Contestants Weigh in on Trump Candidacy; Trump Supporters Speak Out; The Stump for Trump Girls
TRUMP: Let's assume that somebody else becomes president. Wouldn't that be horrible? Wouldn't that be horrible? So let's assume somebody else becomes president. Let's assume a very low energy person, very, very low energy, so low energy that every time you watch him, you fall asleep. Let's say -- he said, Hillary. Yeah, Hillary too. So let's say Jeb becomes president. Not good. Not good.</s>LEMON: Breaking news tonight here on CNN. Thousands turn out tonight in Mobile, Alabama at a pep rally for Donald Trump. Joining me now is John Brabender, a senior strategist for Rick Santorum, Rick Wilson, republican strategist, and Douglas Brinkley, CNN presidential historian. Good evening to you, gentlemen. I said earlier, I never thought I'd be glued to my television on a Friday night watching Donald Trump and here we are. So, John, you know what, you're a campaign guy. You're advising Rick Santorum, who was on CNN earlier today. You know, how challenging is it for Santorum, and anyone, if they're running against a Donald Trump?</s>JOHN BRABENDER, SENIOR STRATEGIST FOR RICK SANTORIUM: It's challenging for all of them because if nothing else, Donald Trump is entertaining. We like watching him. He makes us laugh. The question is should he be president? If you -- I'm a republican consultant. But if I was running the democrats and you gave me Ellen Degeneres, I think I could probably get her the democrat nomination over Hillary because she ideologically fits who they are, she would be funny to watch and so forth. But that's not the same as saying that he should be president. The other problem is he's difficult to attack. We saw that when Rand Paul tried it, when Rick Perry tried it, and Lindsey Graham tried it and it backfired on them. So this is very challenging for all these candidates.</s>LEMON: Hey Rick, he didn't talk much about Hillary Clinton. I mean, he's talked more about President Obama.</s>RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well look, I mean he -- tonight was a lot of the usual stuff he does. But I think he believes as a lot of people do, that we're in a phase now where Hillary Clinton may be a declining stock in this market and we may be looking at something else. So he is trying to frame up against an opponent, particularly that he knew that the audience tonight would be very responsive too because Barack Obama's numbers throughout the south are about as low as they can get mathematically at this point.</s>LEMON: Hey Rick, real quickly. I want to ask you this. He talked about doing interviews regularly. He mentioned CNN, he mentioned Fox, he mentioned MSNBC with jeers and some jeers from the crowd. Should other candidates be doing the same sort of thing if they want to be relevant?</s>WILSON: Absolutely. You know, Don, we've have this discussion a couple times Don. I've actually encouraged two of the other campaigns to get more engaged in terms of, you know, if you're going to be on a spectacle, you're going to be in a contest where people are playing this by ear and running, calling audibles on every play, you've got to be in that game too and be more accessible and start to fill up some of the vacuum that Trump tends to fill with being on the phone with folks all the time. And you got to also play by the same rules. You guys already know what Marco Rubio or Rand Paul or Ted Cruz call in and not have them, you know, only be in a studio or only be in a package piece.</s>LEMON: Well if they want to call in, they're welcome to call in to this show. Hey you know, I want to ask you this, Douglas and I want you to put this in historical context for me before. But let's listen to the sound bites. Because he's talking about Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush talking about anchor babies. This is the first time he really took on Trump. Listen to this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, do you regret using the term anchor babies yesterday on the radio?</s>JEB BUSH, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, I didn't. I don't. I don't regret it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't regret it?</s>BUSH: No, do you have a better term?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm asking you.</s>BUSH: You give me a better term and I'll use it. I'm serious. Don't yell at me behind my ear though.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sorry about that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... language anchor baby is that how...</s>LEMON: OK, so Douglas, historically I think the last time I remember any term that really set people off, I think it was welfare queens. They probably were more. What do you make of this whole incident in the historical context? Or Donald Trump playing the birther card about Barack Obama.