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GOP Presidential Candidates Clash on Terrorism and National Security; Republican Candidates Clash over ISIS, Immigration; Hillary Clinton Outlines ISIS Strategy; Ben Carson's Best-Worst Analyst. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired December 16, 2015 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[01:00:01] ANDERSON COOPERS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Tom, thanks for keeping them honest. That does it for us here. I want to thank all our panelists who braved the cold temperatures out here while Jake and his team got to be inside.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, and welcome to our viewers all around the world. I'm John Vause live in Las Vegas. You're watching CNN's special coverage of the Republican presidential debate.
And the frontrunner, Donald Trump, is holding his hard line in the war on terror standing by his plan to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States. Also, he wants to shut down parts of the Internet used by the terror group ISIS.
Each of the candidates says they would do the best job at keeping America safe. They laid out their plans for defeating the terror group.
U.S. president Barack Obama was a prime target. All of the Republican candidates blamed him for putting the country at greater risk from terrorists.
Here is a look at some of the highlights.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners. But he's a chaos candidate. And he'd be a chaos president.
SEN. RAND PAUL (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So Marco can't have it both ways. He thinks he wants to be this, oh, I'm great and strong on national defense. But he's the weakest of all the Candidates on immigration.
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If your eyes are glazed over like mine, this is what it's like to be on the floor of the United States Senate. I mean, endless debate about how many angels on the head of a pin from people who've never had to make a consequential decision in an executive position.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think Jeb is a very nice person. He's a very nice person, but we need tough people, we need toughness, we need intelligence and we need tough. Jeb said when they come across the southern border, they as an act of love.
BUSH: You said in September 30th that ISIS was not a --
TRUMP: Am I talking or are you talking, Jeb?
BUSH: I'm talking right now. I'm talking.
TRUMP: You can go back. You're not talking.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's strategy is to lead from behind. It sounds like what he's outlining is not to lead at all.
PAUL: Well, I think if you're in favor of World War II you have your candidate.
CARLY FIORINA (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Talking tough is not the same as being strong. And to wage war, we need a commander-in-chief who has made tough calls in tough times and stood up to be held accountable over and over, not first-term senators who have never made an executive decision in their life.
BUSH: The simple fact is, if you think this is tough and you're not being treated fairly --
TRUMP: This isn't tough.
(CROSSTALK)
BUSH: Imagine what it's going to be like dealing with --
TRUMP: I wish it was always this easy as you, Jeb.
BUSH: Or dealing with President Xi. Or dealing with the Islamic terrorism that exist.
TRUMP: Oh yes.
BUSH: This is a tough business to run your president.
TRUMP: I see. You're a tough guy, Jeb.
BUSH: And we need to have a leader that --
TRUMP: You're tough. You're real tough.
BUSH: You're never going to become president by insulting your way to the presidency.
TRUMP: Let's see, I'm at 42 and you're in 3. So, so far, I'm doing better.
BUSH: Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
TRUMP: So far I'm doing better.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Yes, that was the reply. Look at the scoreboard from Donald Trump.
OK, joining me here right now, our senior reporter for Media and Politics, Dylan Byers, our senior political analyst Ron Brownstein, and Rana Faroohar, I'll make you our senior global economic analyst, OK? Just for the night, you get a promotion. OK, so --
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The global already?
VAUSE: Well, global, intergalactic. Whatever, you know, OK.
Ron, let's start with you. This is a very substantive debate. And for first time, really, we have a really good idea of where all of these candidates stand on these issues.
BROWNSTEIN: I've been part of presidential politics since 1984 and I thought it was crisp, substantive, informative, really one of the best debates I've seen and exactly what you say, teasing out the differences among the candidates on these issues. You know, usually within the primary debate, you're looking at subtle shades of gray within a party. But here we saw some pretty big delineation on intervention abroad and surveillance at home. And as much distance in some ways from George W. Bush, particularly on intervention as it was from Barack Obama.
VAUSE: OK. So, Dylan, to that point, if we're looking at where these candidates now stand, we seem to have Trump and Rand Paul on one side saying no more troops to the Middle East, everybody else is saying they want to send troop overseas. And there are some other differences as well.
DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA AND POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, there are plenty of differences. And I think what you saw tonight was sort of a fight night with many different bouts and many different notable bouts. You saw Jeb Bush going after Donald Trump, certainly showing more enthusiasm than he's shown at any given time. You saw Rubio and Cruz tangling and that to me was by far the most significant matchup of the night because that is a preview of what very likely could be happening months down the line when there are just two podiums on stage. A podium --
(CROSSTALK)
VAUSE: You're nodding --
RANA FAROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: I actually agree with that. I think that it was very much the Rubio versus Cruz show.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes. Yes.
FAROOHAR: And that really -- you know, it sort of highlights this big delineation in the party. Is it going to be a party that Rubio is really representing where he's a moderate, he's working across the aisle on things like military intervention, on immigration? You heard a lot about the Gang of Eight. But that's something Cruz can slam him on. He represents this other vision of an America that is really paralyzed by fear where security is pre-imminent and values, you know, come second.
