parts of south florida are under a hurricane watch right now. hurricane matthew is a powerful category four storm, slammed into haiti this morning. cuba is next. could make landfall there at any

moment now. top winds at 145 miles per hour and from those pictures, this is the projected path of hurricane matthew, you can see how it's expected to security the east coast later this week. for ways you can help those affected by this hurricane, go to cnn.com/impact. we continue on, on the of the hour i'm brooke baldwin. we're coming to you live from longwood university, the site of tonight's vice presidential debate, the number two names on the ticket taking the stage for their one and only debate. just a couple of hours from now democrat tim kaine and republican mike pence squaring off as hillary clinton regains some momentum in the polls and donald trump fends off more questions about his taxes. i can tell you voters right now are evenly split over which vp candidate will do a better job

in tonight's debate. these are the new numbers we have. 38% kaine to come out on top. 38% say the same about mike pence, dead heat in a race so close that any slipup could spell disaster. let's begin the hour with jim acosta, our cnn white house correspondent standing by here outside of that debate arena. let's talk strategy. which should we expect tonight, jim? >> well, i don't think it's going to be a war of the bores, brooke. these are two political professionals who are going to be prepared for this debate. i'm told by advisors to mike pence that he has been preparing for this vice presidential debate since he was tapped as donald trump's running mate back in july so that shows you how seriously mike pence has taken the debate prep sessions with wisconsin governor scott walker. i will tell you, brook, from talking to one of mike pence's aides, he is ready for these attacks on donald trump's tax

returns. that know that is coming. i talked to a democratic strategist who said if climate change comes up expect tim kaine to talk about tax returns. if immigration comes up, expect tim kaine to talk about tax returns. republicans know this, republican tick know this is and mike pence has been preparing for this having said that. they feel like inside the trump campaign that there is a target rich environment when it comes to hillary clinton. she's been unscathed because so much has been focused on donald trump, whether it's his fight with alicia machado or those tax returns and so expect mike pence to be aggressive on that tonight. he also has been preparing to defend himself. he was a top house republican in congress for many years and governor of indiana so he has to come in with that expectation and there's pressure obtain. he is the governor of this state. and the last thing he wants to do, the last thing the clinton campaign wants them to do is blunt momentum hillary clinton

has on her side. if you look at the polls sand have been talking about them, she and tim kaine are riding into this debate with a little edge that have debate at hofstra and that is why when i talk to people inside the trump campaign they say mike pence has one mission tonight. to sum it up in one word, it is to win. they want a win, they want to change the narrative heading into the rest of the week, brooke. >> hillary clinton's post-debate surge comes with donald trump losing support among certain types of voters and the shift in numbers bodes well for the democratic nominee when it comes to the electoral map. inside politics anchor john king shows us clinton's possible path to victory. >> let's look at our national poll. a five-point lead for hillary clinton in the national poll. 47% to 42%. you see the third party candidate getting a combined nine. that's a boost for hillary clinton in national polls but we elect presidents state by state. is it carrying over to swing

states? the answer at the moment is mostly yes. look at these. new polls showing clinton plus five in florida, plus three in north carolina, plus four in pennsylvania. trump still leads in ohio by five. that's important but clinton comfortably ahead in colorado and virginia as well. there's no way to draw a path for donald trump to 270 without florida, north carolina and ohio so while ohio is encouraging this is a problem for donald trump and good news for secretary clinton. why is this happening? a number of reasons. here's one. donald trump will win among white voters who lack a college degree. the challenge is to keep it close. in september in our poll 68% of white voters without a college degree are for trump. now look. she's narrowed the gap. she's losing but she's narrowed the margin. very important gain for hillary clinton among white voters who lack a college degree. here's another one. independents, if you gho back to our poll in early september, donald trump up 20 points among

independents. now secretary clinton leading by seven points. if she wins among independents on election day you can bet the ranch she will be the next president of the united states. watch these numbers after the vice presidential debate and the second presidential debate sunday night. w listen to secretary clinton on the road. she seems certain we'll have a few more momentum swings. >> i need your help. >> let's analyze this with chief political bash, phillip rutger, jamie gangel and jeff zeleny. we heard jim acosta say no small potatoes for mike pence, he just needs to win. when you look at the polls. talk about the pressure pence faces and the next five days for trump in st. louis. >> i think michael pence -- >> you call him michael pence?

