john: i am john. mark: with all due respect to donald trump, do not expect too many endorsements for your policy proposal. on the show tonight, hillary clinton drain. first, the first night of hanukkah. obama put forward his ideas on how to beat terrorism at home on gunoad, with emphasis control.

he said everything would be fine and he did not announce any new policy ideas. the catalyst was the massacre in san bernardino. the fbi has said that the shooters were radicalized for some time. they had not found any clear overseas terror links. why did obama choose to give the oval office address with nothing new? john: there are a lot of questions from a lot of sources, including democrats, who feel he is not into with the public mood. the president feels that the fear in america of islamic state is a greater risk, in some ways, then islamic state. you can quibble with that. i think he is speaking to what he feels about with the american opinion and try to calm it down. mark: he went around the media filter and he is confident. he spoke to the american people directly with the prime time

address. the filter is positive -- powerful. the speeches criticized by republicans, with no new ideas, and it's treated like a partisan volley, not like the president of the united states unify the country. he should have had new things to say. even if he was not going to change course. john: i do not know what you would ask for him to say, given that he does have confidence that the strategy he has is the right strategy. unfortunate, to me, to use the oval office and have this be the ultimate outcome. essentially, a partisan line. we are basically where we were before the speech. mark: if he reached out to the republicans, and i could not find any evidence of this, it did not work.

he has to unify the country and the president will have a hard time doing this. he will not get authorization to use force the way he has been asking for for weeks. nothing changed with the speech. john: i agree. it is hard, if you think the greatest path to national unity is calming everyone down and there are people trying to inflame, rather than calm, i'm not sure how you accomplish what he seeks to accomplish. mark: take it to congress. john: i am not sure that would work. republican candidates waxed political. we will have our version of a hanukkah minoru. ennorah. ofsee mr. trump at the top oath of our list. he released a statement calling for a shutdown of muslims

entering the united states. best inwe see him doing getting his message across. chris christie is doing well, in that regard. mark: trump said, at a rally i covered, when national security comes, people think that trump will collapse and he has not. christie is speaking emotionally about the threats to the homeland as a u.s. attorney. i do not know if he will go up in the polls. he chose to attack trump on national security and homeland security in a way that gives him a voice to go after trump in a way that is powerful. john: i keep waiting to see some actual real impact data in a measurable way. we have seen it in the media chattering class. nowhere else.

i am not approving of his message, when we say he is doing well. he seems to be capitalizing on this moment well. mark: i have ted cruz doing third best and rubio at fourth. you have them flipped. ted cruz is saying, basically, i will keep america safe, use american force, i will not get us entangled and violate civil liberties. i think he strikes a chord as a person who will use american power, when necessary, and not overreach. john: we both agree that marco rubio is doing well getting his out.xonish for policy ted cruz said that he was not in favor of a no-fly zone.

he said that he want to carpet bomb isis until we saw the sand below. isis.he wants to beat he does not want to take out another dictator. john: on one hand, he says he is the voice of restraint and he will find a third way between the neocons and isolationists. i don't think voters will understand the clarity of the vision. mark: he is killing it on talk radio. jeb bush is criticizing hillary clinton and donald trump. rand paul is standing on principle. i know you do not think it will work any better. i think he has a chance. john: i saw him doing interview this morning on morning joe and i thought he was not cutting through the clutter in any way or making much of an impact.

liberty solidify the base. for the last year, he has been trying to work that constituency. he has gotten nowhere. now, the world has changed and it works against those messages. he can consolidate it. it is a smaller group them before. mark: the conventional wisdom is that carson has been hurt i this, more than anyone. john kasich is knowledgeable and not breaking through. on these nuanced issues to really stand out in a field where people speak in a muscular way. john: we both agree on these. carson is doing worse than you think he is doing. we both agree he is not getting anywhere. k-6, like bush, not cutting through the clutter. so, not succeeding in capitalizing in this moment in a

meaningful way. to bush and he said that national security will be the dominant issue through the caucuses. true or false, takers is number one in iowa. the answer, when we come back. ♪

mark: what is the deal with ted cruz? a new university poll puts them at the top of the pack in iowa. he has a big lead with iers, andals, tea party ar

others. poll shows trump on top and cruise in second place. -- cruz in second place. #confusing. matchup against hillary clinton, ted cruz does not do well. going deeper against hispanic voters, cruz does not do well. the only person who does worse is el trumpo. i ask you, these polls, taken together, is this good cruz news ? john: overall, good news. rubio,en more the marco when you ask who is the finalist and has the ability to go into