</s>DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: I think there's a lot of what they used to call the 19th century no nothingness, no nothing party was anti-mormon, anti-catholic, anti-Jewish. I mean here tonight in California -- I mean, in Alabama tonight watching this, you think about that George Wallace with segregation now and segregation forever, plays well with a certain audience. But is that the brand the GOP wants to have represented. In other words, Trump did well tonight. He had a lot of momentum.</s>LEMON: Do you think it's on that level though? Do you think it's on the same level as segregation now?</s>BRINKLEY: I do. I think it's basically Mexicans go home. That's the code language what's going on with the wall and that's what anchor babies is all about. It's deeply offensive to Mexican Americans and it's going to kill the republicans with the Latino vote. It doesn't mean it's not entertaining. Demagogues are often entertaining, but there's too much -- the China bashing, Japan bashing, the Saudi Arabia bashing, going after all of our allies. Basically, it's nativism on steroids and it's tracking right now. It's going to be awful hard for Jeb Bush to go after Trump. I'm not quite sure how he does it effectively because Trump is a master at media manipulation.</s>LEMON: Donald Trump talking more about immigration now, listen.</s>TRUMP: And you know, when I announced that I was running for president, I brought up the subject of illegal immigration. And I took a lot of heat, that I can tell you. Rush Limbaugh actually said, incoming. He got more incoming than anybody I've ever seen. And two weeks later, everybody was apologizing to me. They saw that I was right between what happened in San Francisco to incredible Kate and her family is such an incredible family and Jamile and so many people have been so badly hurt the other day in California last week. A woman, 66 years old, a veteran, was killed, raped, sodomized, tortured and killed by an illegal immigrant. We have to do it. We have to do something. We have to do something.</s>LEMON: So when he brings up immigration, he often will bring up crime, as he did there. Douglas Brinkley said it's nativism, do you think -- it's a scare tactic. Do you think it's a scare tactic for voters? This is for John.</s>BRABENDER: Sure. Well, you know, first of all, I found it more entertaining that Trump took that much credit. At some point, we're going to have to do random drug testing for all these presidential candidates because they all think they were the first of topics that we've been discussing for a long time. People are missing the entire point right now. It is not about Donald Trump. It's about the large number of people who are enthused about somebody because they think he's authentic and they've been greatly disenfranchised and so that's why he's doing so well. The other important thing that you got to watch for is his 15 minutes of fame were supposed to be up after the debate. But now he's in 16, 17, 18 minutes. So people like Bush and others have decided they're going to ratchet up and go right after Trump. And as far as I'm concerned, the real race is now beginning.</s>LEMON: But Douglas, OK, if you look at -- history will show and correct me if I'm wrong, that the people -- you know, we're -- we've got eight years of a liberal administration so the pendulum is swinging the other way. But isn't it the people who are upset and who are more angry and who feel that they have something more to fight for, don't those people often go out and vote more so than the people who are in power?</s>BRINKLEY: Well, it's true. Donald Trump is bottling up lightning. There's no question about it right now and there's a lot of ways you remember when Ross Perot talked about a lot of this. She got 19% of the vote in 1992 against Bush and Clinton. There's a real third party feeling in the country. I think Donald Trump is attracting a lot of independents and he gives a great speech, but it's a problem for the Republican Party if he's the nominee because he alienates so many people that aren't part of the hard right. I do think thought after McCain and after Romney, the conservative wing, if you like, the nativist wing of the Republican Party is demanding that they have a player in the game and it's really Trump or Ted Cruz and it's been interesting that Trump and Cruz have kept a bit of an alliance to all these. They're standing up to the GOP establishment.</s>LEMON: Hey, I got to go. Rick, I'll give you the last word. Fifteen minutes of fame, can that turn into four years?</s>WILSON: You know, I think that 15 minutes of fame are still -- I think he's still on the clock. And I think this is really going to become a contest between a Republican Party that believes in limited government conservativism or Republican Party that believes in sort of a native stateism.</s>LEMON: Rick Wilson, Douglas Brinkley, John Brabender, thank you gentlemen, have a good weekend.</s>BRINKLEY: Thank you.</s>WILSON: Thanks Don.</s>LEMON: Coming up next, two of Donald Trump's biggest fans, the Stump for Trump Girls are as fired up as ever. There they are. They are next.