>> governor pence. >> he's a very formal guy, jeff zeleny. >> the best thing he could do is flip the script here and change the narrative that the clinton campaign is not running away from and i think governor pence is probably pretty equipped to do that. he is the candidate who gives republicans calm. all the republican anxious and unease that dana talks to all the time governor pence makes them feel slightly better about donald trump's candidacy so he has a slightly higher burden here but that's why tim kaine is going to go immediately after governor pence not only on his record in indiana but on donald trump specifically, i think that is why the burden is slightly higher for pence tonight. >> let me move on to issues and to dana and jamie, i want to play sound because, yes, alicia machado came up in the debate. hillary clinton brought her up. then we saw the twitter rant

from donald trump at 3:00 in the morning last week. now today hillary clinton was asked a question by a 15-year-old girl and women and body image. here she was. >> at my school, body image is a really big issue for girls my age. i see with my own eyes the damage donald trump does when he talks about women and how they look. as the first female president, how would you undo that damage and help girls understand that they are so much more than just what they look like? >> you're right. my opponent has taken this concern to a new level. think about it. my opponent insulted miss universe. [ laughter ] i mean, how do you get more acclaimed than that? but it wasn't good enough. so we can't take any of this seriously anymore. we need to laugh at it, we need to refute it, we need to ignore

it and we need to stand up to it and especially the bullying. there are too many young women online who are being bullied about how they look and being shamed and mistreated. >> how smart a strategy to the ladies here is this for hillary clinton to keep this in the bloodstream, this issue. and then also secondly how should trump ultimately address this? >> would be political malpractice for her not to keep this in the bloodstream as you put it so well, not just because it's about women, it's about women who were once girls and remember what it's like, women who currently have bodyish imagine issues just because of society but also men who have daughters. it hits so many demographics and hits home so intensely for so many people about the realities of what's going on not just in society but maybe in their own

families, people they love dealing with these issues so of course she'll keep bringing it up. what better whey to do in the than in a setting like this with her daughter and this 15-year-old girl who is asking in the setting because she says she feel this is way. >> and this is an obvious problem with a history for donald trump. he needs women voters. he needs these women to do it so we've had a whole history going back where megyn kelly brought up names he called women and now you have this i spoke to four job people that felt trump got trounced but having this miss universe thing when these are

the very women with how many days to go before the election is devastating for him? the other thing i was told about governor pence tonight in addition to "p" for pressure is pivot. pivot, pivot, fifth all night long wherever something like this comes up he'll go to hillary clinton's e-mails. >> exactly what donald trump didn't do. >> exactly. >> let me play sound. taxes will come up. it will be interesting to see how mike pence threads that needle. here he is talking to chris cuomo on that. >> my dad said it's a small price to pay. since when does somebody who lives in the top of the world in the penthouseover looking the world be in a position where he doesn't feel any obligation at all to pay any federal income tax to support the military, to support education, to support our foreign policy?

