No matter what poll you use, ted cruz, in each case, by more than 20 points. Tradition would tell you National Polls are meaningless. Just ask president s giuliani and herman cain. But donald trump and marco rubio are throwing out the old book that says you have to win iowa or New Hampshire before building a National Camp pain. Trump, who will join me in just a moment, wants to rewrite the rule book. The question is, can he rewrite history . The only one im not leading in is the stupid des moines register. Donald trump is are drawing thousands to rallies with a whistlestop strategy. Parking miz boeing 575 within view of the stage. Hes ignoring the facetoface retail politics that have been the political play book for decades. Hes held just 32 Public Events in iowa. His biggest threat, ted cruz, has held 75. In New Hampshire, trump has made 22 stops compared to jeb bushs 66 and Chris Christies 111. Fact that theyre lagging nationally. This time eight years ago Hillary Clinton was 25 points ahead of barack obama. I dont remember people saying obama, you have to get out of the race. True, but weve never seen someone like trump. Hes saturating social media. Im the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters. And hes dominating cable news. On fox news, a Traditional Home for republican primary voters, trump has gotten nearly eight times as many mentions as cruz over the past month. Marco rubio is following a similar strategy. In iowa, hes chosen to invest in Television Ads over staffers in field offices and hes been criticized for a Light Campaign schedule. Just 48 stop this is year. You havent been in iowa nearly as much i read that. Thats not true. Meanwhile, ted cruz is betting on a Traditional Campaign play book, rolling out iowa endorsements and opening a dormitory in des moines nicknamed camp cruz for lets go cruz crew, weve got three minutes. Reporter cruz and rubio are in an all out brawl, competing to be the leading alternative to trump. Marcos campaign is lying. Hes not told the truth about the his position in the past. Reporter rubios sponsorship of the senate 2014 Immigration Reform bill was met with hostility by many conservatives but rubio insists cruz wont admit he backed the reform, too. He supported an amendment in the u. S. Senate when we were debating the immigration bill where he flat out bragged about the fact he wasnt undoing the legalization. Rubio is trying to expose cruz as just another slippery washington politician. But cruz is having none of that, attacking rubio on the arab zbhsh the republican establishments gang of eight plan. In 2013, cruz said this what would you do with the 11 Million People here illegally. I think there probably could be a compromise on that. A compromise . If a path to citizenship was taken off the table. Legal status for undocumented immigrants, now or in the future. I have never once supported legalization, i do not now and i will never support it. Well, im joined on the phone by republican president ial candidate donald trump. Mr. Trump, welcome back to meet the press, sir. Good morning, chuck. Good morning. Let me start with last nights democratic debate. Not surprisingly, the only republican candidate i think that was said, talked about by name, was you. I want to play one particular quote that Hillary Clinton said last night and get you to respond to it the. Here it is. He is becoming isis best recruiter. They are going to people, showing videos of donald trump insulting islam and muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists. Now, i know what youre about to say, no fact checker has been able to back up her claim on that. Thats exactly correct. I was going to say that. Exactly correct. Nobody has been able to back its nonsense. Just another hillary lie. She lies like crazy about everything. Whether its trips where she was being gunned down in a helicopter or an airplane, shes a liar and Everybody Knows that. Thin air. But let me ask you this. If you knew your words were being used in recruitment videos because ive had intelligence officials worry about this, youre right, theres no evidence yet. If you knew your words were being used, would you change your language . No, because i think my words present toughness and strength. Hillarys not strength. Hillarys weak, frankly, shes got no stamina, shes got nothing. Let me stop you there. She couldnt even get back on the stage. Nobody even knows what happened to her. Its like she went home and went to sleep. Why do you keep going on this . She couldnt get back on the stage last night ill tell you why. Because we need a president with great strength and stamina and hillary doesnt have that. President like we have right now. We need a president with tremendous intelligence, smarts, cunning, strength, and stamina. Theres a lot of things ive heard about Hillary Clinton, the idea, though, she did travel more than any secretary of state, its a gruelling job, this is somebody that has been on the National Stage shes sitting on an airplane, truck. So are you. Chuck, she may have traveled a lot but she didnt do the job because the entire world blew up around her. So she wasted a lot of time and energy and money and frankly she wasted a lot of lives because her policies were disaster for the world. The middle east has blown up around her. Her decisions were horrible. And hundreds of thousands of people have been killed because of her faulty decisions. Ive heard you say that. Hundreds of thousands of people. Of course. Where . What is this charge . How about