♪ >> it is thursday, the 31st of december. we have an update of the top stories. consumer prices in south korea increased. 1.2% in december above estimates. it is led by the cost of clothing and food. inflation remains below target. and the chairman of china telecom has quit after an official investigation. he stepped down on wednesday as the chief operating officer is taking over until a new appointment is made. and the government says he was

questioned about the veer -- severe violations of discipline, that is code for corruption. and an unscheduled landing in calgary after several passengers were hurt from turbulence. this flight landed without problem, but the carrier provided hospital treatment. air canada says that 20 people were taken nearby with non-life-threatening injuries. and that has been a violent china at at offices in cement company. it has been reported to authorities. and a young people and the elderly living in shanghai are warned to stay indoors because of small compared environmental authorities say the city was heavily polluted around dawn.

the u.s. embassy says reading it, it hit 10 times above the international safe level. and india is adjoining china and having a mobile phone market with one billion subscribers. the number of users in india has surged and is now three times the population of the entire united states. intel has more than 200 million subscribers on its own. and we will leave you a quick check of the markets. this is in the asian pacific where things in hong kong and shanghai are paring back for the end of the year. ♪ ♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: sebastian thurn is here. he is the co-founder of udacity, an online education company.

he is among the world's leading experts in robotics and artificial intelligence. he also taught computer science at stanford. last month, the value of udacity was at $1 billion, making it a unicorn. i am pleased to have sebastian back at the table. welcome. sebastian: it is great to be back. udacity, who is it for? sebastian: people who want jobs. people who want to be in demand. we are trying to find a separate pipeline. it can guarantee jobs. charlie: how do you do that? sebastian: we have a lot of companies that we work with. you get a nano degree in a completely different kind of certificate. fueled byfield --

industry. vouche and amazon about -- that these degrees are leading edge. so when they come out they will really be strong engineers. charlie: this separates you from most online courses? sebastian: there are fantastic companies out there. but we really focus on the drop -- job aspects. it is about job placement. we drop them into various programs to see that they can get a guaranteed job. charlie: if they do not get a job, they get their tuition back? sebastian: yes. it can take six months. you can take two months, four months, whatever it takes to get a new skill. and most of the program is projects, you do things with your hands and build a portfolio. charlie: let me talk about one issue, encryption. explain to my audience what the debate is between silicon valley and law enforcement.

sebastian: there is, of course, when we send messages, e-mail messages and browsing the web, almost all messages are encrypted in a way that retains the privacy of the message. there is a suspicion that law enforcement has a backdoor into encryption. and are able to decipher messages. it is unclear at this point how much is being deciphered. and there is also a demand from law enforcement to get access. charlie: it is more complicated. the fbi director says there are some companies that encrypt and there is no backdoor. and they say, this is what apple says, yes we are encrypted. but we cannot get in ourselves. you want us to go in the backdoor, we cannot do that. sebastian: it is an open and important question today, how

much access should the government have? there are a lot of different opinions. some people say, i am actually on this side, i believe it is good for our current system to monitor activities and when something is found, to practically prevent bad guys from doing something very bad. there is an equally strong opinion saying that that is private. charlie: that is easy to understand, but how do you work this out is my question? sebastian: i think it is partially a legal issue and a policy issue. it is a washington issue. charlie: so they will have to make a law? sebastian: yes. but it is congress that is supposed to make the best decisions for the people. charlie: as you know and i know, everybody sees both ends, i think. most people understand the need for privacy in this society, but

on the other hand we live in a world in which we are worried about the spread of people who wish us ill. and we want to, if we can, stop that. sebastian: yes. and i think that the feature will be very different from the past. it is hard to think of past examples. there is an enormous security threat. every year in cyber security, the things are different from the previous year. different things happening. and we have only seen the top of the iceberg. for companies that have been hacked, there are other companies that do not know they have been hacked. and that is just the beginning. sebastian: you have either been hacked or you do not know you have been hacked. sebastian: right. and there are terrorists who organize in a very different way from the past and have social media to communicate in different ways. in cases like syria. and i think the type of security we need for the future is fundamentally different than what we had in the past. charlie: i want to be careful about this. this is what i think i read, that law enforcement in paris has said that some of those terrorists that made those attacks in paris killing all of

