(people talking over each other)

– There's drama in Iowa. I'm John Phillips and this is The Rundown. It's down to the wire in the Hawk Eye state as the first votes of the 2016 presidential contest approach. The latest polling shows Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in a dead heat for the GOP nomination, while Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton fight a close campaign on the Democratic side. Be sure to check out this week's episode of Poll Position where we explore all those polls in depth. But Donald Trump has flipped over the table, suddenly announcing that he won't show up to the Fox News debate scheduled for Thursday, my birthday. Ted Cruz is hitting Trump hard for skipping the debate, saying that, "Someone who's terrified of Megyn Kelly "isn't prepared to be Commander in Chief," and challenging Trump to a one-on-one debate, mano a mano. But wait, the latest national poll from CNN shows Donald Trump crushing the rest of the GOP field with a whopping 41%. So is this a smart strategy for the front runner who doesn't want opponents or the media to have a chance to attack him? Or an arrogant move from someone who thinks he's too good to audition for the role of President? And how will it all affect the outcome as Iowa votes? To figure all this out, we're joined by our pal, Scott Ott, from his home studio in Dallas, Texas. He's a political satirist and author. Joining me here in Southern California, stand up comic and PJTV contributor, Stephen Kruiser. Kruiser, I grew up playing basketball, you grew up as an athlete in Tuscon. One of the things that I used to do when I played basketball is I'd play the refs. You knew going into the game, 'cause you play at all the same schools over and over and over again, who stays in the key too long. You know who steps on the baseline when they're getting rebounds 'cause they don't know exactly where they are in the court. And you get in the ref's head, you put these things in the ref's head and then some of the calls start going your way. What Donald Trump is doing here, in my estimation, is he's playing the ref's. Fox News has been pretty anti-Trump heretofore, especially Megyn Kelly and some of their prime time hosts, and he's going to Fox and he's saying you're gonna shift the way you cover my campaign or else I'm gonna take away your ratings. Do you see him as playing the refs, like I do? – I think your theory is very plausible, but as you know from the beginning, I've maintained and I still maintain that this is all ratings theater between Ailes and Trump. I do, they both had so many quickie promo talking points ready to roll out after this. I even turned on Fox News this morning, which I don't do in the morning ever, just to see how they were covering it and they're doing the whole (stutters), they had one Fox person saying, "Oh, horrible strategy." One Fox person, "Great strategy," but they're still milking it for all it's worth. So while I don't discount your theory, I still think this is all a game between Ailes and Trump because they've broken up now four times during this primary season and they've gotten back together rather quickly after each one. – All right, Scott, let's assume that Kruiser's theory is right and this is kabuki theater, does Trump kiss and make up with Fox before the debate and end up attending after all? – I don't think he can at this point. I mean, I heard an interview with Corey Lewandowski his campaign manager this morning, in which he said, hey, we're gonna do this wounded veteran's event where they're gonna schedule, they're not quite sure what it's gonna be, but Trump will speak, and some vets will speak, and things like that. So he's already booked it so that he can't show up, plus, he'll be going to John Phillips birthday party and so I think that whole night is taken up for him. I don't think he's gonna kiss and make up but I think Kruiser is right because when you get to the seventh Republican debate, it's a bigger story to say Donald Trump isn't gonna show up, than it is to say he is gonna show up. – By the way, props to Scott for pronouncing a Polish name correctly. If anyone on this program were to do that, I would have assumed it would have been you. – Yeah, he hit that out pretty well. And the thing is about what Scott says, it's a win/win for either side too. Neither one of these sides is going to lose. Trump still gets to be the maverick dude out there, and all of his followers are, "Yea, look at you! "He's stickin' it to the media." And ra-ra, he's using the veteran thing wisely. Okay, we're gonna give money to the vets and nobody's gonna poo-poo that and he's great over here. And he's gonna get a lot of pub from CNN and probably MSNBC out of it too. And Fox is still gonna be Fox. Everybody's gonna be safe with their own constituencies with this. People will still turn in to this debate. It won't be record numbers, so Trump can go, "See what I said? "I wasn't there." But as you said, it's the seventh debate or one of you said it's the seventh debate. So there aren't gonna be the numbers. Both of these sides are gonna win, there's no downside, and guess what everybody's saying, everybody's talking about Trump. No, everybody's talking about Trump and Fox News. That's what everybody's talking about right now. – [John] How bad are the numbers gonna be without Trump? – I don't know– – [John] Worse so far of the GOP debates? – Maybe, we'll see what the curiosity factor, just for Trump alone is on this. He may actually (stutters) reverse