BROWNSTEIN: Rubio last -- Rubio, you know, the thing about Rubio is that the opening for him, everybody is waiting for him to fail, is that center right opening created by the inability so far of Bush. Chris Christie who did well tonight --
FAROOHAR: Yes.
VAUSE: Yes.
BROWNSTEIN: John Kasich to kind of emerge. But Rubio really doesn't want to be in that space. I mean, and very --
VAUSE: Why is that?
BROWNSTEIN: Because he doesn't believe there are enough there and he also believes those voters will be left with no alternative when there are two -- if they get down to two or three candidates and he keeps pushing to the right.
[01:05:05] I mean, his attacks on Ted Cruz tonight were from the right on surveillance and on intervention. And he did -- he did go back to his view on immigration allowing at some point in the distant future there might be a path to citizenship, but by and large, Rubio is tilting further to the right and the risky phases is something like Christie can revive and move ahead of him in New Hampshire, maybe he never gets to that final two.
VAUSE: Rana, so with regards to Rubio, everyone thought that he was going to be the star of the debate. He needed it to knock it out of the ballpark.
FAROOHAR: Yes.
VAUSE: Did he have a good night?
FAROOHAR: You know, I think he had a good night, but I think Cruz also had a great night. You know? And I think -- and you can see that in the airtime. I mean, they have -- the two of them had the most airtime followed -- you know, right after with Trump.
I have to say the one thing that disappointed me was that none of the candidates, with the exception of Jeb Bush, really pushed Trump on his comments about Muslims.
BROWNSTEIN: Right.
FAROOHAR: Muslims, on the way the tone that he has set around this issue. And that was something I was really hoping to hear more about.
VAUSE: And, Dylan, that was the thing. Because I noticed that, too. That was the first question right out of the block, as you'd expect it to be, they kind of dealt with it for a few moments then everybody moved on and we didn't hear about it, I guess.
FAROOHAR: Yes.
BYERS: You had this kind of debate that was focused almost entirely on national security and on foreign policy. And here is this elephant in the room, which is this historic proposal.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
BYERS: To ban this world second largest religion from entering the United States.
BROWNSTEIN: What I'll tell you, you could feel the weight of the poll on the conversation with 60 percent of Republicans, that is according to the ABC-"Washington Post." Because both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio ultimately distanced themselves from it but you could hardly tell in the answer.
BYERS: Right.
BROWNSTEIN: Because it started by all this misunderstanding about why he said it. Only Jeb Bush really went after it.
FAROOHAR: Right.
BYERS: And this gets back to the challenge that these candidates face in terms of running in a primary where the majority of Republicans support that proposal according to some polls and the majority of Americans oppose it. So you're trying to run a general election campaign and a primary campaign in the same time and that's very challenging.
FAROOHAR: Yes.
VAUSE: And you talked about Cruz didn't go after Trump, certainly didn't go after him on the issue of the Muslim ban. He danced around it. He was very nice. So I kind of understand where he's coming from and --
FAROOHAR: Well, they're frenemies. Right?
VAUSE: Yes. Yes.
FAROOHAR: You know? And, you know, I think Cruz, particularly on immigration on Muslims was trying to really play it on both sides of the fence and kind of give voters who might be in either category a reason to go with him. You know, I just think that it's an issue that should have been faced head on and will have to be faced on head on for sure.
BROWNSTEIN: In a general. As indicated by Hillary Clinton's speech a few hours before the debate.
VAUSE: Yes. FAROOHAR: Yes.
BROWNSTEIN: When she went very directly against them and said the Muslim American community is our first and last and the most important line of defense.
I will say Donald Trump, I thought, had a pretty good night.
FAROOHAR: Yes. Right.
BROWNSTEIN: I thought it was the first time -- the first time I've watched him where I thought he was calibrating his answers against the possibility that he might actually be the nominee.
VAUSE: He lost (INAUDIBLE) with Jeb Bush.
BROWNSTEIN: Right. With Jeb Bush.
VAUSE: Yes.
BROWNSTEIN: Most of the evening, he was more -- his tone was more even. His answers were kind of more restrained and I thought he was like actually thinking, you know, I might be someone standing up on this stage in the fall.
BYERS: And I'll say a sign of how well I think he thought he did. I was just in the spin room. He was in the spin room longer than he's been.
VAUSE: Right.
BYERS: After any of these debates, and going back to this relationship between Trump and Cruz, and frenemies, he was speaking to the press and he said, you know, the thing I like about Ted Cruz is that he's been with me since the beginning. So that relationship, if we thought there was going to be any Cruz versus Trump action, that's been repaired.
VAUSE: With regard to Jeb Bush, and he had a great night, it still didn't seem to be a turnaround moment, though. Was it?
BYERS: No. Not at all.
FAROOHAR: He had a great social moment, though, but it was a comment about Trump and you're not going to insult your way to the presidency.
BYERS: Right.
VAUSE: He's used that line before.
FAROOHAR: Absolutely.