those people, used at least two apps that were essentially encrypted. sebastian: yes. charlie: they have talked about telegram. sebastian: that is an important question, to what extension government will have access to this. when i think back on september 11 that was a long time ago, , that data was available and had not been found. we could have prevented the biggest terrorist attack ever in this country. and do not think it will be the last one. there are more coming. and i think we should open this. for me, the agencies have an important purpose. it is important for the country. charlie: i will talk about artificial intelligence. this is a subject i am doing a on 60e on, or a story on, minutes. where are we? sebastian: we are really far

advanced. we have systems that can beat and outperform humans in tasks, not mundane tasks, but that i really highly intellectual tasks. charlie: like what? sebastian: for example, driving a car. flying a plane. pilots today in bad weather, they need to use in autopilot, they cannot fly in bad weather anymore. i do not think the step toward accountantwyer or an is far off. charlie: because they can digitalize it? sebastian: yes. this is deep learning. this is the most fascinating work we have done. it is a model of the human brain trained with massive amounts of data. we had this 20 years ago, but we did not have enough data.

and now we have this amazing amount of data and amazing machines that can do the work. charlie: data on everything? sebastian: data on everything. and every time we train something the outcome gets better. we have two students who i asked this spring to train a visual recognizer for skin cancer. they found about 100,000 images online they could use and they trained it to recognize skin cancer. charlie: through a camera's eyes? sebastian: you take your phone out and you look at the skin and out comes information. charlie: they have a database and they can say yes, this is it. sebastian: yes. so to be tested -- they compare you and they can reveal it. so we ask a question, what is the best in the nation?

charlie: what does he say about that? not from an ego standpoint, but does he say wow, this is an important development? sebastian: yes. dermatology expertise for anybody with a phone. it is at home. one of the main promises is you do not have to consult doctors. this is artificial intelligence. with this amount of data, a machine can see some is more than a human being. it gives the ability to pass intelligence and it could surpass human intelligence. charlie: what is the timeline? sebastian: in driving, this already happened. injecting, it is interesting -- in driving, it is interesting. google had a car team for many

years. in driving, an interesting thing happens, if a human driver makes a mistake, hopefully they will not make it again. but the rest of humanity will not learn. about the driving, when a car makes a mistake, the car learns from it, but so do all the other cars on the planet. including all the unborn cars. that means, generically the learning speed for the machine, the ability for it to evolve outpasses the ability of the human to evolve. no matter where you are in the evolution, the machines will take over. charlie: should we be frightened? sebastian: nope. we will find new things to do. in the history of technology, we usays use technology to give new focuses on life. 100 years ago, farm equipment took over from us at a time when most of us were farming. and it was fine, because we found new jobs that did not exist.

charlie: when people like elon musk say it causes them great concern, the extent of the development of artificial intelligence and they worry about it. what are they worried about? sebastian: i think that is pessimism. for me, that is lack of imagination to see what will happen next. if we go back and i show you the picture of a tractor and you are a farmer and i am a farmer, we are not worried about it. i see great excitement. imagine the possibilities to have machines by our side. charlie: but who controls the machines? sebastian: i assume humans will be smart enough to keep control. charlie: but is that the ultimate recipe? assume human beings will keep control. you have to build that in, don't you?

sebastian: yes, you build it in with some sense. the dishwasher, if i push a button, it works. sf i push a button, it stoppe working. we can build machines like that. charlie: so how, what if the machine develops the ability that you cannot stop it? is that a problem? i am trying to understand why so many prominent people in silicon valley want to say, be careful. at the least, be careful. sebastian: i do not quite see the negative scenario where machines take over at all. we have a long history of building amazing machines that have replaced components of what we do. like manufacturing or farming equipment. there is no difference with a.i. and you get to a point where we can enhance ourselves. to me, i cannot tell you what will happen because i do not know which jobs will be invented when the brains and memories are outsourced. i think it will be a better life.