libya . How about all the bad decision. How about wheres going won the migration which was caused by her president , her leader, our great president who is grossly incompetent. How about now . You look at our president , how about the iran deal, one of the worst deals ive ever seen negotiated in my life, chuck. I mean, its just bad deal, bad decision after bad deal after bad decision. Why are you so comfortable praising Vladimir Putin . Im not. I didnt praise him. He praised me. He called me brilliant. He said very nice things about me. I accept it. Well, you called him a strong leader. He is a strong leader, what am i going to say hes a weak leader . Hes making mincemeat out of our president. He is a strong leader. You would like me to call him a weak leader, hes strong leader. Im not going to be politically correct. Hes gotten a 80 Approval Rating done by pollsters from this country. Its not even done by his pollsters. Hes very popular within russia. That my change. But i didnt say anything one way or the other. He came out with a very nice thats very nice, im honored by it and it would be very nice if we got along with russia, chuck, its not a bad thing, its a good thing. He can not stand our president. He doesnt like president obama. I think it would be a positive thing if russia and the United States actually got along and they could work to the mutual good of getting rid of isis and clean things up. Right now we dont get along with him at all. But right now Vladimir Putin is the best ally iran has around the world and the best ally that assad has in syria. No. No. By making the horrible deal, one of the worst deals ive ever seen made in my entire life, giving them 150 billion, 24day check periods which dont start for a long time after that, 24day check periods, selfinspection, we dont get our prisoners back, our four prisoners, we dont get them back, we gave them 150 billion. We happen to be in its own sick have been one of the great allies of iran, if you want to know the truth. And by the way, just to add to that, we also handed them iraq on a silver platter. We gave them iraq with the secondlargest oil reserves in the world. Theyre taking over iraq as you speak to me this morning so we gave them one of the best deals ever made and, by the way, theyre taking that money now and theyre giving it to russia and others where theyre buying argument which is nobody ever reports. Do you stick by the idea that the middle east would be more stable today with Saddam Hussein and qaddafi in power . 100 . 100 . Theres not even is there even a doubt in your mind . And you would havent the migration and you wouldnt have people coming over to this country that we have no idea who they are and if i win theyre going to have to go back because we have no idea who they are. And if you become president , do you let assad stay . Do you let assad stay . Well, you cant fight assad and isis at the same time. And i dont say assad is good thats exactly what Bernie Sanders believes. Well, thats okay. Then i agree with him. Its okay to agree. I dont agree with him on much but if he says that, im okay with it. Let me tell you, you cant fight them both at the same time. I say assad is a bad guy. But we dont know the rebels who are fighting. Every time we get involved with rebel, look at libya, look at these rebels, look what they did to our ambassador and those young men, those wonderful young men. Every time we get involved in benghazi, im talking about, every time we get involved with rebels, the rebels, they call them the freedom rebels, always nice names, it ends up being far worse than the people there in the first place. So assad is not a good guy. But the people were backing, a lot of people think were actually backing isis. So what are we doing . We have to get rid of isis first, assad we can think about later on. Let me ask you to respond to your friend jeb bush and what he had to say about you yesterday. Take a listen to the full quote side. Just one other thing. I have to get this off my chest. Donald trump is a jerk. [ laughter and applause ] i feel better now. I just i just i gave myself therapy there. Thank you for allowing me to do it. Well, this has escalated between you and mr. Bush. Look, his people gave him that quote, you could see he was just saying okay, im ready to say it. Jeb is a weak and ineffective person. Hes also a lowenergy person which ive said before but hes a weak and ineffective person. Jeb if he were president it would be more of the same. Hes got money from all of the lobbyists and all of the special interests that run him like a puppet. Hes got 2 in the polls. I have 41 in the latest poll. He has 2 . Hes going to be off the stage soon. Hes an embarrassment to the bush family and he doesnt even want to use the bush name which is interesting. And his family and the Republican Party has essentially theyre not even listening to jeb. Jeb is saying that by the way, hes only saying that to get mojo going but in the meantime i went up 11 points in the new fox poll. I went up 11 points after the debate and he went down two. Very quickly, why has ted cruz caught you in iowa . We can dispute whether youre ahead by a point pour two, whether hes ahead five or six, but ted cruz has caught you in iowa and he may beat you in iowa. I just got back from iowa last night. I was there for a long time yesterday, we had a tremendous rally and frankly i think were doing great in iowa. I dont know. I cant tell you who caught who. It looks like a twoperson race, everyone else is