psychology drive this too. He may have hyped it so much that people will still turn in out of curiosity to see how it goes without him. – All right, what's your prediction, Scott? What are the numbers gonna be like? – I think for the first half hour they'll be big. I think people will tune in just to see how Fox handles the absence of Trump. There's been some speculation that there would be an empty podium there, you know, prepared for him with him not there. I personally think they should go full airplane on him and have an inflatable Donald Trump there. And even, you know, just ask the inflatable Trump questions and have, you know, prerecorded soundbites that he, cause he always says the same thing anyway, what difference is it gonna make? I don't think it's gonna hurt Fox that badly in the ratings. My guess is, they got their money already for the advertising. And Trump is smart here in a sense that, he doesn't need Fox. He doesn't need this debate. I mean, when Rand Paul said he wasn't gonna play the, sort of the B league debate, a couple of weeks ago, I slammed him, 'cause I said, "You idiot. "You're standing in front of a dozen people in the "freezing cold in Iowa and you turn away an audience "of a couple of million people." But in this case, Trump already has universal name recognition, only bad things can happen to him when he shows up with a bunch of his rivals three days before the election. – Did you see what Chris Matthews said about this? – Yes. – He said something to the effect of, who's gonna tune in to watch a couple of Cubans go at it? – Yeah, 'cause he's not racist at all. But, I also noticed, monitoring the news since last night, both CNN and MSNBC had multiple stories on Trump and Fox News here. Both of them just can't stop talking about it, which is why I just think it's a brilliant strategy so far. And in the end, I just, God help me, I'm gonna quote Mike Huckabee, or not quote him, I'm gonna refer to him now because he's a populous, big government Republican and you know I don't like them. He said, look if Trump can just blow all of this off, not have much of an organization in Iowa and then still go out and win this thing, then maybe we need to rethink the Iowa caucuses, which is something I wouldn't mind doing. I mean the whole– – [John] I'm with you. – The whole Iowa and New Hampshire get to set the tone for an entire presidential election. I mean, 'cause Iowa's barren and a smallish state, New Hampshire is smaller than this studio that we're in. There are 12 people there, so if we have to rethink that model, if Donald Trump is the one to blow it up, fine with me. – All right, let's talk about the actual voting– – [Scott] John, can– – In Iowa, Scott, because it looks like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are statistically in the same place, when you look at the margin of error. If Ted Cruz loses Iowa, how big of a problem is that for him

and does he, essentially, have to keep his powder dry until Super Tuesday and put all of his chips there? – Well, you know, how big of a benefit was it when Rick Santorum won Iowa? Or how big of a benefit was it to Huckabee when, you know, so I don't think, I think Kruiser's right. I don't think that Iowa is a barometer for the nation. I think what you try not to do is you try not to get killed in Iowa, so that you look like a loser, but, of course, anybody who competes against Donald Trump is already a loser by definition. And then you go to another small state and I think you try not to get killed there as well. But I think you can limp your way through Iowa and New Hampshire and then make a good showing when it goes to the south. I think the key is gonna be, by the way, in this debate Thursday night, is the candidates who are smart and don't spend their time sniping at Ted Cruz or at Marco Rubio or whining about the fact that Donald Trump isn't there and focus on being presidential and looking like the kind of person who could beat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or both of them combined. – Different states, though, meant different things to different candidates. If you're a social conservative, you have to win Iowa. If you're gonna be that guy, which is Ted Cruz, he's not gonna win New Hampshire, that's not gonna happen. Even in South Carolina, the polls show that as being a tough putt for him and the Nevada caucuses after that. So you've got to pick your battles. The Super Tuesday states could be advantageous for him, there's a lot of southern states that vote, a lot of evangelical voters. But Iowa is filled with evangelicals, especially when you look at the caucus process. I think he's gotta win there or he's got to do really well on Super Tuesday, otherwise, it's gonna be tough for him to win this nomination. – With the evangelical vote so split up in this election between Santorum, Huckabee, Carson, Cruz, I don't know if it's as essential right now. And Cruz's focus all along has been on Super Tuesday. This Iowa conversation is very late to the party here because he started to surge in the polls. That was never part of, even though he wanted to be the evangelical guy, it was almost as if they were conceding it to Carson early on. And they really didn't get that, so I don't know if it's as big a priority, and I just think it's, I think it's remarkable that after the last two elections, where, as was mentioned, Huckabee won and Santorum won and we were all discounting Iowa, saying, "Oh, what does Iowa mean? "What does Iowa mean?" And