sirns when is that a patriotic thing to do? can you imagine any other president ever say that and be proud of that? i can't fathom it. >> and democrats are piling on. how does pence address that tonight? >> well, i think he's probably going to do something along the lines of what chris christie and rudy giuliani did. >> genius? >> say this is an example of a brilliant man who manipulated a system legally to take advantage of it. the problem is twofold, he had a nearly one billion loss in his business so he's running as a guy -- >> to me that's the bigger take away. >> that's a huge sum of money and the second problem is it's a broken system in the minds of a lot of voters. people make sacrifices to pay their tax bill every year and here is a guy that takes advantage of loopholes. >> can't republicans say it's the democratic administration with said loopholes and they could have fixed it. >> they can but i don't know

that voters can separate a system from the guy who took advantage of. >> it it's what taxes pay for. i was with hillary clinton in ohio. that's what i was struck by and that seemed to be resonating for voters. that pays for the weak military donald trump talks about. the airports, from t infrastructure he talks about is broken. so what taxes pay for this this country. so yes his base, donald trump's base is okay with this but those voters in the middle, particularly those democrats who the clinton campaign believes they've lost over trade in ohio may be offended by this. >> real quick. i was going to add that it's not just that, it's also when you think about the theatrics of tonight so many times over the past three months we've seen pence do cleanup for trump. >> captain cleanup is what brianna called him. >> and then trump kind of picks up on the way pence phrases something and says "oh, yeah, that's the way i should phrase it." i think what trump said yesterday or today about that

was at the time he was working for trump and now he'll use those skills to work for you. >> thank you so much. appreciate it. you have a spieder. >> whoa, thank you. >> live television. love you, jeff zeleny. michael pence and all. tonig tonight, will the phrase sex tape come up? i'll speak live with a trump supporter who grilled wells fargo over its outrageous scandal. does donald trump think someone should go to jail? and gary johnson gives an interesting interview. this one on cnn. hear his explanation for his most recent gaffe. you're watching cnn, spiders and all in beautiful farmville, virginia. we're thrilled to be here on the campus of longwood university. we'll be right back.

>> the people getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies. why? because they're not organized, they don't any bargaining power with insurance companies and they're getting whacked. so you've got this crazy system

where suddenly 25 million more people have health care and people are busting it sometimes 60 hours a week wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. it's the craziest thing in the world. >> let me bring my panel back. we heard bill clinton back. the a-team hillary clinton surrogates are out and about but it's making news when you hear "crazy" and "obamacare" coming from bill clinton in the same breath. dana bash, let me defer to you. a, is he right? b, how much cleanup needs to be done? >> is he right on the policy? this is basically the talking points from republicans since before obamacare was passed and even more so as they claim that people are becoming more and more uninsured because of obamacare. i still can't believe what i just heard came out of bill clinton's mouth. it's almost as if he forgot obamacare passed and he was talking about the need for health care reform like pro-obamacare. i honestly can't explain it, i'm

just -- flabbergasted. >> i'm not surprised. it's bill clinton being bill clinton and we've seen him do this over the years. we saw it when hillary ran against obama the last time. he sometimes goes a little krakatoa. [ laughter ] here was an example of it and the reality is that i'm not sure it's so bad for her. because there are so many people, both on the right and in the center and on the left who are not happy with obamacare. >> don't you think republicans are already slicing and dicing this sound for the next ad for donald trump? >> a little bit. i talked over the week end to kellyanne conway, trump's campaign manager and she said we want to talk about health care, it's an issue they don't see hillary clinton talk about, it's not in her tv ads and the trump campaign seems to believe that could be something that will give him momentum. >> shockingly, it's not talked about as much by donald trump, though, either. i think now that it has been injected into the bloodstream i

would suspect governor pence will bring this up or senator kaine will be asked about it but whoever becomes the next president they will have to deal with this so i'm shocked after covering the legislation for so many years as we all did that they're not talking about this. that is a big challenge waiting for whoever becomes president. >> but he's so good at turning policy needs and necessities into language people can understand. >> he being bill clinton? >> he being bill clinton. the fact that he called it -- what did he call it, crazy system? not "you know what, this needs to be fixed and when hillary clinton becomes --" i won't pretend to be bill clinton but in a more calm kind of understandable frame as opposed to handing the republicans an issue on a silver platter. >> so i just wanted a quote, something from your paper, this is my favorite thing all day today, this is from the "washington post." the headline is "being vp is