VAUSE: And the thing, one Trump supporter -- sorry, Jeb Bush supporter said to me, one Jeb Bush supporter said to me, look, compared to the other debates, it was awesome because when the patient has been in a coma and they open their eyes and start blinking, it's a break through.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
BYERS: Jeb Bush, I have to say, has done better consistently with each debate. And this was probably his strongest debate. But he needed to be playing this way at the first debate. I mean, he's playing catch-up. And look, he landed some powerful lines, some one- liners, but that's not enough to break through.
BROWNSTEIN: Look, he's not -- yes, he did. And he's in a -- look, he's in a kind of a one or done situation as is John Kasich, as is Chris Christie. All of them are really in this kind of cage match along with Rubio, really, to see who is going to be the strongest finisher in New Hampshire from this bracket. And I think the big question is hanging over Rubio that people are talking about.
Yes, he seems to be the guy best positioned to get in there with Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, who seem to have a clear path into the finals. But if Rubio -- where does Rubio win? Right? And if he comes out of New Hampshire with someone like Christie or Bush ahead of him, maybe he never fully emerges in the way that many are expecting.
FAROOHAR: And it's going to depend on what the new cycle is like. If this continues to be a new cycle that's dominated by issues of security, terrorism, immigration, that puts him in a weaker position, I think. If it turns out to be something that we get back to talking about the economy, we get back to talking about a variety of other things that Ted Cruz will then have more problems with, you know, in the broader electorate, then I think he does better.
VAUSE: Will Ted Cruz now have an issue with immigration because he went further than he's ever gone before when it comes to immigration? He said that he never supports legalization of undocumented workers here. How much of a problem does that position mean for him in a general election if he's going to be a serious candidate?
[01:10:06] BROWNSTEIN: Yes. If he gets to the general election. So it's complicated. He supported a bill during the big immigration debate in the U.S. in 2013 that in fact would have legalized undocumented workers. It was his amendment. But he says he put that up as a poison pill to try to sink the broader proposal that Rubio supported which provided a pathway not only to legalization but all the way to citizenship. So now he's saying he just did that as a poison pill, he never would be for it in the future and he also indicated tonight, he basically supports a strategy for the 11 million already here that is essentially self-deportation as Mitt Romney talked about.
In a Republican primary, it probably doesn't hurt you that much even though polling does show a majority of Republican support.
FAROOHAR: Yes.
BROWNSTEIN: Some kind of legal status. If he does get to the general election, a significant problem. VAUSE: There's also that other wonky debate between Rubio and Cruz
about the NSA and collection of data and all that kind of stuff, and then we get that moment from Chris Christie and a couple of these moments where he said, are your eyes glazing over? Like welcome to the U.S. Senate. I thought there were three debates here tonight. I thought there was the debate between Jeb Bush and Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and then it seemed Chris Christie was sort of debating Washington, and he had a good night.
(CROSSTALK)
BYERS: Because of the senators.
VAUSE: Yes.
BROWNSTEIN: He did have a good night.
FAROOHAR: He's sort of taken over Carly Fiorina's role on that score. You know, she -- there is a reason for that. You know, I think she's really fading. But she, for some time, has been hitting that point on crony capitalism, that's sort of political class, and that role is now Christie's. He's the one that's saying look, we're all bored to death of this. I'm the one who's taken action. I have an executive ability that these guys don't.
BROWNSTEIN: You know one other quick dynamic in terms of debates, I thought that another debate was half of -- almost half of the candidates up there and George W. Bush, who had Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and then most forcefully Donald Trump essentially rejecting the Bush vision of foreign policy and remaking their own.
When Donald Trump said not only was it a mistake to go into the Middle East, but we were better off spending the $4 trillion at home.
(CROSSTALK)
VAUSE: Sounds like a Democrat.
BROWNSTEIN: Carly Fiorina is exactly right when she said, boy, that sounded like -- I mean, that was something you could have heard from many liberal Democrats.
VAUSE: Barack Obama, I think, made the point.
FAROOHAR: You know, let's say Cruz got the nomination and went against Hillary, that would be a very interesting divergence, right?
BROWNSTEIN: Yes. Right. Right.
FAROOHAR: Because then you've got this kind of far-left and far-right position against the center.
VAUSE: They'll all be coming back together. One of the other issues which I thought throughout this debate is Ben Carson, who, you know, was doing so well a month ago, which seems like a lifetime ago. He went into that debate. He said he'd been prepping for it, he was ready for it. Then nothing happened.
BYERS: Absolutely nothing. Look, I think if you look at the polls, Ben Carson has been sliding for weeks now. And I don't think his sort of -- you know, his sort of soft manner, nice guy approach is going to break through at a time when the rest of the candidates are politicking on fear and terrorism and issues of national security.
VAUSE: His soft manner, nice guy approach, he said that sometimes you have to be willing to bomb refugees to save them.
BYERS: He does, but, you know, his whole -- look, fortunately there are a lot of smart people who talk -- who understand the issue. But optics also matter.
VAUSE: Right.