march and beyond, cruz is on the than anyone i talked to. john: there are a lot of proms you will have in the nomination fight that you will have to deal with in the general election. i think these polls are good for ted cruz. he has a path to win the nomination. n iowaishes strong ani and there is a path for him. the difficulties are the general election. they would be huge. mark: most other republicans think so. they want from to fail. -- trump to fail. leaves, they think the races open and they can win. cruz may be too hard to stop. john: this is the establishment

trump thinking" that goes away. trump and takes out disappears. would be as big of a problem for the republicans. mark: check out our website. we have a story by our colleague about why any attempt why the republicans and establishments against donald trump might not work. why is that? tois because we talked trump turnsnd negative attention into positive energy. with the establishment he making a mistake to run negative ads against trump? i do not think so. trump has to appeal to more than

0%-30% of republican voters. at the establishment wing, some point, they have to drive negative impressions and make sure that trump cannot grow beyond 30%. isk: it is likely that trump taken down by candidates and a campaign, rather than the outside group. i think he could use the outside group to his advantage. cruz, chrisio, ted christie, if any of them say they will take out trump and put their money where their mouth is, using paid ads, that is the way he comes down. john: i will go further than that and i will say that those people cannot stop trump without going negative against trump in a serious way.

some day, the day of reckoning comes. you have to do it. it is essential to him losing a race. he has to lose in iowa, new hampshire, both. that will take the wind out of his sales. mark: trump is not politically correct and he stands up to special interests. clinton is getting dizzy, tacking from left to right on issues. she is a hawkish on isis and elizabeth warren-ish on wall street. when it comes to maintaining general election viability, how is she doing? tok: she has been left appeal to the base and hawkish to distance from obama. she has been hawkish on for policy. these are issues she is comfortable with and running in

a general election -- comfortable with running on in a general election. john: the question back then was how hillary clinton is different from her husband. someone said how she is different. she is further to the right on for policy and further to the left on economics. and furthern policy to the left on economics. that is who she is. that is true of obama. aboutwhat is effective being hawkish is that it is discombobulating for bernie sanders. it positions her to rise above the republican presidential candidates and above the feud they are having. john: this is an opportunity for her -- there are places where

she does not want to disagree with barack obama in the nomination fight. she wants to be shoulder to shoulder with him on issues that matter. when she gets to the general election, she will be looking for space from obama and this moment gives her the opportunity for differentiation. mark: washer on the issue of tax cuts and increases in the general election. carson and ted flix and chill. ♪

john: our first guest is the

president of the council of foreign relations. and deli. john: obama gave a talk last night and you felt that he fell short in a variety of ways. >> on form policy, it was "stay the course." there was no new initiatives. it would be different, if we were on the cusp of success. i was hoping for more direct help for the kurds and more pressure on turkey to slow the flow of recruits. there are things he could and should have done. he could have communicated a sense of urgency. you have to do that over there and here. john: do you understand why he does not? he does not believe in doing this. why is that?

what gives you the sense that those are things he does not want to embrace as a matter of substance? >> he has analytically looked at them and concluded that they would not work or the pain-gain ratio is wrong. there is a narrative of the administration that he is reluctant to use force. what we did in syria and did not do in libya afterwards. afghanistan, pulling troops out of iraq. this would be consistent with the reductions in significant usage of force. mark: am i wrong to be appalled as an american that the president gives the oval office address about the challenges the country faces and he is blasted by republicans and he does not do anything to reach out to them to create the environment of bipartisanship?

andhese are serious issues what worries me is the gap between the issues we face in the region and the lack of seriousness in the debate. everything we want to do in the region, the forces we commit, how we move the pendulum between privacy and collective security, civil liberties and national security, these are tough issues and serious trade-offs. we have to be able toave something of national conversation. mark: i remember president bush gephardt.ith a what do you think would have happened if obama invited paul ryan and mitch mcconnell? what they refuse? >> i don't think they would refuse. this is as polarized as it gets. not just on these issues.

