BRIAN WILLIAMS (CO-HOST): Steve Schmidt, let's talk about arming your candidate for battle in this case. And we should remember throughout, both of these men are going to come in with a lot of material tonight. The ability to get off a lot of good lines that they're preloaded with, whether the opportunity comes up or not. It's a high risk, high reward possibility for both of them going into this evening.
STEVE SCHMIDT: Look, no doubt. Coming into this presidential debate last week, Brian, the Trump campaign was down about two and a half points in the national averages. That's spreading now to five. You look at the key swing states. If the election were tomorrow, they would lose the race. So things have not gone well for the Trump campaign since that debate. I think when you look at Tim Kaine's job tonight, I'm sure somebody on the Clinton campaign has made the point to him, look, keep provoking Donald Trump. Question his business acumen. Go after him on the things that it is impossible for him to be restrained on responding to. And hey, good news, he's going to be live tweeting. He's going to have his phone in his hand during this debate. And so when we look at the first debate, we saw a premeditated deliberate strategy by Secretary Clinton to say when I attack Donald Trump on these things, it will melt him down. He does not have the capacity to not respond to it. Like a Labrador Retriever who will chase the tennis ball when you throw it and bring it back, Donald Trump will respond to provocations on his business record, on his competence time and time again. And I think Mike Pence has a very difficult job tonight. Mike Pence is going to have to answer questions about Donald Trump's comportment, about his temperament, about his capacity to be commander in chief when he's up at 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 in the morning literally so angry, unable to sleep because of the feud he has going with a former Miss Universe, and this is, you know, this is coming at a moment in time where we're roughly 40 days out from a presidential contest that determines which of these two people will be the commander in chief and have command of America's nuclear arsenal. He's got a very difficult job tonight trying to explain some of that behavior over the last week.
