-You have the coolest microphone thing.
It looks like a tie clasp.
-Yeah, isn't that really -- That's top-level.
-I was thinking like -- That looks pretty sharp.
-What do you guys wear? Is that what you do at CNN?
-Yeah, just this. -It's like that?
-Yours looks cool, like it's intended.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Well, you have your own show, too.
You've got to get one of these.
-I don't have as much pull, I don't think.
-Yeah. Well, the problem is, you have a show
on a network that has too many hosts.
So they'd be like, "You get one, then Cuomo's going to want one,
Anderson's going to want one." -Exactly.
-You can't do that. Whereas me, it's --
-It's not just one tie clip. -I guarantee you,
if I've got it, that means Fallon had it first.
[ Laughter ]
-It does actually have his initials.
-It does, yeah.
-"J.F. -- do not touch." Oh, no.
-You hosted the debates. -I did.
-And that is a lot.
Not only was it back-to-back nights,
but 10 candidates both nights.
Did you -- How do you approach it with that many people?
-Well, first of all, we should just make sure everybody understands.
If it were up to me, I would have like five candidates.
But it was the Democratic National Committee.
They made the decision. -Right. Not CNN's choice.
-And they said, "This is what you have to achieve
in order to get on the debate stage."
And it turns out it was very achievable.
-Yeah. -So they had 20 candidates.
Thank God we were allowed to split it into two nights.
And it's tough, because all these competing imperatives.
You want to make sure that you get to the big people,
the bigger candidates, but you also want to include everybody.
You want to bring out debate.
You want to get to as many topics as you can,
but you don't want to be too shallow.
I mean, it's a lot of moving parts.
-It did seem that you guys
got credit for hitting on a lot of substantive issues.
Obviously, a limit of time
and the fact that 10 people are talking.
And I think when -- We remember the last debate
that had that many candidates was the GOP debates 4 years ago.
You did those, as well.
-Yea, I did one with 11 candidates.
-11 candidates at once.
-Because Carly Fiorina got in there.
-She slid in at the last minute. -Yeah.
-And thank God she did, because then she was president.
But you -- Those, I think, are not remembered as being
as substantive, but you would argue that they were.
We just forget because of Trump.
-Because of who was in the middle of the stage.
I think we asked a lot of substantive questions,
but I think one of the problems with a debate
anytime that President Trump -- then candidate Trump -- is there
is, you might not remember the discussion
about the nuclear triad, for example, which was brought up.
And you might remember when he made fun of Rand Paul's hair.
-Yeah. -One of them might stick out --
stick in your brain a little bit more.
-Yeah. Do you think that will ultimately be the challenge
for whoever ends up against him, moving forward?
Is that -- As voters, we will also be distracted
by his ability to make fun of sort of trivial things?
-I don't know. That's going to be the big challenge
for whoever the Democratic nominee is.
What's the way to go after him?
Because you could argue
that Hillary Clinton won all three debates.
-Yeah, I think pretty -- Like, by a clear margin.
-Polls indicated that the American people thought she did.
-Yeah. -And then, yet,
she's obviously not at the White House right now.
-Yeah, 'cause they were like, "That other guy
is a little crazy, though. I kind of like that.
Let's see what that looks like in the White House.
Let's try the crazy guy.
It's only for a week, right? Four years?!"
-It was a little bit more complicated than that.
But okay. We'll go with that.
-I think most voters -- Trust me.
I've been in the diners. That's what they did.
I've talked to people in diners. So you --
-There were the Russians and Comey and Wisconsin.
-There's a lot of things. -A lot of factors.
-You've had this issue, because you have to deal with it
certainly in a more serious way than we do.
There have been things this week
that are hard to lay out exactly what happened.
Steve King, who is an Iowa Congressman,
he basically made comments defending rape and incest.
Which you would think would be a real career ender,
but not as yet.
How do you even -- When you hear that,
how do you even go about presenting that to people
as "here's a real thing that happened"?
-Well, I mean, we just ran the clip.
And just for those of you who are not familiar
With Congressman King's oeuvre...
-Yeah.
-He says a lot of just really insane and offensive things.
-Yeah, the craziest thing is
it wasn't out of left field for him.
-Yeah. The good news was, it wasn't racist.
-Yeah, that's right. He tried a new thing.
That's like, be careful what you wish for.
It's like -- Good news. He's not racist anymore.
-Well, it wasn't that -- Just in those comments he was,
"I'm going to try a little misogyny.
Let's just see how that goes. Try it on for size."
Yeah, the basic argument he was making,
he was trying to explain -- he was trying to defend
his argument as to why he does not support --
he's opposed to abortion
and he does not even believe in exemptions for rape and incest.
And his argument was, "If you go back in history,
you know, a lot of people got raped
and a lot of people had incest,
and I don't know that my family tree doesn't have any of that."
-Yeah. I'd argue it probably does, yeah.
[ Laughter ]
-It would explain a lot. -Yeah. It would, yeah.
-But, anyway, so, in that instance,
we just ran the clip.
And then I just turned to a guy on the panel,
poor Mike Rogers, former Republican Congressman,
and just said, "Why does he say things like that?"
-Yeah. -He didn't have an answer.