after 2012, when we swore off the polls forever because they were evil and wrong, here we are, it's all polls and all Iowa. That's all we're talking about. – Let's shift to the Democrats here for a second, Scott. At dinner last night with a Republican consultant campaign manager who's done presidential campaigns successful ones in the past, and he said that there is absolutely no doubt in his mind that Hillary's gonna lose Iowa and New Hampshire. First question, do you think he's right? Second question, how devastating is that for Hillary if she loses the first two to Bernie? – Yes, I think he's right and I think it's not as devastating as being indicted. But I think that there's a good possibility– – Duly noted. – [Scott] That both of these things could happen, you know? I just did a podcast interview with my 27-year-old daughter, who is a big Bernie supporter and she said, "I don't know anybody who supports "Hillary Clinton. "I know some people who will reluctantly "vote for her if she's the nominee, "but I don't know anyone who's enthusiastic about her. "Everybody loves Bernie." And I think if they show up, and I think they're going to show up. I mean, they've stood in line in the cold to go see Bernie, to hear an old geezer rant, I think Hillary Clinton is going to be one wounded pup by the time she gets out of New Hampshire. The big question is, can she go in and hit that firewall in South Carolina through which Bernie Sanders cannot penetrate? – I want to give props to Scott, 'cause Scott said should Bernie prevail in the first two, then they were gonna painting, (stutters) then the Hillary camp is gonna start painting Bernie as a racist. You had it right, you had the timing wrong, they started last week– – [John] They did, on reparations. – [Stephen] David Brock came out, everybody, they started last week. Nailed it. (laughing) – What's the headline in The New York Times– – [Scott] Yeah, sorry I did. – If she loses the first two on that Wednesday morning? – If she loses the, in The New York Times? – Yes. – [Stephen] Unexpected, surprising, any variation on that you can get, even if Bernie's just leading, clearly going in. And then they're going to almost ignore New Hampshire, it's gonna be, "Clinton Unexpectedly Stumbles "in Iowa, Looks Ahead to South Carolina." – Here's what I think the headline is gonna be, or this is the way the Clintons are gonna spin it. They're gonna say, they're two entirely white states, they voted for Bernie, Bernie only talks to white people, this is yet more evidence that he's a racist. – Yep, could be. I think so, even though I saw two or three far leftist publications admit the other day that Bernie's tried very hard to work with the black community, it just hasn't caught on yet. – Well, he's from Vermont. – Yeah, I mean, he's not used to talking to people. – Yeah, but the guy, literally, like marched with civil rights protesters, you know, back during that time. Bernie Sanders, and he flubbed the whole Black Lives Matter thing, from a progressive point of view, he botched that and had that embarrassing incident where Black Lives Matter's protesters came up on stage at one of his events and sort of demanded that he not say, "all lives matter," because we know they don't. And so, you know, eventually, he said, hey, I was wrong about that, black lives matter and I'm with you. But that, I'm still questioning whether Hillary Clinton's got enough support in South Carolina. My perception is that people are very luke warm about her and even the black vote will swing to Sanders if Hillary starts looking like a loser, which I think she's going to after these first two rounds. – How important is it for Bernie to get O'Malley out of the race? – I think he's becoming more of a non-factor every day. I don't know that that's much of a thing right now. I think his biggest move right now is happening this week, he's going to have his first private meeting during this campaign with the President. The President's had a few meetings with Hillary, none with Bernie so far, and the President has been kind of hinting that he'll give Hillary some support because she's been sucking up to him so hard on Obamacare on the campaign trail. But I think he's starting to see the tea leaves a little more clearly now and that will look very good for Bernie, that suddenly, the President is going, oh, he's a factor. – But if O'Malley is at 5% and Bernie and Hillary are within the margin of error in Iowa, that 5% would, in my opinion, go disproportionately to Bernie. That could be the difference in who wins that state. – One would think so, but then I'm thinking all along now if it's really, you know, there are two kinds of progressive votes, is there that much difference between Bernie and O'Malley that they haven't been able to make the commitment to Bernie yet? So I don't know if they're all, I don't know if they're all hard core progressives over there because the hard core progressives should be just dancing in circles like little Ewoks around Bernie right now. – Well, the difference between the two is we having seen as many shirtless pictures of Bernie as we have of Martin O'Malley. – Come over to my house. – All right, there we go. – God is merciful, God is merciful. (laughing) – That's all the time we have for today but now it's your turn, after you finish throwing up. Is it smart for Donald to skip the debate? Tell us what you think in the comments section below. I'm John Phillips, thanks so much for watching The Rundown. (fast-paced music)