trump s comments supporting a database to track muslims in the united states. hallie jackson is joining me from des moines, iowa. good morning to you. what s the latest on this back and forth? reporter: alex, we are hearing about it on the campaign from system of the candidates and from many of the democrats as well. we re here in des moines, the season s first snowfall means some campaign stops have been cancelled after last night s faith and family forum. the snow didn t stop more than a thousand people from coming out. but i ll tell you what, donald trump was not here. he s weathering his own storm after some controversial comments about a muslim database. after another controversy, donald trump s clarifying. i was signing books and there was music blaring in the background. reporter: back tracking, blaming background noise for mishear an exchange with nbc news in which he didn t rule out a database tracking muslims in the u.s. i would certainly implement that. absolutely.
it was clear he was supportive of this idea of registering muslims into the database by the federal government. so he did offer specifics. for the first time he saw not for the first time, but unusually he saw actually some blow back from his competitors who had been generally loathe to actually critique him because he s so popular. particularly ted cruz. he was he really did juxtapose his position with that. we heard ron allen talk about the president who was visiting that refugee center in malaysia. he saw children there. afterwards he spoke with reporters. he had this message for critics who refused to accept children seeking refuge from syria. here s that. the notion that somehow we would be fearful of them, that our politics would somehow leave us to turn our sights away from their plight is not representative of the best of who we are. does the president have the political capital, philip, to win this fight with congress,
we couldn t trust to great success and russia was one of them during the world war ii and one of them was stall in killed more nazis and sometimes you have to cozy up to people you can t stand north to get things done and one of the reasons we re in the predicament we are because we insisted on getting rid of people we couldn t stand who were blood thirsty despots and the result of getting rid of them, which we supported, turns out to be chaos. chaos is never very good no matter who you are supporting. the attacks in paris have sparked heated rhetoric on the campaign. gop front runner donald trump with new comments this week after appearing to call for a national database to track muslims in the u.s. here s what he had to say a couple hours ago where he appears to double down on those
care about them and help them and that this talk about sending people back home or making a test between christians and muslims just brings out the worst in people. and the president said at one point it should just stop. something he s spoken forcefully about. and unfortunately given the timing of the attacks, the president had to address what happened in mali. reporter: indeed, alex. terrorism is never far from the agenda. hasn t been since the paris attacks, since the mali attacks. this is a country also on the front lines as an a ally in the war against terrorism, but predominantly a muslim country, and it was largely the economic summit the centerpiece of it was the obama administration pushing their trade deal. the transpacific partnership. the historic trade deal between the united states and 11 other nations in this part of the world. that the president wants the congress to approve before he leaves office. a real legacy issue. but the about thes in paris, the attack in mal
19 past, a live look at one of many growing memorials in paris, one week after the terrorist attacks which killed 130 people with at least one suspect from the attacks still at large and seen entering belgium. that capital of brussels is under lockdown today. here in the u.s., the ripple effects throughout europe have become the focus of 2016 race with many taking aim at donald trump for supporting a database to track muslims in the u.s. this suggestion was presented by reporters, he s never ever said he s against it. we re in this environment of inflamed rhetoric and i think it s really important to talk about specifics. and logistics. if we re talking about a mass security system against the muslim community in the u.s., what does that look like and does that really fit with our ideals? all right. folks, that was actually not the