dreadful, running for it is so much worse." this is what they wrote in the "post." "pence looks like he'd blush at the word sex tape and yet could be asked to defend donald trump's tweets alleging a former miss universe had been in one. kaine could keep every e-mail he's ever gotten in a scrapbook and still have to talk about hillary clinton's secretive correspondences. meanwhile, millions of people will be watching at home mostly just to see whether everyone says something stupid." how do they do this tonight? >> in many respects they're up there but it's not about them. it's about hillary clinton and donald trump. >> they have the worst jobs in essence. >> but better than the jobs they currently have. one will be the vice president so they both have a job to do here. it's never sexy. sex tape, i mean -- >> blush, blush. >> and the one thing i don't think viewers will be looking for is whether they meet the commander in chief test. on paper both of these vp candidates are qualified and mike pence is more qualified in

a traditional sense than donald trump on the ticket so it's not like a palin debate where people are watching to see can this person fit in the big chair someday? >> let's remind everyone, hillary clinton and donald trump, aren't they the oldest -- >> they are. >> this is so important that we should be paying super-duper close attention to these vice presidential potentials because they would be a heart beat away. what else? reading so much, what's interesting with this race is it's been divide of social issues. we haven't heard about same-sex marriage or abortion, something that has been pervasive. these two men, faith is important with the honduras missionary journey that cane went on and mike pence likes to say he's a christian, conservative and republican in that order. do we expect to hear more on social issues and faith tonight? >> i think certainly you're going to hear it from governor mike pence because that's what he's trying to also shore up for donald trump so he's going to

speak about it for two reasons. he has a -- whatever happens, let's assume that hillary wins. then he has his own ambitions down the road. and he wants to cement those but for this race he is trying to shore up christian con coservive thes for donald trump so i think we'll hear a lot about those things. >> and the irony is you're probably going to hear social issues coming out of tim kaine's mouth with regard to the law that mike pence pushed in indiana that got pilloried even by some self-described christian conservatives with regard to lgbt issues. so the whole goal of the clinton campaign in general is to paint the trump ticket as out of the mainstream and not serious in 2016 social and political life and so that is maybe the one issue that tim kaine if he wants to go there could do which is

ironic because mike pence is to the right of donald trump on social issues like gay rights. >> it also helps kaine activate young voters, millennials. >> great point. >> by kaine talking about look, off social conservative warrior in mike pence -- >> he could reach them potentially. thank you all so much. again, the vice presidential candidates face off this evening in virginia. don't miss it. tonight watch with us live 9:00 eastern on cnn. a vocal donald trump supporter and the republicans' top watchdog over wall street joins me live. we'll talk to texas congressman jeb hensarling on what he thinks of trump's tax controversy. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] eligible for medicare?

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welcome back to farmville, virginia. i'm brooke baldwin. you are watching cnn. we're thrilled to be here. a couple hours away, you hear the students behind me. they're happy we're here, i hope, ahead of this vice presidential debate at longwood university. donald trump is defending revelations about his possible tax avoidance touting it as proof of his business acumen. at a rally in colorado on the heels of the report from the "new york times" over the week end that indicated mr. trump lost nearly a billion dollars back in 1995, a loss that could have allowed him to legally avoid paying federal income taxes for the next 18 years, trump spoke about it, confronted the issue head on, here he was. >> i have legally used the tax laws to my benefit and to the

benefit of my company, my investors and my employees. i mean, honestly? i have brilliantly used those laws. >> with me now is congressman jeb hensarling, a congressman from texas, donald trump surrogate, chair of the house financial services committee. nice to have you here. >> thanks for having me. >> first of all, you just met with one half of this debate tonight, you met with mike pence in richmond a couple hours ago, what can you share about the meeting? how do you feel? >> well, he's tan, rested and ready. >> tan, rested and ready. what does that mean? he's ready for tonight, he knows what he needs to do. he needs to tell the american people if you're not satisfied with the status quo, if you're not satisfied with this economy, if you don't think you go to bed in an america where your children and grandchildren are safer there's an agent of change and it's trump and it's pence