BYERS: The impression that people are left with matter. I think coming out of this debate, you know, Hugh Hewitt called it the Christmas dinner debate.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
BYERS: Voters are going to coalesce around the Christmas table talking about which candidate they like. They're left with an impression that there's the Donald Trump campaign and if you don't like the Donald Trump campaign, there's the Rubio versus Cruz campaign. And maybe you're talking about Christie, maybe you're talking about Rand Paul.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWNSTEIN: I think that's right in the national. The one that we have to keep in mind is the potential for a different dynamic in New Hampshire where Christie, Bush, Kasich, kind of all just put all the chips in the Vegas analogy.
VAUSE: Yes.
BROWNSTEIN: And if one of them can score there, that does scramble the deck.
VAUSE: I want to ask you this last question.
BROWNSTEIN: Well, metaphor.
VAUSE: Because we're now heading into the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. And even though Chris Christie isn't doing particularly well nationally, he is doing very well in New Hampshire. So is that his path? Is that his opening there?
BROWNSTEIN: Yes. And look, he really -- you know, historically, New Hampshire has been the place where that center right candidate gets anointed. And right now, the risk they face is that Rubio, Christie, Bush and Kasich, none have separated from the other. That increases the odds that Trump wins, even if Trump wins, it still matters which of them finishes first. You know, as I said earlier today, you don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than your friend. And so one of them will come out of New Hampshire with a little bit of identity as the candidate of that kind of white-collar, center-right bracket.
BYERS: But I would just say to this point.
VAUSE: Last point.
BYERS: Sure. There are two debates left between now and Iowa. One of these candidates has to land a bigger punch on Donald Trump.
VAUSE: Right.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
FAROOHAR: Yes.
BYERS: If they don't want him to take Iowa and then go into New Hampshire with some momentum, those candidates don't differentiate themselves, and Trump takes New Hampshire, too.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
VAUSE: And we'll leave it at that. Dylan Byers, Ron Brownstein, Rana Faroohar, we will talk to you guys -- I think you're coming back and we'll talk to you a bit later on. Thanks for being with us. We appreciate it.
And, of course, you can watch the entire Republican debate right here at CNN. We'll be replaying it 8:00 p.m. Wednesday in London, 9:00 p.m. in Berlin only here on CNN.
A short break here right now. When we come back, we'll have the latest international reaction on what the candidate said about that Muslim ban on traveling to the United States.
[01:15:03] Also, about what they said about tackling global terrorism. Back in just a moment. You're watching CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(SPORTS)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: This is not a serious proposal. In fact, it will push the Muslim world, the Arab world away from us at a time when we need to reengage with them to be able to create a strategy to destroy ISIS.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Governor Jeb Bush there talking about Donald Trump's very controversial plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States, at least temporarily. Tuesday's Republican presidential debate focused heavily on national
security and foreign policy and what the United States should do to fight ISIS. And of course there was that controversial proposal by Donald Trump. It wasn't really addressed in any major way apart from Jeb Bush.
CNN anchor Becky Anderson joins us now from Abu Dhabi to talk more about this.
So, Becky, it was brought up at the beginning of the debate and then it kind of was left there. They didn't really address it. There wasn't a lot of pushback on Donald Trump. How will that be seen in the region?
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN ANCHOR, "CONNECT THE WORLD": Well, I have to say, John, you'd be hard pressed to find many people who could name check many of the candidates in this Republican presidential debate, say, for Donald Trump.
[01:20:05] Those incendiary comments on banning Muslims from the U.S. very much shocking people here in the Gulf and I hazard a guess across the Middle East for a lot of people here. There is this sense that anti-Islam and anti-Muslim fervor are being used as sort of to whip up the votes and what is this environment of fear, as you rightly point out this debate very much concentrating on national security.
I have to say, there's not much support for the Bush family these days on the streets here in the Middle East. But Jeb Bush's line that Trump is a chaos candidate and he will be a chaos president I would say will resonate with anybody who stayed up through the night to watch this show. And don't forget, it was the middle of the night, this debate, for people in the Middle East.
What else did we get, John, when we got Ted Cruz's line that ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism will face no more determined foe that he will be, and that was followed by somebody that's fairly new to the Middle East viewers, Marco Rubio's contention that ISIS could not be contained by airstrikes so they cannot be defeated through airstrikes and must be defeated on the ground by a ground force. And he did go on to say, John, that ground force must be primarily made up of Sunni Arabs.
And as we're well aware, just this week after huge pressure from the U.S. and other anti-ISIS coalition members, Saudi Arabia did announce this partnership of sort of 30 odd Islamic countries who they say will provide support for the fight. But without -- and this is important -- the involvement of Iran, Iraq and Syria who quite frankly are facing the biggest threat from ISIS.
So I guess sort of, you know, out of all of this, if people were listening to the debate and could sort of get past Trump, they'd have been interested to hear what Rubio and Cruz were saying, but when you get back to this region as we have been reported -- reporting recently, while countries are motivated by their own political and religious agendas, there are those who fear that things could get even worse possibly with this sort of new Islamic force getting involved rather than better if we are looking at this sectarian divide between Shia and Sunni Arabs widening.