charlie: is robotics and artificial intelligence the same thing? simply because what we are talking about is the capacity to create something, a machine, that can do things? sebastian: yes. robots are physical. they are doing something physical in the world. they cost more. they break faster. but the underlying key thing in both cases is the software. to make something smart. really good robots are smart. and really good a.i. is smart. charlie: so the masters of the future world are software writers? sebastian: i think so. and at some point when machines become smart enough, they will write their own software. charlie: this is amazing. this may be you. you are a parent? sebastian: yes i am. charlie: how old? sebastian: eight years old. charlie: have you taught him to code? sebastian: yes. he just began coding last year. charlie: because i was in silicon valley recently and somebody was talking about

sending their child to the camp to learn to code. sebastian: yes. but coding now is like a second language. there are beautiful sides to it. you can code and it becomes like a visual game. instead of typing with your hands, you are moving blocks around. you are interacting. charlie: therefore you learn the principles. sebastian: yes. it is phenomenal. all the old stuff when i grew up, you had to do the code, wait 20 minutes. it was a task. charlie: are you teaching your child chinese? sebastian: chinese, no. [laughter] think thati actually the language thing will go away. we can go to google translate and put in a language and out comes the other language. and we also see that -- charlie: charlie: is it that good right now? sebastian: i think so. and we make the same progress with voice recognition.

it is quite amazing, when the accuracy surpasses 99%, it is magical. almost every word is correct. charlie: that is amazing. sebastian: better than me. i have like 95%. charlie: you can go to any place in the world. sebastian: yes. charlie: and i can say, you know, please tell me what is at the opera tonight and the person who hears that will hear it in their language. sebastian: there is amazon echo. i do not want to do product placement here, but it is phenomenal. you say, read me the news. what is the weather tonight? and you get an answer. and the speech recognition quality is very high. as i said before, you have a self driving car, it goes faster than i can learn to drive. so amazon echo learns faster than a human can. so if you do not like it yet, wait another year or two and it will get better. charlie: and it is less than $100?

sebastian: $150. charlie: what do you use it for? sebastian: for me, i love gadgets. and i love the apple watch. charlie: why do you like it? sebastian: i love the design. i see the potential for this. i like to read my text messages. read the news. charlie: and you can use it as a phone? sebastian: you can. that is correct. charlie: do you think it is successful as a product? sebastian: i do not know statistics for apple. but they have done a phenomenal job. charlie: you know why i think it is successful? they have already started the next generation and the next generation. it is one of those things you know, it makes sense. and they will figure out a way. sebastian: the iphone took generations to improve. the first version was very thin. charlie: in terms of what it could do. sebastian: and in terms of sales. charlie: right.

people had to develop the notion that i really need this. sebastian: echo is a very visionary. it is great product quality. charlie: is there a difference between apple today without steve jobs? because he was sick as we know, he has been dead for four years, so the same people who surrounded him, tim cook as an example. tim cook was his hand-picked successor. it is the same company. unless you make the case that steve jobs can never be replaced and therefore we do not have steve jobs, but you have everybody that helped steve jobs and followed his vision. sebastian: no replacement for steve jobs. i have been really impressed by tim cook's ability to fuel this company. and to drive it forward in a way

that feels like steve jobs is there. and everybody says this is an operation guy. he has no product division. i think that he proved the world wrong. charlie: is that generally the feeling in silicon valley? sebastian: i think so. everybody admires what he is doing. charlie: in your view, this is the smartest people in the valley. sebastian: it is a great privilege to have the few friends i mean -- meet who are twice my iq. like my friend larry page. it is humbling to be there and to see the intellect and product vision. but i am also very fortunate i get the chance to learn. for example, we are learning from these fantastic leaders in education. charlie: this is what i want to understand. you say that you have friends that have twice your iq. you are one of the smart people in the valley. and you say that larry is twice your iq?