and he can do that, i've known him for years, he is the right man for the job and i have to tell you, i didn't know donald trump but once he picked mike pence i knew he was my man, too. >> you told me before we were live that mike pence -- this is something mike pence has been preparing for for as long as he's known, doing his home work, readying himself for his debate before the hofstra university presidential debate it was known donald trump didn't do mock debates, he said he wanted to appear authentic and by all indications he lost that debate. why do you think mike pence has chosen to go a different reparation route? >> mike in many respects has been preparing for this in quite some time. he was a leader in congress against his own leadership. he helped lead the fight against earmarks and wasteful washington spending. >> why did he decide to do his home work? >> well, he's done his home work before but he knows he's been in many debates before, this is not his first rodeo as we say in

texas. this is something he needed to prepare for and he did. i think america will be in for a real treat tonight. >> just looking ahead to this weekend and the town hall in st. louis that donald trump will have learned his lesson and donald trump will have done his home work? >> i certainly hope so. it wasn't necessarily his best outing but i remember barack obama didn't have a particularly good first debate against romney and seemed to bounce right back. so there's a number of these and i think, you know, america will be pleased at donald trump's choice. they make a pair. he didn't pick somebody who was a clone of himself when he picked mike pence, he picked a partner who also wants to change washington but also knows how washington works and how you can be the agent of change that donald trump represents and hillary clinton, again, if people are satisfied with the status quo, they'll choose her. but i believe at the end of the day most of america is not satisfied with business as usual, with a system where washington insiders play by one rule, the rest of us play by some other set of rules, an

economy that's slipping. >> on the rules and on this "new york times" report on trump and near billion-dollar reported loss in 1995. on his taxes, do you agree with chris christie and rudy giuliani in saying that he's a genius? >> well, what i do know is he apparently followed the law. >> yes or no. >> something the clintons -- >> yes or. no. >> i assume he followed the law, that's the most important thing. i know he is committed to changing our tax code. he's put out the most fundamental tax reform plan we've seen since ronald reagan and we know in the reagan era we had one of the longest periods of economic growth that benefitted all americans. it took people out of poverty and made middle income people secure and that had to do with making the tax code fairer, flatter, and simpler and so people care more about their taxes than they do about donald trump's taxes, he has the plan to reform that and grow america. >> as chair of the financial

services committee, you know a thing or two about pennies, nickels and dimes and when you think a billion dollars in '95 could be like a hundred billion now. let's put the tax avoidance, the legality of it, to the side. what does that say about his business acumen? losing that kind of money? that's something that is concerning americans. >> some people can lose money in one year, make money in the next year, i learned more from my failures -- >> one billion dollars. >> i don't think i'll lose that much but i've learned more from my failures and he's learned something, too, but at least he's done something with it and built a company, he's employed tens of thousands of people. i'm not sure hillary clinton has ever created one job. i don't know, maybe she created a few jobs of the people who deleted her e-mails many have pleaded the fifth. >> which is something tim kaine will have to talk about. let's talk about wells fargo and those accounts they created and the people they duped and you took those executives to task recently. let's listen. >> this sordid affair does

remind me why i trust markets and i do not trust individual companies. mr. stumpf, i regrettably have a mortgage with your bank. i wish i didn't. if i was in the position to pay it off, i would because you have broken my trust and you have broken the trust of millions of dollars and it will be a long, long time to earn that trust bac back. >> let me ask you what's on the minds so so many americans in this day and age, especially after the big banks and the failure. how is it that these folks who made that sort of move aren't going to jail? >> it's an excellent question and we have to hold washington accountable and wall street accountable so we obviously had wall street in to hold accountable but there's also questions, why have we had federal regulators embedded in the bank who have been conducting the exams for 18 months to two years? why did it taken a "l.a. times"

