LAS VEGAS–Republican front-runner Donald Trump defended his provocative call for banning Muslims from the United States in Tuesday night’s presidential debate as the candidates pushed their own plans for fighting Islamic State militants.
Trump insisted his proposal, which was roundly condemned by his rivals, wasn’t an attempt to discriminate.
Trump said, “We are not talking about isolation, we’re talking about security. We are not talking about religion, we are talking about security.”
Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz said they understood why Trump had raised the idea of banning Muslims while avoiding directly criticizing the front-runner.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dismissed Trump’s proposal as unserious, saying, “Donald is great at the one-liners, but he’s a chaos candidate and he’d be a chaos president.”
Trump responded by spotlighting Bush’s low position in the polls.
“Jeb doesn’t believe I’m unhinged. Jeb only said that because he has failed in this campaign,” Trump said. “It’s been a total disaster. Nobody cares.”
Meanwhile, Rubio and Cruz clashed over government access to Americans’ communications.
Trump also says he wants to keep members of the Islamic State from using the Internet to recruit American fighters. He says the government must work with “brilliant people” in Silicon Valley to keep IS fighters offline, even if it means shutting down parts of the Internet.
Trump is also calling out members of the media to stop calling IS fighters “masterminds” because, in reality, he says they are thugs and terrible people. He says, “we should be able to penetrate the Internet and find out exactly where ISIS is.”
Also ,retired neurologist Ben Carson ducked a question about whether Congress was right to end the National Security Agency’s bulk phone-records collection program. Carson declined to answer when asked whether rival candidate Cruz was right to vote to end the program or whether Rubio was correct in supporting its continuation.
Carson says: “I don’t want to get in between them. Let them fight.”
Carson also says he is in favor of monitoring any place where people who may be engaging in radical activities are gathered, including mosques, schools, supermarkets and theaters.
Carson says we are at war and “We have to get rid of all this PC stuff.” He says America’s enemies will “take advantage of our PC attitude and get us.”
The Las Vegas debate was dominated by discussion of national security, reflecting the reshaping of the 2016 contest by the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. Hours before the debate began, officials in Los Angeles closed all schools after an emailed threat that was later deemed a hoax.
Earlier in the night, a four-man debate of the lower polling candidates took place.
That debate began with a huge rift about Donald Trump; Sen. Lindsey Graham apologized to the Muslim world for Trump’s comments and former Sen. Rick Santorum countered that “all jihadists are Muslims.”
