might shut down a bridge because they don t like their friends. we need a commander in chief who has made tough calls in tough times. not first-term senators who never made an executive decision in their life. if i m elected president, we will secure the border. we will triple the border patrol. we will build a wall that works, and i ll get donald trump to pay for it. i ll build it. morning, everybody. it is wednesday. december 16th. welcome to morning joe. okay. what do you think? lindsey graham won the debate. i m with you. lindsey graham was fantastic. veteran columnist and nbc contributor mike barnicle is with us. former communications director for george w. bush nicolle wallace. i loved watching rubio defend a world view. been beaten up and kicked around. i think he got attacked more and had to defend that sort of
path. bush and rubio we said were obviously going to jump. other debates we said carly was going to go up in the poll. i can t think of anybody whose going to jump from last night s polls and going into a christmas break dead zone, we may see a race frozen over the next few weeks. who takes the debate? i think trump might move up a little bit. it might actually increase his strength number a little. i don t think anybody stopped his momentum. he s the candidate in iowa and also in the scc states. mika, stylistically, trump was better than any debate.
debate if he would change his posture toward cruz and he said maybe down the road. everybody else i think asks the question. with the exception of jeb bush and chris christie are they comfortable with the projecture that they can t be stopped and there s a two man race between them. you got to ask that question about rubio first and foremost. rand paul plays a good roll. rubio will be and trump will be which is good enough. that s a gentleman s whoever. he might as well be an a. carly b minus and kasich b minus
obama were just slightly muted. they would have been much, much worse if he hadn t had this press conference. i think you ll agree we ve been harshly critical of the president. that pentagon briefing actually changed the tone of the debate. we had commander in chief. because he changed his tone. he changed his tone and sounded like president hollonde saying we ve got to beat them. i know the president doesn t like things like that, but it matters in times like these. he got it. i think the debate was a tad bit more muted. it s hard to go into a tank briefing at the pentagon and not come out feeling em bolded by the strength and intelligence of your commanders. they see operations and hear from their generals and i think
philosophy. it was good for him. sounds like you liked his performance. i liked his performance. who won? i adore lindsey graham. i thought the apology at the beginning did a lot of good for the republican party. he was incredible. willie. i thought jeb bush was really good. best performance but too late. chris christie, again, excellent in other debate. i thought. donald trump has to be the winner because nobody laid a glove on him and he is up by 25 points in the polls. after the debate i started thinking, this was an inside deal. you have trump and cruz that were kind of hitting each other, but they see now that they re locked in first and second place. right. everybody else is a distant third. everybody on the stage was attacking everybody but the top two guys. trump goes after jeb. cruz goes after rubio. the establishment s two favorite candidates and they refuse look at this they refuse to touch each other. it smacked of an inside deal. if this maintains t