sebastian: what i really admire is, elon musk is one of them, and a few others, they can really think logically about the future in a way that is not bound by tradition. there is nok, today reason -- today we have cancer, but there is no reason we should have cancer tomorrow. and elon musk says today we cannot go to mars, why not tomorrow. when you do the math and you ask the question, is it feasible? a lot of stuff is feasible. i believe only 1% of things have been invented yet. people do not buy it because people often have no imagination. go back to the past, from this coffee cup, to sewage, to the cameras, those have been invented in the last 50 years. there is nothing that was not invented in the last 20 or 50 years that we do not love. so we go 150 years forward and take into consideration that the speed of invention is going up.

we will see stuff like flying cureand care cancer -- cancer and other things. ♪

♪ charlie: i know we are close on curing cancer. i have done enough conversations with people. with leading experts who believe it is within their vision. and they have based on what has been accomplished in the last several years. therapy is one example of how they are learning. and it is going beyond just in terms of what they're doing with t cells. it is unbelievable. sebastian: we will look back and say that this was the middle age of medicine. this is not just treatment, this

is also detection. so, take for example like what steve jobs had, this cancer. that cancer is specific because it is non-symptomatic. and finally when a symptom appears, you have bone pain, it is too late. but if you image people every day at home, it could detect things long before they are big. we can use technology to find things that are so small. we can do that today. charlie: is it possible to develop sensors beyond a visual thing, just like smell, hearing, and all the other senses that can look at a human and see if in fact they might have some disease they do not know about? sebastian: i mentioned finding skin cancer. with the camera. we have cameras on our phone, $1.00 a -- they cost

piece. for example, if i had a microphone on my cell phone and watch speech patterns, i am sure that you could find the onset of dementia or alzheimer's. because your speech pattern changes when you have this. into a single snapshot at a doctor's visit cannot find it. but i spend about half an hour a day on the phone with a phone can tell me over time in for me -- and inform me just based on my personal speech pattern. it is something you could do tomorrow morning. charlie: this is all fascinating. say you went from google x to udacity. what is your next stop? sebastian: everybody asks me. it has become profitable, our next step will go in the direction of ipo and worldwide. there is a lot to do in that space. i believe the single most important thing to do right now is education because it is the gift that keeps on giving.

if you educate somebody -- if you teach a man how to fish, they have food for the rest of their life charlie:. life. charlie: and it is powerful in developed countries. sebastian: yes. charlie: it is the only ticket. sebastian: and we have an office in egypt. if you go there, you have little access. and we teach this in india. and you take india and china, this is about half the world population and they have about three universities in the top 100. charlie: but my question was not what is next for udacity, but what is next for you? sebastian: we have work to do. charlie: obviously, you have done something to be proud of in learning and education, this is vital to how a society moves and progresses, but you talk with passion about medicine. you are obviously thinking about opportunities for someone who both understands the velocity of change in technology and has great curiosity about the human being and what opportunities that offers all of us.

sebastian: i wish we could share all of that. i think this is a skill that is trained. before silicon valley, i was much less creative in thinking about the future. the examples i give you do not require new technology, they are all existing technology, they are on the shelf today. there is no magic in what i say. it is saying, look there is massive world problems that exist today and massive technology in just the past 10 years. put these two together and you can have a brainstorm and find what is amazing. charlie: here is my question. and i do not want you to include yourself in this. although you should be there. i would love to do the following. it happened at different companies, i know. i would love to be able to, every month, bring together 5-10 men and women and sit down with them and have them deep think

about what it is they think we wouldo put, as bill gates say, put iq on. and meet every month and make sure -- take larry, who understands the role of the corporation and his own vision of the role of the corporation. he has that deeply. sebastian: and is logical. charlie: and he understands the resources that are the. re. i would like to have a meeting every month and just see. sebastian: i have the great fortune to have any good access to larry page and we spent a lot of time on questions like this. i feel like a schoolboy, to be honest. it is great to see how his mind constructs so fast. every time i talk to elon musk, i am blown away.