reporter to break this in the first place? it's one of the reasons house republicans are working on something called the financial choice act that actually increases fines and penalties for fraud and deceptive acts like the ones that were committed at wells fargo. it goes further and makes sure they can never qualify for a bailout. unfortunately, hillary clinton supports a bailout for wells fargo and that's wrong. >> you were against the bailout. >> i absolutely was. i helped lead the charge against it. >> if the banks were to fail again and they would need bailing out, do you know, would donald trump support that? >> well, i don't believe so, donald trump has said he wants to get rid of dodd/frank. dodd/frank is what has codified too big to fail into law. it's legislation that provides for a taxpayer funded bailout. have we not learned anything? let's remember, the root cause of the financial crisis was government policy that

essentially cajoled and incented banks to loan money to people to buy homes they couldn't afford to keep so we started out with bad policy. listen, wall street is more than happy to profit off of it but we start off with bad public policy trying to put people into homes they couldn't afford to keep. an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so investors and lenders need to suffer the full losses, let them monitor their own risks. if you think you'll get a bailout, you won't pay attention to your investment and that's the problem. donald trump will make sure that doesn't happen. >> thank you so much. did you offer advice to mike pence before you left him? >> i told him whatever he does, don't mess it up. >> congressman jeff hensarling, thank you so much from the great state of texas. up next, donald trump calls the protest over fatal police shootings race riots everyone though he admits he was told not to use that controversial term. we'll debate it with supporters of both donald trump and hillary clinton minutes away.

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we need someone who is honest and plays by the rules because not paying taxes for years and years while the rest of us pay our fair share -- [ cheers and applause ] -- see, that does not make you smarter than the rest of us. we need a president who will choose to do what's best for the country even when it doesn't personally benefit them. >> that was the first lady just moments ago on the campaign

trail for hillary clinton today in raleigh, north carolina. north carolina a battleground state where polls show clinton with a slight lead. joining us now, george w. bush's political director, a donald trump supporter mat schlapp. also bakari sellers, hillary clinton supporter and brianna keilar is back h. our senior political correspondent. so let me begin with you. we've seen michelle obama and bill clinton. >> chelsea clinton. bill clinton. >> why are they rolling them out today? >> i think it's a show of force not just about today but about throughout the election. >> final stretch? >> yeah. she has -- she does have a big sort of team that donald trump doesn't have. when you look at who he has, he has rudy giuliani, he has chris christie but he doesn't have paul ryan stumping for him.

he doesn't have the bigger republican names stumping for him. they are keeping their distance from his position bus hillary clinton has bernie sanders, elizabeth warren, joe biden, her daughter, her husband and she has that kind of democratic star power that donald trump isn't able to have. it's a force multiplier for her so it's a good thing and it would be better for donald trump if he could get that. >> let me play one more bit of sound and we'll talk to you fellows about this. this is michelle obama at an earlier event poking fun at donald trump and his microphone. >> hillary clinton is tough. see, i watched her. when she gets knocked down, she doesn't complain. she doesn't cry foul. no, she gets right back up. comes back stronger for the people who need her most.

>> so is the issue with the debate -- sorry, are you trying to tell me something? okay, silence. >> is there something wrong with your microphone? [ laughter ] >> is this thing on? is this thing on? >> it's the peer piece. >> we just saved her. >> i think going back to the list of surrogates that hillary clinton has at her disposal, anyone will tell you that michelle obama is her best surrogate. michelle obama talks to a live variety of audiences. there's not much to dislike, if anything, about michelle obama. she's very strong but talks directly to women. female voters, african-american female voters we need to make sure turn out in high numbers but also college educated white women. she was campaigning in raleigh, north carolina, places where if