it is a full range of public policy issues. mark: it could not be worse. it is one thing to fight about the budget. is it possible to rebuild this questio? >> it has been a long time since "politics stops of the water edge." deeper andched broader than we have ever seen. john: let's talk about hillary clinton and being more hawkish practitioner than obama and her husband. question,on mark's and love republicans admired her national security and armed services credentials. do you think that she, pursuing the policy she is enunciating, overcomes the division? or, issue polarizing as the next

president -- is she polarizing as the next president? >> it is always hard to make productions about the future. track record of working across the aisle. in the senate, she learn from the experiences in the white house. -- learned from the experiences she had in the white house. obama has not, in many ways, reached out. he signed up for the job. part of politics is the give and take. seven years, this is not a part of the job he will miss, when he gives it up. john: hillary clinton's positions on syria and national security, do you think they are intellectually consistent? >> for the most part. she said no combat troops. she is open to special

operations forces and talked about creating a humanitarian zone. she seems to be willing to get slightly more involved. the short answer is, "yes." argument that everyone makes, from obama to lindsey an air force. i see no indication that countries are interested. >> a great idea on paper. should this not be part of the debate anymore? >> even if they are there to remove isis, what happens after? the only person who holds the territory are syrians, in the case of syria. and, iraqis, in the case of barak. syrian ando be

iraqi. mark: that will not happen, either. trained and effective. >> the bigger question is syria. there are two scenarios. you could work with the syrian government with a different leadership. until then, can we work with syrian tribes and with people who were already in the fight? i think this is the direction we have to go. it will be slow and difficult. mark: 17 candidates. with a neward one and interesting idea on how to deal with isis? >> there is no solution and it is multifaceted. obama got at some and not at others. no one has said anything truly persuasive. john: one of the things obama was criticized for what was not saying anything about what we would do to combat the

propaganda machine that islamic state has become. what can the president do about that? >> he has to change the military momentum. isis has momentum. not doing things militarily, he hurt himself. the real thing has to come from ab voices. ar they have to delegitimize certain behaviors. we cannot do that. back, our we come interview with ben carson. after this. ♪ the only way to get better is to challenge yourself,

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>> yesterday kevin sat down with ben carson just outside des moines. they talked about a lot of stuff, including one topic that's been at the top of a lot of voters minds and iowa, experience. >> what do you say to people on the level of commander in chief? >> people are rightly concerned about protection. what are we going to do overseas, in the middle east, what kind of leadership capabilities do we have? obviously, they listen to people you've only been a doctor so you obviously don't how to provide any kind of leadership. that it's forget is is the loudest voice that always the wisest voice. we need to start looking for wisdom. and i was appointed director of pediatric surgery at johns hopkins, it was not even on the map that johns hopkins.

i had to build it so that by 2008, we were ranked at number one in the country. the ceo of a big company doesn't know everything in the company. that's why he has a vice of i.t., mergers and acquisition, finance, personnel, hr, the whole gamut of different tanks. the president is very much the same way. people who expect the president to know everything are very unrealistic. what you need is somebody who knows how to utilize the resources. you have all kinds of resources available to you. have how many people gotten a number of 2:00 a.m. calls that i've gotten that are life-and-death issues? glean information quickly and make very quick decisions before somebody dies. >> here in iowa there's a political battle for the evangelical vote.

senator ted cruz's supporters have raise questions about where you stand on the issue of abortion. what is your response to evangelicals who have raised concerns about your stance on the issue of abortion? >> of course the rhetoric needs to be toned down. some of my opponents would say see, he is blaming the right. that's not what i'm saying at all. only when we can make progress in a pluralistic society is if we are able to sit down and talk to each other and let's not get into all the inflammatory comments. .ne needs to look at my life of all the people running, i think i can safely say i'm the only one who has ever saved anybody's life. the only one who has operated on premature babies all night long, the only one who has operated on babies inside the womb. the only one who's come up with

new techniques and procedures to i gotives, over which into a lot of controversy early on, but now many of those things have become standard procedure and they continue to save lives all over the world. there should be no question about where i stand on the life issue. in general, it's easy to sit around and talk about stuff. let's see what people actually do before you judge somebody. what do they do, not what people say they have said. my position is that abortion should not be done. i believe it is murder, and i've said that many times. that's just telling the truth. >> including in cases of rape and incensed? -- rape and incest? incest.ding rape and one evangelist was the result of a rape.

