Vacation time. How about this weather . Look outside to the crowd. Some people dont have jackets on. I say break out the thong in new york city. I was afraid you were going to say that. Anyway, well talk more about that great in the east, a little snow out west. Well talk about that as well. Let us get to our top story on this Tuesday Morning. President ial candidates donald trump and Hillary Clinton bypass their immediate competition entering what seems like a general election grudge match. Last night at a rally trump spewed venom towards clinton who refused to back down from her claim that he has become isis best recruiter. Nbcs katy tur is in grand rapids, michigan. Katy, good morning to you. Reporter good morning, matt. The rhetoric on this campaign trail, particularly with this candidate, has never been mild, but donald trump took it to another level last night when describing Hillary Clinton, begging the question what if anything is surprising when it comes to donald trump anymore. Festive, donald trump and his crowd of thousands monday night were anything but merry and bright, at least when it came to protesters. Really are a loser. Reporter the press. By the way, i hate some of these people but id never kill them. I hate them. No, these people, honestly. Ill be honest. Ill be honest. I would never kill them. I would never do that. Ah, lets see. No, i wouldnt. Reporter and above all, Hillary Clinton. Shes terrible. Reporter with supporters cheering him on the billionaire lasered in on the former secretary of state for claiming that his rhetoric is being used as a recruiting tool for iies. Isis. And it turned out to be a lie. Shes a liar. Reporter Intelligence Experts say isis hasnt used donald trump videos to but the clinton camp isnt backing down saying hell no to trumps demand for an apology. The person that needs to apologize in this matter is donald trump for his hateful bigot the rhetoric towards muslimamericans. Reporter trump even mocking clinton for using the bathroom during a break in saturdays debate. Sorry. What happened to her. Im watching the debate, and she disappeared. I know where she went. Disgusting. Reporter and recalling clintons 2008 primary loss with a vulgar term used to describe the males anatomy. She was going to win and she was favored to win and she got [ bleep ], she lost. Reporter five weeks to the iowa caucus and its already starting to feel like the general election. A general election, as matt said, in the sense that both of the frontrunners are focusing in on each other and ignoring their immediate competition. Add another twist to this rivalry. As you know, ivanka is pregnant with her third child and now Chelsea Clinton is pregnant as well, announcing her second pregnancy on twitter, and shes due sometime next summer. Back to you. Katy tur, thank you very much. Mark halperin is managing editor of bloomberg politics. Youve been covering politics a long time. Have you ever seen anything like this, a candidate, these are not slips of the tongue who goes out of his way to be outrageous, demeaning, degrading, sexist, juvenile and continues to gain support . Never seen anything like it. In the Trump Campaign they say let trump be trump. Thats trump being trump and as weve seen thats worked for him. As we get down towards voting in a nomination fight, as we head towards the general election if hes the nominee, this version of donald trump i dont think has as good a chance of winning as some other versions weve seen. I hesitate to say this because ive asked the same question to you and others so many times but was there a misstep . He scored some points on this show yesterday demanding an apology on Hillary Clinton for his remarks about him being an isis recruiter . After that rant last night, i dont hear anyone talking about that potential apology anymore. I think both of them, you grandchildren. Neither of them want to look back on this grandchildren and have their grandchildren hear about how they ran and have the last 48 hours of it. This country needs a highminded debate. Will this hurt him, every trump supporter even when he says crude things, well take that. Along with the things we like about him. You talk about a highminded debate. This is anything but. When you talk to the people behind the scenes of the Clinton Campaign, do they think she can benefit from this short dialogue . In the short term they want to show she will stand up to him and make him the face of the Republican Party so that the images hes leaving behind will carry over to the general election. Thats a shortterm benefit. You hear some people saying this may be a little out of control. This is not the kind of thing we want to deal with day in and day out from a guy, donald trump, who will say what it what he thinks it takes to win. You also have contacts in the Republican Party, so when you scenes in the Republican Party, how do they feel this kind of a debate or rhetoric is going to impact their party in the long term . Well, this is a nightmare for the Republican Party between now and iowa and New Hampshire and this shows that trump could dominate more clearly than ever every day between now and the beginning of the voting and hes got a lead so a guy with a lead who is dominating is hard to break. Long term, this is not the image the Republican Party wants to, have but its not the image the Democratic Party wants to have or anyone serious in public life or National Tents to have being discussed. Trump has a lead. He has a lead in the national polls. Hes behind ted cruz in the polling coming out