he does the same thing. and what comes out of the other end. charlie: and bill gates is doing the same thing in terms of health. extraordinary world we live in. sebastian: i am game to join you every month and come to new york. charlie: i am thinking about it. i really am. sebastian: do it. charlie: we can sit around the table and think about big ideas. from around the world, not just silicon valley or austin, texas, but around the world. sebastian: it is like the wild west. you are really far from washington dc, you do not think in regulatory terms. you think about was possible. and think about all the past rules. we do not take things for granted. coming from i come from a country that is much older, german thinking is by and large, much more ok, it ought to be perfect.

going talk about universities and i talked to professors, it has to be the classroom, have to be this way. and i asked the question, does it really? maybe it does, but in most cases it does not. what we have is this a left over from the nontechnological past. and we are moving in a much more sophisticated way. and -- charlie: how far off is that? sebastian: it is not far off. we have this idea at google x. it is a stretch to go to surgery -- but this technology has made enormous progress. we have input and output. we have our keyboard, our mouse, our notes, they are relatively slow. the reason we cannot look at 100 webpages, we cannot focus as fast.

charlie: tell me who else should be a my table. from uber. charlie: are they still primarily somehow tied to a university? sebastian: i think society thinks this way. universities are such a big thing and important thing. it gives people identity, a lifetime identity. if you graduate from harvard or yale, you'll always be a harvard or yale graduate. the thing we address at udacity is a thing people cannot get there.

or the people who grew up in india or china, who have no chance or no access. we sometimes forget that we marvel about an i.t. and harvard, but we forget, even for american students, 80% go into nonselective universities with graduation rate of 50%. so for most of american youth, the university half is a bad one. half of them do not graduate, they have enormous debt that will last a lifetime. so people are charged maybe $100 a month, because for some degrees, we even give you a job. tuition should never be more than $1000 a year. charlie: imagine that. sebastian: and i really believe it is working. we have many things to prove.

we have many problems that remain. but we graduate more than 1000 people who have found jobs and did they are really strong. and they shift careers. and you come to us afterwards and you are in demand. charlie: this is something that was said to me recently, what is the secret of the silicon valley? the usual answer is a start ups. you have entrepreneurial talent, tech companies, tech universities, venture capital and he makes that up and here you go. the thing is, start ups are a necessary component of a but the secret, and very few people talk about it, is there is a whole skill set and talent network so how do you get that global school fast? sebastian: i am going to quote, basically if you take google and the number of people, you will

not do twice the amount but because -- this is true for many companies, not singling out google. if you take start up and double the number of people in startups, you get twice the number started, you'll get twice as many products. charlie: so doubling the number of startups, not doubling the number of people at startups. sebastian: yes. you have 2000 startups, you get 2000 products. twice as many people, twice the activity. why is that? in big organizations, most people spend most time in meetings. so the coordination efforts go up. and more creative energy gets going -- i just spent the last two days in banks in meetings. with it startups, you barely have a meeting parity but all that creativity into products.

not coordinating is good, it makes it independent, it makes it fears. the moment you are in a big organization, it is much easier to have a meeting, a committee -- charlie: more responsibility. sebastian: if you take big companies and cut them into smaller company's, there'll be more activity. charlie: you applause what they did in terms of organizing an apple? sebastian: yes. there is a large set of products, like google does, having coordination difficulties. any of you would -- in the viewer would process -- protest, it is, looking at. it is the logic of chance.

charlie: that is the way that i thought problems coming up. rather than trying to sort of solve everything at one time. sebastian: good people do that. charlie: so let me go back to deep mind. exactly what is it? sebastian: it is a learning program. it was able to learn by itself in deep learning how to learn and play video games. the interesting thing about video games, not just a recognition thing. like i mentioned the example of screening skin cancer. this is an interactive thing, but you have to learning policy. the different sets, deep mind did not just learn one, a learned many. it was smart enough to pick up video games. so google bought it because it is amazing.