So I guess in the end, the opinion of many in this region is that while George W. Bush overreached in the Middle East, the current president, Barack Obama, many say, has under reached, he's got this policy of disengagement and a drawdown in counter-terror intelligence. And that has left, many say here, a vacuum for the likes of ISIS who are now terrorizing.
Let's remember, they are terrorizing people across the Middle East in their hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Many more people have died, many more Muslims have died at the hands of ISIS and those elsewhere around the world. And we do keep reminding people of that, John.
VAUSE: Absolutely, Becky Anderson, in Abu Dhabi. Thank you for that.
Let's bring in now our senior international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson. He joins us live this hour from London.
Nic, thank you for being with us. Throughout this debate, it seems John Kasich, the governor, Chris Christie, another governor, Carly Fiorina, they seem to be vying to prove who is most willing to start a war.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. John Kasich said it was time to punch Russia on the nose. Chris Christie said that he would be -- that he was ready to enforce a no fly zone and if that meant shooting down Russian planes then he would do that. And Carly Fiorina said she wouldn't talk to President Putin and that she would tell the Iranians it was time to negotiate a new deal.
So it was pretty fiery talk from them. But I think the performances overall showed more nuance, more nouns, if you will, about -- you know, about international diplomacy than I think we've seen in previous debates. That said, there was still this sort of language that once they were commander-in-chief, this sort of language really could land the United States in a very confrontational position. But I think there was very little in this that would be looked upon positively in this debate, looked upon positively from a Russian perspective, other than Donald Trump saying that when it comes to fighting in Syria, there's Assad and there's ISIS and it's time to pick one fight at a time and go for ISIS first.
And this essentially is what the Russians are saying at the moment. So, you know, when you look at it in that perspective, I would say Russia and Iran would not be looking favorably upon the next Republican candidate, whoever may emerge from all of this.
VAUSE: Also during this debate, and Becky touched on just moments ago, there did seem to be this agreement that to defeat ISIS, they need more involvement from Arab nations, there's a large number of ground troops there.
[01:25:08] But that is a strategy which is being used by the Obama administration. Right? It's a strategy which so far doesn't seem to be working too well. ROBERTSON: Yes. And here is kind of broadly speaking what these
Republican candidates had to say about that. Number one, they said that by across the board here that the deal that President Obama had made with Iran was a bad deal and we know that this deal has, in part, soured United States relationship with Saudi Arabia and other important Gulf allies because they see Iran as an enemy.
And then add into that, as well, the sort of what President Obama did back in 2011 during the Arab spring. And that was to not support President Ben Ali in Egypt and not support President Hosni Mubarak -- Ben Ali in Tunisia, rather, and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and this is something, again, that the Sunni leaders, particularly in the Gulf states, but around the region, looked to the United States not standing up behind its ally. That was a Democrat -- a Democrat president who made that decision.
The Republican president -- a Republican president may well take a much tougher line with Iran that would please Saudi Arabia and others more. And it could make an argument that they wouldn't have done what the Democrats did in the Arab spring, which would be they would support their Gulf and Arab allies in a much stronger way. So that could tip the balance when you're talking about it there of how they could swing for Sunni block behind them more -- John.
VAUSE: OK. Nic Robertson, our international diplomatic editor in London.
Nic, thanks for being with us. Thanks for the analysis. Appreciate it.
Donald Trump set the stage in the CNN Republican presidential debate. When we come back, we'll look at how well he held up under some intense criticism from his rivals.
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[01:30:31] JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Look, two months ago, Donald Trump said that ISIS was not our fight. Just two months ago. He said that Hillary Clinton would be a great negotiator with Iran. And he gets his foreign policy experience from the shows.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Honestly, I think Jeb is a very nice person. He's a very nice person, but we need tough people. We need toughness. We need intelligence and we need tough. Jeb said when they come across the southern border, they come as an act of love.
BUSH: You said on September 30th, that ISIS was not a factor.
TRUMP: Am I talking or are you talking, Jeb?
BUSH: I'm talking right now. I'm talking.
TRUMP: You can go back. You can go back. You're not talking. (CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: You interrupted me, Jeb.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Are you going to apologize, Jeb? No.
Am I allowed to finish?
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR & DEBATE MODERATOR: One at a time.
TRUMP: Am I allowed to finish?
When Jeb comes out and he talks about the border -- I saw it, and I was witness to it, and so was everyone else, and I was standing there -- they come across as an act of love. He's saying the same thing right now with radical Islam. And we can't have that in our country. It just won't work. We need strength.
BLITZER: Governor Bush?
BUSH: Donald, you're not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency. That's not going not going to happen. And I do have the strength.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: One of the fiery moments there between Donald Trump and Governor Jeb Bush.
You're watching CNN's special coverage of the Republican presidential debate. I'm John Vause, live in Las Vegas.
