Dialing in. The candidates talked terror last night. Thats the headline over las vegas. That was the topic after the paris attacks and the San Bernardino shootings. If you look at some of the early voting states, well start with the des moines register, where they have the caucus, the headline out of iowa, republicans in that state say trump slips, rubio shines. A little bit from jennifer acobs piece this morning host it said bush repeatedly feuded with trump, and at the same time drove home that National Security is his wheelhouse, the iowans said. Take a look at the he can changes between the Florida Governor and donald trump last night. Well begin with trump defending his stance on muslims and jeb bush following occupy that, saying its not a serious proposal and that donald trump is not a serious candidate. First of all, we need to destroy isis. That should be our objective much the refugee issue will be solved if we destroy isis there, which means we need a nofly zone, safe zones for refugees, and build a military force. We need to embed our forces, our troops inside the iraqi military. We need to arm directly the kurds, and all of that has to be done in concert with the arab nation f. Were going to ban all muslims, how are we going to get them to be part of a coalition to destroy isis . The cuds are the our strongest allies. Theyre muslim. This is not a serious proposal. In fact, it will push the arab world away from us at a time when we need to reengage with them to create a strategy to destroy isis. Donald is great at the oneliners, but hes a chaos candidate. Hed be a chaos president. He would not be the commander in chief we need to keep our country safe. [applause] mr. Trump. Mr. Trump jeb doesnt really believe im unhinged. He said that very simply because he has failed in his campaign. Its been a total disaster. Nobody cares. And frankly, im the most solid person up here. I built a tremendous company, and all i want to do is make America Great again. I dont want our country to be taken away from us, and thats whats happening. The policies that weve suffered under other president s have been a disaster for our country. We want to make America Great again, and jeb, in all fairness, he doesnt believe that. Mr. Bush if you think this is tough and youre not being treated, imagine what its ing to be like or dealing with the islamic terrorism. This is a tough business. Mr. Trump oh, youre a tough guy, jeb. Mr. Bush we need to have a leader thats real tough. Mr. Trump youre real tough. Im a 4 and youre a 3, so, so far im doing better am you started off over here, jeb. Youre moving over further and further. Pretty soon youre going to be off the end. Host this is back and forth last night between donald trump and jeb bush, parted of last nights twohour debate in las vegas. The candidates sparring over National Security issues. The Washington Times front page this morning, donald Trump Defends his stance on muslims in his ban of muslims entering the United States. One of the candidates, Lindsey Graham, the senator from south carolina, apologized for Donald Trumps proposal. Well go to john in pennsylvania, an independent. Hi, john. What do you think of last nights debate . Who won . Caller nobody won. This collection is best characterized as a rolling dumpster fire. The only thing they did last night was try to scare the American People more than theyve already done. There doesnt seem to be any end in this. If they all think back to what robert gates said about the middle east, anybody that goes into the middle east for a ground war needs to have their head examined, and these guys are all talking about that. Host well, they werent all talking i mean, they werent all talking about it, because you saw the differences within the party when it comes to what you do in syria, where you have rand paul saying you cant put Ground Troops in the middle east, and you had others saying that you need to, and ted cruz sort of nuancing that, saying you need to bomb them, unleash the full power of our military. Caller well, its all based on the fear factor, though. I mean, if you really think about it, there have been, what, 48 terrorist deaths since 2001, and theres been 300,000 gun deaths in the United States, so theyre just trying to scare people. Nobody won. Host ok. Thats john, an independent. Daniel in maryland, also independent. Hi there. Daniel, you with us . Daniel . Caller yes, this is daniel. Host all right. Youre on the air, sir. Caller i dont know what people are seeing on trump. Trump can handle himself. You have the entire establishment attacking, i think hes doing quite well. Bottom line is if president obama can handle it, everyones open game now. Anyone can handle it. Host candaele, whos your candidate . Caller my candidate right now is trumpcruz. Host trumpcruz. Caller thats it. Host ok. How do you how do you describe caller i think its fear mongering. I think anybody in america that is not worried about terrorism, its easy to say unless it happens in your community. If it happens in your community, then all of a sudden you say well its totally different. When you say gun deaths, violent deaths with guns, you cant say one here, one there, because theres a lot of deaths in inner cities, as we all know. I live in baltimore, and theres probably one every night. Host all right, daniel. Heard your point on that. I want to show you another exchange from last nights debate based off the headline from politte co, how cruz and rubio the headline from politico, how cruz and rubio exposed the g. O. P. s rift on foreign policy. Take a look at this exchange between rube scombrow cruz, who sparred frequently last night. Marco has continued these attacks, and he knows theyre not true. Yes, it is true that i voted against the National Defense authorization act because, when i campaigned in texas, i told voters in texas that i would oppose the federal government having the authority to detain u. S. Citizens permanently with no