of iowa. I talked to him on the show yesterday. I said why does it appear that youre using kid gloves when referring to ted cruz and youre bashing all. Other candidates and he said, you know what. There will come a time when the peace has to end and hell have to go after ted cruz. Trump versus cruz will be an interesting fight because weve seen very little of it. Mostly about personality. We saw trump talking about when he went after cruz for a little bit, talked about him as a maniac and how he couldnt get along with people. Trump will put himself forward, if the two of them do end up as finalists as the guy people like and say they dont like ted cruz. There will be issue fights but trump and cruz are happy now with the status quo, happy facing off against each other as finalists rather than worrying about anybody else and if you look at national polls, most of the state polls, those two guys are head and shoulders above the rest of the field. Mark halperin, always good to see you. Happy holidays. You, too, thanks. All right. Now to space history. It was made overnight as the private company spacex managed to launch and resupply a mission to the space station and land the rocket back to earth. Nbcs tom costello covers space. Good morning, tom. Reporter yeah, good morning. The pictures were dramatic and exciting, but what spacex managed to pull off is truly extraordinary, and it now opens of doing business in space. Spacex making history overnight with the falcon 9 rocket launching 11 satellites and then returning safely to earth. That is the first stage coming back down to land. Reporter its the first time an unmanned rocket has returned to earth successfully using a vertical landing, and it was spot on the falcon has landed. Reporter the gigantic 23story rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral air force base at 8 29 p. M. A live webcast from the companys california headquarters captured it all. Its main mission, to supply the space station but also create reusable rockets to save on launch costs and make space more widely accessible. Spacexed is the brainchild of elon musk, the 44yearold billionaire mogul also behind tesla. Six months after a failed attempt in june with a massive explosion. Shortly after launch, the rocket on its way to deliver supplies to the space station disintegrated. Last night redemption and triumph with elon musk tweeting, welcome back, baby. Nasa weighed in, too, tweeting congratulations spacex on your successful vertical landing of the first stage back to earth. You know, as you know, several companies are competing for a piece of the pie to resupply the space station and eventually carry astronauts to the station. Competitor jeff bezos, the ceo of amazon. Com achieved a similar success, and couldnt help but gloat when he tweeted congrats on landing falcon sub orbital booster. Welcome to the club, a little ribbing there. Their reaction in the control room. Oh, wow. The pressure on those people to have that happened successfully was enormous. Euphoria. Absolutely. Lets talk about new developments in the sandra bland case, the chicago woman found days after being arrested in a routine traffic stop that went dramatically wrong. Five months after the incident drew National Protests the grand jury on monday declined to indict anyone, including the jailor in connection with her death. Grand jurors will reconvene in january to consider remaining issues. Blands family says they have no confidence in the grand jury investigation. And there are new details today about the deadly hitandrun crash on the las vegas city. Today, Lakeisha Holloway will be in court for a bail hearing. Shes the 24yearold woman who is accused of plowing into pedestrian with her 3yearold in the back seat. One person was killed and 35 others were hurt. Jessica valenzuela was killed. Holloway faces murder and attempted murder charges. Investigators say she did not appear distressed when she was arrested. She had apparently been in las money. Today Sergeant Bowe bergdahl will be arraigned facing a courtmartial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Hes accused of leaving his post back in afghanistan in 2009 before being captured by the taliban. 29yearold from idaho was held for five years and then freed in a very controversial prisoner swap for five prisoners held at guantanamo bay. Bergdahl faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted. The taliban is claiming responsibility for a deadly attack on u. S. Troops in afghanistan. Six troops were killed and one hurt on monday when a suicide bomber rammed a motorcycle loaded with explosives into a foot patrol. It happened near bagram air field, the largest base in the country. Among victims, a new york city duty, a 15year member of the nypd joseph lemm is survived by his wife and two children. And federal Health Officials are looking into another handful of e. Coli chases linked to chipotle restaurants to see if they are part of a larger outbreak that started back in october. The cdc says five people in kansas, north dakota and oklahoma got sick about a week after eating at chipotle outlets late last month. Chipotle believes the cases are related to the earlier outbreak that sickened 50 people in nine states but the cdc says early evidence shows a different strain of the bacteria may be involved. Chipotles stock hit a 52week low on monday. A Police Officer in michigan got a surprise after the driver of a car he had stopped for erratic driving on saturday night made a getaway. The incident was captured by the cruisers dashcam but the driver didnt very far, losing control of the car and careening into the oncoming traffic. Thats when the driver, a 13yearold boy and his sister, got out and made a run for it. No one was more surprised than the pursuing officer. It turns out they took their dads girlfriends car out for a joyride. Look at that kid running. I think the sister was 8, still, 13 and 8. Wow. Ridiculous. Yeah. All righty then. Lets get a check of the weather with dylan dreyer who is in while al is taking a vacation. Its officially winter. 