Those attacks on Donald Trump, who is the front runner in all of this, no real surprise. But we also saw a number of candidates taking aim at the man currently in second place in the most recent polls, Senator Ted Cruz. He and Marco Rubio clashed over immigration. Cruz says Rubio has been fighting to grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants and not to secure the border.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: For Marco to suggest our records are the same is like suggesting the fireman and the arsonist both have the same record because they're both at the scene of the fire.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Dylan Byers and Rana Foroohar are back with me now.
OK. So this was one of those wonkish debates. Obviously, there was this big Senate bill, which was put forward, and essentially Cruz and Rubio are trying to hang it around each other's neck here, right? So where does this go from here? What's the back story, if you like?
RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: It's interesting. I think Christie made the big point of the night by saying, hey, nobody cares about the back story. Nobody cares about the details. I think the issue of metadata is going to continue to brew, particularly of security concerns become preeminent. If they stay that way in the news cycle, this is something we're going to come back to.
What was sort of fascinating to me is that this was one of the points in which Rubio was to the right of Cruz. And that's really not where they --
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: on a surveillance issue, that's really not where they shook out during the rest of the debate.
VAUSE: And on immigration, which is a big issue for many Republican voters, especially in a primary, Cruz went after Rubio on that, essentially to try and say this is a guy -- because he sponsored that bipartisan bill, right?
DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR REPORTER FOR MEDIA & POLITICS: That's absolutely right. And what Rubio is forced to do is say, look, I'm only for even considering that after the federal government proves that it can stem the flow of illegal immigration.
VAUSE: A dodge?
BYERS: It's a total dodge, and it's a dodge that comes in the context of fierce rhetoric from Donald Trump, fierce rhetoric from Ted Cruz and Cruz coming and saying he would never support legalization. And so, again, we spoke about this earlier tonight with, and we've been talking about it all week, Rubio is in a position where he has to thread that needle between running to the conservative base now and running in the general election audience later.
FOROOHAR: Yeah. And he kept trying to talk about the general, we have to beat Hillary, we have to beat Obama, against those two as opposed to against each other.
VAUSE: If they agreed on anything tonight, they agreed that President Obama is bad.
(CROSSTALK)
VAUSE: And I guess at least they got one thing.
FOROOHAR: Although, you know, Rubio, one of his weaknesses in some sense is the fact that he agrees with the Democrats on a number of issues like intervention in the Middle East.
VAUSE: So Rand Paul who also had a pretty good night, he almost didn't make the debate. He went out there and was going to make the most of it. He brought it back to national security. This seemed to be one -- I don't want to say clever, but this was a good ploy for him.
FOROOHAR: It was. And of the candidates that spoke about immigration as a national security issue, I kind of buy Rand Paul's shtick the most. I would say I think he believes this issue he. I think it's something that he remains solid on. I was troubled by the fact that Ted Cruz, when he spoke about, OK, yeah, we have to limit immigration, we have to -- you know, he was sort of agreeing with Trump's comments without actually agreeing of them and try to sort of be on both sides. I thought that that was really problematic. I just think that it was disturbing that none of the candidates were tougher on Trump about the comments against Muslims.
[01:35:24] BYERS: Here is an important point about Rand Paul and it's why he has such fervent supporters. He doesn't have many supporters relative to the candidates. But you could hear him yelling in the debate hall tonight. And part of that is because he doesn't waffle.
(CROSSTALK)
BYERS: What he stood for, he's always stood for, and he's not playing that game that Rubio and Cruz are playing where they're trying to navigate Trump at the same time --
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: You can feel his authenticity about it.
BYERS: You can feel his authenticity, but I don't think it's enough. I don't think he broke through tonight.
VAUSE: And we saw this in the closing statements. His was completely different to everybody else.
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: Yes. And we hadn't heard anything about the economy. I actually tracked it. We didn't hear the word "economy" until an hour --
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: -- and 19 minutes into the debate. And then the next thing we heard was debt from Rand Paul.
VAUSE: And that's the thing. Because that's what his supporters want to hear or that's what he truly believes?
BYERS: Yeah, that's right. That's his thing and that plays very well with that core group of supporters. And maybe he does get this and he just doesn't care. But, again, he's playing in the context of a Trump circus, of a Rubio versus Cruz battle to the nomination that we're all waiting for. And what part is he going to play in that? Guys like Chris Christie, they're fighting to get into that. Jeb Bush is hanging on for dear life. Rand Paul seems like he's not --
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: In the family drama, Rand Paul is like the stepbrother who comes in every three months and kind of has a meal and then goes, you know what I mean? He's really not --
VAUSE: With that in mind, does he go? Obviously, no one is going to get out before -- well, maybe, but really, for Rand Paul and someone like John Kasich, maybe Ben Carson, he's still got some good poll numbers.
BYERS: I think there, we talked about this earlier. There are three different campaigns going on. First of all, you've got the Trump circus. And the question is, does the Trump circus leave town? And if it does, who do you have left? Second, you have Cruz/Rubio dynamic going on. Then you have guys like Jeb Bush hanging on, Chris Christie trying to seize his moment. Everyone else, bar something major performance in the next two debates before Iowa, slides away. Ben Carson slides away. Rand Paul slides away.