due process. I have repeatedly supported an effort to take that out of that bill, and i honored that campaign commitment. But more broadly, the notion marco is suggesting that somehow he also has tossed a few insults in this direction, lets be absolutely clear. Isis and radical is lame i can terrorism will face no more determined foe than i will be. We will uttering destroy them by targeting the bad guys. One of the problems with marcos foreign policy, he has far too often supported Hillary Clinton and barack obama undermining governments in the middle east that have helped radical islamic terrorists. We need to focus on killing bad guys, not getting stuck in middle east civil wars that dont keep america war. The first distinction is, if you are an american citizen and decide to join with isis, you are going to be treat as an enemy combatant, an enemy of an army attacking this country. [applause] number two, we do need our defense capabilities t. Is a fact that the customs would leave with us an even smaller air force and smaller navy than the one we are going to be left with. The final point that i would make is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obamas strategy is to lead from behind t. Sounds like what hes outlining is not to lead it all. We cannot continue to outsource foreign policy. We must lead. We were the most powerful nation in the world. We need to begin to act like it again. Whoip won . Rich in south bend, a democrat, youre up next. Caller good morning. I would call last good morning. I would call last nights debate the chicken hawk debate. Every one of those guys on the main stage, when they were of military age, chickened out of chickened out. Everyone. And cruz, who was the toughest, really senator, you are 29 years old on september 12, 2001, and you chickened out. Host david, texas, a republican. Caller good morning. Host good morning. Caller i felt like trump won because he didnt lose from the standpoint of that technical aspect. Just a couple of details. Somebody earlier mentioned the deal about the gun deaths in the u. S. If you factor out host david, i dont want to go down that road. I really want to focus lets stay with last nights g. O. P. Debate. Who won . You say trump did because he didnt lose. What do you mean . I dont feel like the dynamics associated with the republicans at this point. I thought that rubio did well. I thought that ted cruz was able to gloss over the issue of the difference with the n. S. A. , the change in the n. S. S. Rules. I think that the n. S. A. Collection of met adata has been one of the most misunderstood things related to national intelligence. My understanding is the french, for example, use the same process, and that was a lot of discussion and debate about how much approximate that has stopped other acts of terror. Ive heard lots of stories about how its stopped things before they got to that point. But my understanding of how the french acted so quickly after the fact was that they used that technology. They got ahold of the terrorist cell phones, at least one or two of them, and my understanding is they used that technology to immediately be able to track who they were communicating with, and thats what led to so many arrests and led to the next attack. Thats a big part of whats being missed here in this discussion. Its just meta data, its not conversations. Cruz did act in a way that reduced what the n. S. A. Can collect, and its going to be there are a lot of issues related to how quickly theyll be able to assemble that data to use it, and its definitely less. Also cruz, look, i liked a lot of things about ted cruz fray republican standpoint. I think hes a little too absolute. I think he scares some people. I think rubio is a better choice in that regard when you look at two of them. But cruz i was just listening to another show earlier. They showed the sound bites where cruz had the deal about the immigration issue. He does clearly support legalization, and he has said so i just watched it on video a few minutes before calling you so. A couple of his big, strong debating points were based on things that werent quite factual. Host so you brought up two interesting parts of last nights debate. I want to stick with the metadata, surveillance of phone records. You might be interested in this. Heres the opinion page of usa today editorial board, and they say dont reconnect the n. S. A. s phone records dragnet. They say, in fact, the program had been operating for nine years before farook killed 14 people at a holiday party. It was operating when they were married, when she came 209 u. S. , and when, according to news report, they had contact with six people who federal authorities scrutinized for possible terrorism ties host as david said about this program, mike rogers, who uselessed to chair the intelligence committee, a republican from michigan, hes no longer in congress, he writes the opposing view today, and he says this the program did not and does not collect the content of conversations, just the to and from billing data re tunal provided by companies host as you said last night, ted cruz, marco rubio, rand paul all got in on this zpabet had the sharpest back and forth of the night on this issue, so i want to show you first, ted cruz, on why he voted to get rid of this program. Ted well, the premise of your question is not accurate. Im very proud to have joined with conservatives in both the senate and house to reform how we target bad guys. And what the u. S. A. Freedom act did is two things. Number one, it ended the federal governments bulk collection of phone metadata of millions of lawabiding citizens. Number two, the second half that is critical, it strengthened the tools of National Security and Law Enforcement to go after terrorists t. Gave us greater tools, and we are seeing those tools work right now in San Bernardino, and in particular, what it did is the Prior Program only covered a relatively narrow slice of phone