11 49 last night. Not out there. If you forget what snow looks like, take a look. Lots of . Lots of snow. Out in the high elevations of california, out neither sierra and up across oregon and into washington statement lots of folks enjoying the snow out there. This is muchneeded snow pack that they need this time of year to get through the later months. It did cause some delays on the road. Travel was very treacherous. The roadways were very slippery, besides the slopes were obviously slippery, too, always also a lot of rain along the coast of oregon. Winds so strong it knocked over some the semis. They were gusting up near 65 miles per hour, downing trees and power lines and there are some power outages, one of many storms that has been making its way into the Pacific Northwest so weve got this weve got this moisture streaming in off the pacific, and you can see some of the heavier rain still falling across Central California right now. Weve got the mountain snow which will continue to accumulate as we go through the next couple of days. Great news for the ski resorts and higher elevations. Out east weve got the ridge in the jet stream. Were looking at record high temperatures possible across 30 states over the next three days. Were looking at temperatures to run about 15 to 30, even 40 degrees above average. Take a look as we go through the day today. Temperatures will continue to warm into the 50s, 60s, even some 70s up and down the east coast. Its not going to be nice and sunny. Does come with a lot of rain with a slight risk of stronger storms in southeastern texas. Some areas threats of large hail. Thats a look at the weather across the country. 30 seconds. Still a few areas of dense fog, too, especially along the mississippi and our northern counties. Stormtrack7 Live Weather Network shows that most of us are doing okay, though. And temps are still well above average, although they have moved very much from yesterday. Mainly in the low 30s with mid 20s to the west. Westerly winds are turning more to the south and will eventually become southeast and breezy today. We also keep the low level clouds as the next system tracks our way. This will bring rain and thats your latest forecast. Dylan, thanks so much. Turning now to the privileged 18yearold convicted drunk driver who is now on the run. Ethan couch dodged jail time in this case after his attorneys argued that he was too wealthy to understand the consequences of his action. This morning investigators say that controversial affluenza defense is now driving tips. Nbcs Kerry Sanders is in texas with the late on this story. Good morning, kerry. Reporter well, good morning, hoda. This morning the Fugitive Task force is checking flight manifests at the airport to see if ethan couch may have come here, hopped a plane and fled. With what they know right now they say its just as likely he took off behind the wheel of a car or a pickup truck. This morning deputies are searching for a harleydavidson edition ford f150 like this that ethan couchs mother tonya drives. She went missing the same day as her son, authorities believe she may be helping him. He comes from a wealthy family. If youre wealthy in this country, can you continually elude law enforcement. I dont know about this country but not in tarrant county. Reporter in 2013 ethan couch driving drunk killed four people and injured nine in a horrendous accident. His defense, that he didnt know right from wrong because he grew up affluent. That led to probation instead of prison time and outrage. Investigators believe this video apparently of couch as a beer popping party is why hes on the run. Others told the d. A. Couch was there and even though hes not seen Drinking Alcohol it could be a violation of his probation. Tarrant county sheriff anderson finally says what was wrong, couchs probation, can now be made a right. I would really like for him inside workings of the adult skrl Justice System and maybe, just maybe for the first time in his life, learn something. Reporter the family members of those who died in the accident have chosen in the to talk, but the sheriff says when ethan couch is captured, if hes sent to prison, those family members, those victims family members may finally see some justice. Hoda . All right. Thanks. So much. More fallout for steve harvey as Miss Universe crown confusion raines supreme online. And yadda, yadda, yadda. President obama teaming up with Jerry Seinfeld as he dabbles in today on nbc. Coming up, a new study for the ladies. Whats the one characteristic in harder for to you i said i really cant stay baby its cold outside i have to go away baby its cold outside i really cant stay baby its cold outside you never know who youll meet at barnes noble. Right now at kohls take an extra 15 or 20 off already great savings like 50 to 60 off star wars 60 to 70 off fine jewelry and the keurig mini is just 79. 99 plus now you can buy online pick up in store kohls is now open 24 hours arturito soup okay, okay. 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