thought better of abortion and he has had an impact on hundreds of thousands of lives. quick she recently traveled to jordan. you been to places like ferguson will ber this week you an inner-city chicago. why do you go to these places? some criticize you and say you are learning on the job. problems, likere with the syrian refugees, i want to find out for myself what is going on. if we listen to the standard either we have to take intensive thousands of these people, or we are heartless and those are not the only two options. it became clear in going over there that there's another choice that demonstrates our humanity, that we do have a heart, but also demonstrates

that we have brains. them into take care of the refugee camps, to supply the jordanians with money to start talking to the kurds in syria about helping to shelter some of the people in the northeast corner of syria. all they would need is a little bit of military support from us to be able to do something. is, go there for yourself. go to harlem, like i have gone to harlem. go to detroit, go to baltimore, go to ferguson, go to the middle east. find out what's actually going on. we need the very best candidate that we can possibly have. time to get away from politics as usual. if i'm not the candidate, i want somebody who clearly is a better

candidate an im, and somebody who can make that very manifest. but i'm going to do everything i can to make sure i am the best candidate because i believe the election next year is absolutely crucial. >> are you planning any other trips to the middle east coming up? have more trips. within the last year i have been to israel and i plan on going there again. i will begun doing some other international travel, meeting people, and i think the more you do that, the more you interact with other people, the more you get first-hand knowledge. mark: our thanks to dr. carson and to kevin cirelli. next, more on the breaking story of donald trump's new muslimd ban of

immigration to the united states. we will be right back. ♪

x late this afternoon the candidate put out a press release saying all muslims should be barred from entering the united dates. that idea has already been condemned by democrats and republicans. lindsey graham said he's gone from making absurd comments to being downright dangerous with his bombastic rhetoric.

important to save conservatism from him. the statement by donald trump appear just as we were about to start the show and the twitter world is going crazy. what do you make of it? he's i think people think is doing this because he fell or he in one iowa poll has some compulsion to be more more outrageous. i think he did it because he thinks it's the right thing to do. i think a lot of voters will like his, and it could be a turning point in having people then outs him, including perhaps the republican national committee, perhaps some members of congress who have never denounced him before. i'm as inclined to do that is anybody but in this case i feel like we have to stop and take a breath and say wait a second, this is a presidential candidate and by almost every

measurement of front runner for the republican party who saying the american immigration policy should be determined by a strictly religious test. belgian,ms, french, muslim tourists, all should be barred from entering the united states because they pose some kind of threat to the united genuinelythink it is dangerous, irresponsible, horrible thing to say that will have ramifications around the world. this will make headlines all around the world and it's a huge win for islam and state to have a presidential candidate of donald trump stature saying something that is genuinely un-american. mark: for all the reasons you said, i think this could be a turning point. ,e chose to put out a statement and in any other campaign of any republican or democrat who has ever run for president, if a candidate said i want to take a position that immigration policy

should be based on a religious test, they would be stopped by their staff. this shows mr. trump has no one around him who will stop him from saying anything. but a lot of voters will say this is a perfectly sensible idea. john: there is no other way to describe this than reactionary. some are already saying fascist. there is no way to describe this other than reactionary. ideals or whatt the country has always tried to be about. ted cruz, when asked to comment on something controversial that donald trump has done, he would say this would be my policy, but did not denounce him. we have not heard him everybody yet. replicantunced by the -- republican candidates at this point is not news. i'm interested to see what paul

ryan, mitch mcconnell, what the republican national committee says about this. potential has huge political consequences if republicans start to say that this is a kind of rhetoric that justifies everything. i will not support donald trump if he's the republican nominee. a turning would be point. the other thing that will be interesting to see is talk radio . talk radio tends to be more sympathetic to positions like this for donald trump. off,s a history of backing -- has a history of not backing off. i would not be surprised if he does not try to modulate this in some way. john: it would be hard to do, for the reasons you said before. this is a statement, a

premeditated thing. , it wasnot off-the-cuff not a response to question on a rope line. he sat down and wrote this thing extended ittually out there to every reporter in the country. i don't know how you back down from that and pretend like you didn't really mean it the way you said it. gingrich, george w. bush, dick cheney. i wonder what they will all have to say about it. we will talk about this again tomorrow, i can tell you. john: the ivy league, racism, when we come back, in 60 seconds. ♪

john: calls to address the issue of racism in america have grown louder. college students in particular have been leading that call. a few weeks ago, students at princeton university held a protest on racial tension on campus. that woodrowsking wilson's name be removed from the international school of public affairs. i sat down with the head of princeton's department of african studies to talk about it. he is the author of a soon-to-be on how race still enslaves the american soul. he has not taken a position on renaming the wilson school but is supporting the dialogue the students actions have started. >> i think it's important that we take an honest look, and unflinching look at the complexity of our past as a nation. it's not enough to just say that human beings are complex, that the hold back views and good