calls. When you had a terrorist who could only search a narrow slice of numbers, primarily land lines, the u. S. A. Freedom act he can up and down that, so now we have cell phones, internet phones, and now we have the phones the terrorists are likely to use, and the focus of Law Enforcement is on targeting the bad guys. What the Obama Administration keeps getting wrong, whenever anything bad happens, they focus on lawabiding citizens instead. Bad guys. We need to focus on terrorists and stop them before they carry out acts of terror. Host that was ted cruz on why he voted for the u. S. A. Freedom act, which ended that bulk data program. Heres marco rubio responding to cruzs answer. Senator cruz is right. There was bipartisan support for that, but you voted against it. So is senator cruz wrong . Mr. Cruz there were some that voted for if because they wanted to keep it alive. Heres the world we live in. This is a radical Jihadist Group that is increasingly sophisticated, and its ability to radicalize american citizens, and its ability to exploit loopholes, and its ability to capture and hold territory in the middle east in multiple countries, this is not just the most capable, it is the most sophisticated terror threat. We are now at a time where we need more tools. That tool we lost, the met adata program was valuable. Senator cruz . Mr. Cruz i would note that marco knows what hes saying isnt true. Marc levin wrote a column last week that said the attack ads that are running is saying the same thing, that they are knowingly false, and they are, in fact, an attack like barack obama, and the reason is simple. What he knows is that the old program covered 20 to 30 of phone numbers to search for terrorists, the new Program Covers nearly 100 . That gives us greater ability to stop acts of terrorism, and he knows that. Mr. Rubio i dont think National Television is the place to discuss classified information, so let me be very clear. Theres nothing we are allowed to do under this bill we could not do before. This bill, however did, take away a valuable tool that allows the National Security agency and other intelligence agencies to quickly and rapidly access phone records and match them up with other phone records to see who terrorists have been calling. Because i promise you, the next time there is an attack on this country, the first thing people are going to want to know is, why didnt we know about it and why didnt we stop it . The answer better not be because we didnt have access to records or information that would have allowed us to identify these killers before they attacked. Host going back and forth over the n. S. A. Surveillance program. The Fact Checking person at the Washington Post has had to say about ted cruzs claim that the old program only covered a percentage of calls. They say thats not exactly the case, that the act limited Data Collection to the greatest extent reasonably practical. The government now needs a court order to collect up records. The government also needs to prove it has reasonable suspicion that the suspect whose phone records it is seeking to collect is linked to a terrorist organization host you heard the followup by marco rubio saying weve lost a tool at our disposal, and he says it depends what he means. The government still does have a metadata program, but it is now targeted rather than a bulk collection program. Under the u. S. A. Freedom act, the legislation ended the bulk collection of phone records and scaled back the program. David, texas, a republican. David, who do you think won last nights debate . Caller well, thank you for letting me still be here after that. Let me answer one thing about the metadata first, please. Its simple math. I work with databases. Ive done computer work for 30 years. The issue about the database part is, for one thing, it limits the amount of data from five years to 18 months. There are a zillion phone companies. I know you got the big guys, but the phone companies are going to be responsible for storing the data. Everything ive heard about that indicates theyre going to have different rules about how long to hold the data. When something happens, you got to get a court order, but they get the order, and then what . They have to pull the data. They have to go to the different phone companies and get them to supply the data. You got to pull ought these databases together. Its want like c. S. I. On tv. Host it takes too long . Caller that assumes that all the phone companies do it, and what if you miss the wrong phone company. The battle of midway, virtually every war has been won because of intelligence. The battle of midway in 1942 was won because we broke the japanese code. We got our carriers down there. They had an overwhelming force. We surprised them. We surprised them because when they sent out their planes to see if there was a threat of american carry years, there was one plane, the one that went out in the direction where the american carry years were, their radio didnt work. They didnt get the data from one plane, and that caused the japanese to lose four carries years over the next two days. Host got your point. I got to get in other calls. Massachusetts, democrat, hi, bob. Caller like what happened last night, you see all that time clock. They had a time clock that went for two days, two days, a time clock. They all rallied up against each other, and wolf blitzer, what he did is in the situation room, that should be made for the president , and the other thing, black muslims are the number one muslims in america. All black american muslims, theyre the most in the United States, and they didnt get no play last night. Host in tennessee, independent. Hi, greg. Caller hi. Getting back to the fisa court, first of all, that stands for foreign Intelligence Surveillance activity or whatever, well, first of all, lets look at whats coming out, not looking in. In america, im amazed yall havent caught on to that. Thats strictly against our constitut