we look at the latest polls hillary clinton is doing well. i expect over the next 35 days for donald trump and his campaign to be pummelled by a long list of surrogates. >> how do you prevent that? to brianna's point, show of force. >> i'm going to say the same thing. i think michelle obama is a great surrogate. i agree. having a current president out there is a benefit but you go to what's interesting. i looked at all the big events that the democratic ticket has done as opposed to trump and pence. they've done twice as many events and attendance is double or higher so there's a strange phenomenon we haven't seen before which is it is very much about trump and trump/pence. he's running the show drawing huge audiences. these are people that are spontaneously coming to see what's happening and they're not necessarily signed up to support

him. hillary clinton is running a typical campaign. it's good, it's solid. but she needs these surrogates. but can trump get it done with the way he's running this race which is unorthodox unlike anything we've seen before. >> stay with me. we have to take a quick break. up next, presidential candidate gary johnson on his latest interview today. have we seen this? explaining his most recent town hall gaffe when he was unable to name a foreign leader. what he told cnn about that moment next.

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. with regard to aleppo, look, why can't we admit to, in this case, we're involved in syria, we're involved in a civil war where hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died, and because we are involved in both sides of this cross-fire, we have to take some responsibility for a lot of those people that have died? but i guess because you can -- you can dot the is and cross the ts on foreign leaders and

geographic locations, that now somehow you're qualified to put us in that situation? hey, if that ends up to be the case, so be it. i guess i wasn't meant to be president. >> so, gary johnson. this was gary johnson talking this morning to chris cuomo trying to clean up the gaffe last week about not being able to name a foreign leader. this was just a piece of it this morning. he said something else on another channel. >> cringe-worthy. >> in and of itself. >> he said on another network, sort of in the same vein, he said knowledge of world geography, basically, the crossing of the is and the ts, quote, allows leaders to put the military in harm's way. he is bringing up whether that -- i mean, that is a qualification, knowing important foreign leaders, foreign countries, how they relate to usa foreign policy, right? this is a big world. it's not just the u.s. in this

world, and clearly there are allies and there are enemies. and it's cringe-worthy that he sort of is belittling that as a qualification. knowing where countries are doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to put the military in harm's way. you should know where countries are. that's basic -- >> he's trying to put it back on his ground which is, hey, i am not going to be an interventionist. i'm not going to go everywhere with our troops. he's trying to poiivot. >> pre, what is aleppo? this could have been a much different race. but ever since then and ever since with the cleanup -- >> i don't know if i buy that. i don't know. i think it's a big faux pas. it has an impact. i don't think we should minimize it but i do think gary johnson will benefit from the fact that a lot of people are looking outside the parties for answers. >> for an alternative. >> they definitely are. the parties are a little bit under indictment. >> i don't know. >> what we're seeing in the most

recent polling, with comments like this and comments like, what is aleppo? you see gary johnson start to hemorrhage his support. in the millennial poll, a lot of his support there is going back to hillary clinton, which she needs. that's where the michelle obama and bernie sanders and elizabeth warrens come in handy. i saw in new mexico one poll where gary johnson was polling over 20 points. >> exactly. there is a case to be made that, if he keeps it up in new mexico -- don't scare all the viewers. we could get to 269-269. which we do not -- >> clearly, clearly, bakari, matt and brianna, thank you very much. we are in farmville, virginia, hours away from the first vice presidential debate. we're back after this. just because of an accident.p smart kid. indeed.

it's good to be in, good hands.

♪jake reese, "day to feel alive"♪ ♪jake reese, "day to feel alive"♪ ♪jake reese, "day to feel alive"♪

before i let you go, quick note for those of you keeping score on twitter. donald trump announced he would be live tweeting throughout the vice presidential debate tonight which starts a couple hours from here -- from me here in farmville, virginia. thank you for being with me. i'm brooke baldwin. stay here. "the lead" with jake tapper starts now. defenders in chief. senator tim kaine and governor mike pence. their one and only debate right here on cnn. a special edition of tloo"the l starts right now. >> good afternoon. welcome to a special edition of "the lead." debate night in america. i am jake tapper. you're looking at the vice presidential debate stage in longwood university located in beautiful downtown farmville, virginia. that's about 60 miles west of the state capital of