FOROOHAR: And I think to the extent that they slide away faster, then you get to see how long Trump will hang in. One of the reasons he's so strong is that the party is so divided. There are still so many people up on that stage. That's what's unusual. When you had an outsider candidate like that in the past, there haven't been eight or nine people up on stage at the same time.
VAUSE: We talk about Rand Paul having a pretty good night. Does it change anything for him at the end of the day he?
FOROOHAR: Absolutely not, no.
BYERS: No.
FOROOHAR: But I think that he -- I mean, you know, it was funny about debt because if we were having this debate at a different moment, at a moment when terror and security wasn't front and center, I think you actually would have been hearing more about that. You heard about that a lot in the first couple of debates.
BYERS: It actually reminds me of the Democratic debate that happens right after the terrorist attacks and there was a huge push on terrorism, much like national security and foreign policy, much like tonight's debate did. And Bernie Sanders' campaign came out and said we don't want to talk about it. That's Rand Paul. He's sticking to his issue, he's sticking to debt, he's sticking to the economy, the issues that play well with his base, and it doesn't work well in this context when everyone is talking about Paris and San Bernardino.
FOROOHAR: And I don't think he'll be around in the spring if debt doesn't become front and center to have that debate.
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
VAUSE: Rana, Dylan, thank you for being with us. We're going to take a short break here. When we come back, while the
Republicans made their case to become commander-in-chief, the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, was outlining her strategy to keep America safe. More on her plans when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:42:04] VAUSE: The Democratic presidential front runner, Hillary Clinton, is unveiling her plan to keep America safe. She spoke with supporters at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on Tuesday. Secretary Clinton said she is confident Americans will choose resolve over fear, and defeat those who threaten the country. She says it's not enough to contain ISIS. The U.S. must defeat the terror group.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: First, we have to shut down ISIS recruitment in the United States, especially online. Second, stop would-be jihadists from getting training overseas and stop foreign terrorists from coming here. Third, discover and disrupt plots before they can be carried out. Fourth, support law enforcement officers who risk their lives to prevent and respond to attacks. And, fifth, empower our Muslim-American communities, who are on the front lines, of the fight against radicalization.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Joining me now in Las Vegas is CNN political commentator and former presidential campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, Patti Solis Doyle.
Patti, thank you for being with us.
PATTI SOLIS DOYLE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thanks for having me.
VAUSE: Is this pretty much as you expected it to play out?
DOYLE: It is. It was, actually. I didn't -- this was not a game changer. I think no one really changed the dynamic of the race going into the Christmas dinner as Hugh Hewitt likes to call it. But Donald Trump did what he needs to do and that so to solidify his 41 percent lead. He did it by giving his supporters what they wanted to hear, tough talk, doubling down on a ban on Muslims --
(CROSSTALK)
DOYLE: -- and even bashing the media a little bit. And his supporters love that. So I think --
VAUSE: This is all about national security. Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims temporarily from entering the United States very controversial. Were you surprised that a lot of the candidates didn't go after him on that a lot harder than they did? It seems Jeb Bush was pretty much the only one who pushed him on that. DOYLE: I think everyone is fighting for the Republican nomination and
they're not going to go after Trump particularly in a debate setting because when Trump goes on the attack, he's very, very good and very, very precise. But they also don't want to alienate Donald Trump's supporters. He has a lot of them. They're hoping to be the second choice. And they don't want to, you know, like I said, alienate his supporters. They want to hug him a little bit.
VAUSE: Like Ted Cruz did.
DOYLE: Like Ted Cruz did. Jeb Bush, he's at 3 percent. He doesn't have anything to lose. He just needs to make a mark. That's why I think he went after him.
VAUSE: It seemed the Republicans are hawkish, much more so than they have been in the past. All but Trump and Senator Paul were keen on sending troops to the Middle East. And we heard from Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina and John Kasich about essentially looking at starting a war with the Russians in some way. Did that surprise you?
[01:45:14] DOYLE: It was very interesting. What I found even more interesting was that each of the candidates on that stage tonight married Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton in terms of foreign policy. They try to portray it as a sale of foreign policy. But in a general election, when Hillary Clinton -- and I believe she will be the nominee -- when Hillary Clinton goes up against any one of those, whether you like Hillary Clinton or not, you know she's tough, you know she's more hawkish than Barack Obama, and you know she's incredibly knowledgeable about these issues, foreign policy, military, homeland security. These are very complex times, and with her experience and her knowledge, she will beat whoever is on the other side.
VAUSE: And one of the few issues which came out of this, which they all seem to agree on, is to form an alliance with the Arab nations to fight ISIS. And I made this point a little earlier, that's a current strategy by the Obama administration, right now. You could argue about the success of it, but that seems to be what's going on right now.
DOYLE: That's exactly right. Again, they are fighting for the Republican nomination and so they need to go against the current president, even if they have to make it up. So that's why I think they were doing.
(LAUGHTER)
VAUSE: OK, so make it up as they go along.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
DOYLE: Indeed.
VAUSE: Patti Solis Doyle, thank you for being with us. DOYLE: Thank you so much.