way behind but im doing well with evangelicals who i love. Group. With the tea party groups, myself. We have a good team in iowa and ill find out, lets see what ted is doing well there and im doing well there and if you look at the numbers in New Hampshire, im through the roof there and in South Carolina im through the roof there. Im way ahead in those two states. And ted and i are even, although the last three polls have me up in iowa, as you know. Is it fair to say if youre not the nominee youd prefer ted cruz . No, i dont want to say anything about that. But ted has been very nice to me, very respectful. Very will be almost in every single instance he backs my ideas probably more so and ben carson has been very nice, also. I get along with believe it or not i get along with a lot of people on that stage but ted has been very nice to me, yes. I think everybody right now except mr. Bush. Donald trump, i have to leave it there, have a Merry Christmas, happy new year. You, too. I look forward to seeing you face to face. Merry christmas, happy new year to everybody and its been an interesting time. Thank you very much. Hugh hewitt, what did you think . I thought he was consistent with tuesday night. I like the fact that he took it to Hillary Clinton at the beginning. This is what republican candidates need to do. She made up another video last night, she left libya in chaos so i think donald trump showed the republicans how to take the campaign to Hillary Clinton and he did it very effectively. He has been caught in iowa. And i think that that will change the campaign but he did a nice job right now. Maggie, hes on the verge of discipline sometimes. The first half he was disciplined, the second half he let jeb bush get him underneath his skin and it does bug him. He spent more time i was ready to go more and ive got another thing to say about jeb bush. For somebody at 2 of the polls, thats interesting. That is interesting. You have this race going on between marco rubio and ted cruz and then you have the trump jeb fight which is not will end up but they represent the two poles on the Republican Party right now which is immigration, and they are sucking up focus and polling energy. Jeb bush came very close to getting donald trump to blow up and then backed off a bit yet hes clearly still to your point needling trump. This is one of the unknowns. Ill take a quick pause here, well get everybody back in. When we come back, well return to the democrats. They debated last night in New Hampshire. But is Bernie Sanders running out of time . He joins me next. [ male announcer ] whether it takes 200,000 parts, 800,000 hours of supercomputing time, 3 million lines of code, 40,000 sets of eyes, or a million sleepless nights. Whether its building the worlds most advanced satellite, the space station, or the next leap in unmanned systems. At boeing, one thing never changes. Im caridee. Ive had moderate to Severe Plaque Psoriasis most of my life. But that hasnt stopped me from modeling. My doctor told me about stelara it helps keep my skin clearer. With only 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. Stelara helps me be in season. 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Last night was the final democratic debate of the year and it started with a little seasonal peace and good will from Bernie Sanders who apologized to Hillary Clinton for his aides breach of her Campaign Voter Data but they clashed over their different approaches to the war against isis. We wont get the support on the ground in syria to dislodge isis if the fighters there who are not associated with isis but whose principle goal is getting rid of assad dont believe there is a political, diplomatic channel that is ongoing. I think we have got to get our foreign policies and our priorities right. The immediate it is not assad who is attacking the United States, it is isis. And isis is attacking france, and attacking russian airliners. Terms of foreign and military policy should be the destructi of isis. Senator sanders joins me now. Senator, welcome back to meet the press, sir. Thank you very much, chuck. I want to pick up on the isis comment. You said Something Else in here that caught my eye. You were talking about, look, we could get rid of Saddam Hussein but that destabilized an entire region. We could get rid of qaddafi, but that created a vacuum for isis and we could get rid of assad tomorrow but that would create another political vacuum. Let me ask you this would the middle east be more stable today with saddam, qaddafi and assad all sort of strong men in charge . Well, the answer is all three of those guys are terrible dictators and the goal is through a democratic process to get rid of terrible dictators. But the truth, the simple answer to your question is, i think yes, the region would be much more stable. The point here is that it is easy for a major power like the United States to get rid of but the reason i opposed the war in iraq is i worried very much about the destabilization in the region and what would happen the day after. And, sadly, many of the concerns that i had turned out to be right. Similarly, in libya, qaddafi, terrible dictator, gotten rid of, right now isis is gaining ground in libya because of all of the destabilization in the region and all of the turmoil. So i think what you need is coalitions, broad coalitions, to Work Together to create a process by which we removed people or by through democratic change. Well, but the problem, as secretary clinton pointed out, is