For an hour each on Wednesday night, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio took to national television to flash their intellects — detailing policy proposals, navigating constitutional queries and holding forth, in great detail, on how they would endeavor to make America great (again).

A few networks away, Donald Trump preferred to take a pass on all that and let his id do the talking.


In an hourlong MSNBC interview, Trump weighed in on specifics mostly to dismiss them: He denied ever proposing a 45-percent tariff on Chinese imports and shot down the possibility that he would pick David Petraeus as his vice president, saying, “We can't, now. He has been so badly hurt.”

Asked whether he would put another general on the ticket, Trump did not get around to answering that before co-moderator Mika Brzezinski told him: “You said you’re going to build a beautiful wall and Mexico is going to pay for it. … But you never say how.”

“Very simple. You have five different ways,” Trump responded. “No. 1 … We have a trade deficit with Mexico of $58 billion, all I have to do it start playing with that trade deficit, and believe me, they're going to pay for the wall. You watch.” He never got to No. 2.

On many issues, Trump was his own proposal, promising by dint of his own negotiating genius to deal with pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, China and Japan.

On others, he flat-out declined to offer an answer. “Can you share with us three people who you would consult with or want to hear from on foreign policy?” asked Brzezinski.

“I'd rather not because I'm going to be announcing a team in about a week that is really a good team,” Trump said. “A team that I've seen both — and read about both in papers and seen on your show. ... And I'm going to keep it a little bit secret.”

Asked by Joe Scarborough to assign fault in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Trump passed on that, too. “I don’t want to get into it for a different reason, Joe, because if I do win, there has to be a certain amount of surprise, unpredictability,” he said. “Our country has no unpredictability.”

And on the cost of college, Trump considered the question addressed after just 200 choice words: “We have to help the students, Joe, because what the colleges have done, their costs have gone up more than anything because the government basically gives them the money to do that through the students, but the students have to pay back the money.” He offered no specific proposal.

Taking voters’ questions for an hour each on CNN town halls, Cruz and Rubio were working far, far harder.

Asked how he would make college affordable, Rubio launched into a 900-word discourse on his four-point plan. And he made it through all four: a bipartisan proposal he was co-sponsoring in the Senate that would require colleges to disclose income data on graduates, alternative accreditation, “an alternative to student loans called the student investment plan” and pegging student loan repayments to incomes.

Cruz was engaged in similar mental calisthenics. Asked by an Army veteran for his defense plan, Cruz unleashed a litany of ideas, even putting down hard numbers for ships and soldiers.

“President Obama has proposed reducing the regular army to 450,000. I think that is far below what is needed to keep this country safe. I intend to increase it to a minimum number of 525,000 soldiers. The Air Force has been reduced to 4,000 planes. We need to increase that to a minimum of 6,000 planes so we can project power, use our air superiority,” Cruz said. “We need a force level of 1.4 million troops at a minimum and we need to dramatically expand missile defense.”

The list went on: Cruz and Rubio were asked about OPEC, Supreme Court nominees, the Iran nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia, civil liberties in the struggle for national security — and on each, they answered in detailed terms.

Such proposals are difficult, requiring a mastery of policy and the ability to pull it up on command, and elucidating them can be politically perilous, because a dropped zero or a misplaced word could get replayed endlessly on cable news.

But presidential candidates take that risk, largely under the belief that, if voters are going to pick you to lead the country, they’ll demand to know, with at least some specificity, where you’d like to lead it and how you plan to get there.

Trump continues to test that assumption.

Asked about the military, he offered a more succinct vision: “I want to build our military so strong, so powerful, that nobody's going to mess with it.”

Still, it wasn’t all toil on CNN for Rubio and Cruz.

Anderson Cooper, who had ealier talked with Ben Carson at 8 p.m., drew out personal details from the candidates. Rubio admitted an affinity for electronic dance music but said he had never been to a rave. Cruz, reluctantly opening up on the personal, described singing romantic standards to his wife, Heidi, over the phone, but he admitted that his iPhone video game habits drive her crazy.

Cruz also opened up, at length, about Trump, who sent him a cease-and-desist letter Wednesday in the latest escalation of their rivalry. He labeled it uniquely ridiculous, and also touched on Trump’s designs on making America great again.

The CliffsNotes version of Cruz’s position on Trump: “I think his policy positions have not made any sense.”

Eliza Collins contributed to this report.