VAUSE: Stay warm.
DOYLE: Thank you.
VAUSE: Still ahead here, I will go one-on-one post-debate with the Republican presidential candidate, Ben Carson, how he comes to terms with some tough decisions and the possibility of dropping bombs on innocent children.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[01:50:41] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you order air strikes that would kill innocent children by not the scores, but the hundreds and thousands? Would you wage war as a commander-in-chief?
DR. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, interestingly enough, you should see the eyes of some of those children when I say to them, we're going to have to open your head up and take out this tumor. They're not happy about it, believe me, and they don't like me very much at that point. But later on, they love me. Sometimes you -- I sound like him.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: That, of course, was Dr. Ben Carson talking about the question of collateral damage, the death of innocent children during wartime.
I spoke to him after the debate about that change, and also about his decision not to get into the debate of personal data collection and the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against unreasonable searches.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARSON: If he had asked me what my opinion was, then I would have gone into it.
VAUSE: What is your opinion?
CARSON: But I didn't want to get into it there. My opinion is that the Fourth Amendment is extremely important and we need to make sure that we preserve it. But at the same time, we have to fight terrorism and we need to engage in a conversation with both things sitting at the top of the list. How do we create a policy that allows us to have quick access to information that will lead us to be able to prevent terrorist acts and, at the same time, preserve the privacy of the American people? You're not going to do that unless you put those two things up side by side and have that conversation.
VAUSE: Another point in the debate was when you were asked about is, if you were commander-in-chief, would you be prepared to go out and basically bomb children. You made the analogy as a surgeon, you have to do terrible things to children to save them. Would you explain more on the comparison that you were trying to make up there?
CARSON: Well, basically, I always do something called a best/worst analysis. What's the best thing that happens if you do this, what's the worst thing that happens if you do it? What's the best thing that happens if you don't do it, and what's the worst thing that happens if you don't do it? You answer those four questions in the kind of situation you just posed, you will come up with the right answer. There may not be a perfect answer, there may not be an answer that says no one will be hurt and everybody will be happy, but there will be an answer that says only this many people will be hurt and most people will be happy. That's what you have to get to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Rana Foroohar and Dylan Byers are back with me here for the last time this hour.
It was interesting, when I spoke to Dr. Carson about that, when I asked him, especially at the NSA, while he didn't get into it at the debate, I thought he just didn't know enough about the debate to get into it.
FOROOHAR: I think that's a pretty good guess. I mean, I think it's one thing to say, well, I don't want to go between them, but, you know, and put forward an opinion. The only thing I could think was this guy could not go up against Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. I just think he is out of his depth in this area.
BYERS: What you're saying, I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to remember a time when you didn't have an answer to a question or you couldn't weigh in on an important topic and you were running for president of the United States, that was an issue. But what Donald Trump introduced into the campaign, if you don't like -- if you don't like the question asked, you don't answer it. I asked Donald Trump is a question in the spin room and he decided he didn't want to answer it, and he moved on to another reporter. We saw the same thing. Ben Carson rode Trump's coattails on that issue. That's the game he's playing now. He had leverage a while back when he was neck and neck with Donald Trump. He doesn't have the sort of leverage to get away with that this time.
FOROOHAR: This time around, Trump, actually, I felt, was trying to take certain questions seriously and was trying -- within the boundaries of Trump, trying to put forward a more foreign policy base, really get into the details. Carson not so much.
(CROSSTALK)
DYLAN: I think the fact that Trump might win a few states.
(LAUGHTER)
VAUSE: That's the interesting thing. Then he will have to actually start answering questions, right? FOROOHAR: That's right. And, you know, he can answer some questions.
I was a couple debates back, I was impressed with how he handled the economic questions. I think he can do it when he wants to do it. And he showed this time he will do more of it when pressed.
VAUSE: Final quote on the debate, Dylan?
DYLAN: I thought it was a great debate. I thought the most significant thing we saw was the Rubio and Cruz interactions. I think Carson was interesting, Trump was interesting, Christie was interesting. Rubio and Cruz -- the conventional wisdom among the so- called establishment is that a few months out, we're going to see a Rubio and Cruz campaign when the Trump circus leaves town. And you got a preview of that tonight, and that's a debate about the future of the Republican Party, a future of the Republican values, conservatism versus establishment Republicanism. I think that's what you have to look forward to.
[01:55:24] VAUSE: Thank you both for being with us.
One last thing, Cruz, someone said to me, he's very good, but he's still not likable.
FOROOHAR: Yeah.
VAUSE: OK. Anyway, thanks for being with us.
Some compelling views of Tuesday's Republican presidential debate. Take a look at this. CNN teamed up with Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer, Vincent Lofloret (ph), and armed him with seven remote- triggered still cameras positioned throughout the debate hall. CNN then turned the Instagram feed over to him and he could post them instantly and he suggested a few of the shots that he all find there. Take a look.
You are watching CNN special coverage of the Republican presidential debate. I'm John Vause, live in Las Vegas.
Back with a lot more after a very short break. You're watching CNN.
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