views, that they are good people are bad people. to understand what the eye cannot or feet the country represent. do they represent our best collective aspirations? what i see is a demand on the princeton tonts of interrogate its most important symbol, woodrow wilson. by every account, no one denies fact, a that he was, in racist. he was committed to white supremacy. no one denies the fact that he was the architect of modern liberalism, at least in terms of the united states. he did so much in terms of foreign policy with regard to the league of nations. all of that was overturned by his commitment to white supremacy. what we see here at least on the part of the students is this insistence that we interrogate our symbols, that we don't take them at a spell you and not simply demand of those who have to walk by them every day and into her what that simple --

endure what that symbol represents for them every day. woodrow wilson was dealt with in some ways uncritically at princeton. now here we are right here in debating his legacy. there are arguments about whether this symbol represents our best national collective aspirations. in there is the argument that if we pull up that route, we will have to pull up so much. we cannot redact the ugliness of our history. john: what do you think the best response to that is? woodrow wilson may have been a racist but many historical figures were also racist. if we do this, where does it stop? a distinctionake between two different kinds of claims. one would be for example taking n-word out of huckleberry

finn. be aneems to me to untenable position, because we are who we are. if we don't take honestly, take seriously and confront honestly who we are, we can never imagine ourselves honestly differently in some ways, right? i don't want to say that removing woodrow wilson's name from the building of our public policy school is equivalent to pupcting the n-word from fin. what i want to say is that the symbols we choose are important nn.from huck fi think about the fall of the berlin wall or the collapse of the soviet union and what it to destroy thee , to destroynin representations of east roman

rule, to destroy reputations of sodom hussein. that iconography, though symbols represent a particular era and way of imagining the nation. to attack though symbols is not just simply a kind of image or act to erase history. it is instead an insistence that we represent the best of our collective aspirations. that is different than just ridding ourselves of the ugliness of who we are. we need to keep those two things separate. i also think we need to kind of understand the way in which race has been so washed over in our country. racism has been so buried in our country. we just remember all the time. john: i presume when you hear ted cruz, who happens to be a princeton alum, say that student

protesters there are pampered teenagers that are scared of an idea that challenges their worldview, i present you take exception to that. >> i think that is stupid. i don't want to sound like an arrogant, ivy league professor, but i think that is just a stupid argument. if it was not for what the , we wouldere doing not be having a conversation about a figure like woodrow wilson. it's easy for us, for example, to dismiss the importance of the symbol of the confederate flag, because we tend to displace the burden of racism on to that region. woodrow wilson is much more complicated, because he has national stature. about being caught hold or spoiled or not committed to free speech or unwilling to listen to counter arguments.

i honestly don't want to listen to an argument that suggests someoneave to endure making a claim that i'm less than or inferior. rightt think it's fair or for an institution like yale to have john c calhoun, who was a of aor, as the symbol residential college and i would have to live there. it makes no sense to me. i find those sorts of arguments not only disingenuous, but difficult to take seriously. john: our thanks to professor glaude. his book comes out january 12 and is available right now for preorder on amazon.com. when we come back, it have you seen the ted cruz sitcom? you will, after this. ♪

you remember what ted cruz had on you to. there are promos for a possible tv pilot. >> how is business this year? >> this year has been a good year. >> how has business been? >> it's been great. >> that's what you like to see. just howes you realize precious, how fragile freedom is. there is no guarantee that we will remain a free nation unless send a message.

we are fighting for the world, fighting in a revolution. >> who wants to say grace? >> i do. thank you for my puppy. >> candy at school? not a day goes by that my mom is not lifting me up in prayer for hours at a time. [applause] mark: until tomorrow, sayonara. ♪

emily: i'm emily chang in your watching "bloomberg west." the fbi says the california shooters had participated in

target practice, including once within days of the attack. the fbi says both were radicalized and had been for some time. secretary of state john kerry says the climate change agreement that negotiators are hoping to reach in paris has the potential to change the world. , he says he is hopeful it deal will be reached by the friday deadline but he would not be surprised if the talks extended into the weekend. sigh process it is in talks with russia that would -- a deal that would allow them to use its airport in emergency situations. the deal with russia would permit use of cyprus ability to ease the evacuation of russian nationals from neighboring countries. the eastern part of