ideas that lead to radicalization. it is the responsibility of all americans to reject discrimination. it is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country. it s our responsibility to reject proposals that muslim-americans should somehow be treated differently. let me just say this, michael. i want to play this for you. this is cruz and rubio responding to that portion of the speech last night. we don t need a president who goes on national television and lectures the american people like a school marm. the problem we have is a president, commander in chief, who refuses to recognize our enemy. our enemy is radical islamic terrorism. the cynicism tonight, to spend a significant amount of time talking about discrimination against muslims. where is the widespread evidence that we have a problem in america with discrimination against muslims. in rubio s defense he said
when you talk about how scary first of all, there is a question about are americans scared independent from how politicians and the media talk about the threat. i don t think you could divide those two, right? clearly we spend a lot of time talking about the threat. clearly it is terrifying to consider going to a holiday party and find yourself shot and killed by someone engaged in what seems like completely evil massacre out of the blue. totally random. same thing for the people sitting in the cafè, right? anything like that is a horrible thing to contemplate. it happens a lot more in the middle east than it happens here, we should note. or if you re going to everyday iraq, you re 5 years old and you re going to school. the question is, does the sort of talk about the fear michael, your point there about to me, gets at something i kept hearing about the speech last night and connects to the donald trump thing. the question is, do you want leaders to speak to that fear? do y
if we are in a war of civilizations, donald trump s plan, if people are as afraid as michael is of getting blown up in a starbucks, then donald trump s plan makes sense. maybe we should stop all immigration completely. if we re in a war of civilizations. what donald trump was saying is obviously repugnant and antithetical to american values, and it the groundwork for that has been laid by years of republican rhetoric, including even the premise that people that s not just. that s just not true. hold on a second, michael. the premise that people need to be worried about being blown up in a starbucks. the fact of the matter is what took place in san bernardino was different from what happened in sandy hook only insofar as this were little kids who weren t killed and more kids were killed in connecticut when that attack was. these people couldn t do anything more than buy guns illegally and go out and use them and shoot them in a random killing.
david an msnbc analyst and sally joins us, a republican strategist in florida. let me start with david, by the way, the story headlines coming out before you start here are pretty dramatic, unforgiving of rick perry s performance. take a look at the headlines. they are damming. texas toast. michael med verve, a critic for everything, wrote in the daily beast, rick perry, beginning with the end. here s a headline bill chris tall on the weekly standard site, wrote an editorial with the headline yikes. he went on to run no frontrunner in a presidential field has ever we imagined had as weak a showing as rick perry. close to a disqualifying two hours for him. want to start with sally, republican political consultant, runs campaigns in florida.