governor Jeb Bush will attack Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, focusing on what he calls her abdication of U.S. interest in Iraq and the Middle East.”
ROSE: “So, back to Donald Trump. What’s next for him?”
GARRETT: “Michigan tonight, New Hampshire on Thursday. He has got good stats for New Hampshire. Decent stats in Iowa but he has got to build up the central part of his campaign. It’s still has, I think all of us would agree, an improvisational quality.”