and another year, we made it even more complicated. charlie: great to see you. sebastian: good to see you charlie. charlie: sebastian thrun. we will be right back. ♪ ♪

colorado is a star of a large republican class that entered the senate after the 2014 elections. we spoke to him in january about his expectations and hopes. >> we had another conversation midway through the year. now as congress has adjourned, we conclude with the junior senator from colorado. thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. host: you said your hope was that republicans could prove that they could govern responsibly and maturely, have you achieved that? >> i think we have. it has not necessarily been pretty at times, but there have been achievements put in place. the long-term highway bill. the first time in 17 years that has been done. an overhaul of education reform. the first time in nearly a decade that all 12 appropriations bills have come out. they have to not just get out of committee, but get off the floor and to the president. host: we will talk about the omnibus bill in a moment.

but we need to say, enough is enough and we need to buckle down and get work done, whether that is the appropriations process or the difficult time to pass the human trafficking bill, it did not need to take as long as it did. host: the big bill you did at the end. what some observers say is that democrats got spending and republicans -- >> i think if you look at the budget, we passed a balanced budget for the first time since 2001. the budget in itself does not dictate whether there will be savings. so, what congress has to do and with the senate and house, they have to do is put in place a deficit. host: what about the bill you just passed? if you are a grass-roots

republican and you know those people, you are going to reduce the deficit, cut tax rates, you are going to repeal obama care and stop other things and none of that was achieved. there are a number of programs we reduced. and we put this on the desk for the first time, a repeal of the affordable care act. so we have been able to do those things and be able to have successes and it shows the importance of winning the white house in 2016 to finish the job. host: you have said to me twice that it is not enough to be negative.

you have yet to come up with an alternative. but at some point, it has been five years, here is this, not just bill cassidy, but here is a republican alternative. >> i would like this he votes on these are bills you can go read the legislative language, who cosponsored them, see who is on them so we can vote on them. we should. just like we voted to repeal the affordable care act, but over the next several years hopefully we will have a different

direction from the white house and we will be looking to repeal the affordable care act and put something in its place. host: sometime over the next election? >> it will be difficult to get through. host: you think rush limbaugh has it wrong and the gop sells america down the river? >> i think if you look at the bill, the tax cuts for the american people, certainly a business investment. this is an important step that will create economic growth for the american people. i think there are things we need to adjust over the next year and two years, particularly when we have a new leader in the white house who we have committed to debt reduction, working with congress on a balanced budget, that will actually do the job.

i think we will have a better opportunity than senator clinton. host: you have proposed sanctions against the korean dictator, but most people would say to tackle this area we need to work with china. and yet, i saw carly fiorina, she said hammer china on the south sea, hammer china, all of which is justified. but you cannot hammer on everything and get them to work with you on something else.

so there is far more they could be doing to step up against what i have termed "the forgotten maniac." how can we do that? we need to engage better the triple alliance, the three of us, japan, south korea and the united states, coming together to put pressure on china to work on north korea. to face north korea, to make them stand down on their nuclear program and end human rights atrocities. the only way to do this is raising strong alliances. there are challenges. host: but you want china to be part of it. >> we believe they can be further engaged. host: which means dealing with china in those other issues must be more delicate. >> mainly to realize that as it rises in power and a emerges as a global power, they cannot continue with behavior that is unbecoming of a great power.

host: i thought that you were a jeb bush person, but you are now endorsing marco rubio. >> i believe he will become the next president. but i was tired of answering this question, people would ask who you think will win the nomination? i said, somebody who is optimistic, who has a plan for the future, and they said, you are supporting marco rubio? and i would say, no, i have not given an endorsement yet. but i think he is the person with the right policies to move this country forward, whether it is foreign policy, economic policy. this is an important direction for the country. host: on foreign relations, he proposes what he says is a much more robust policy to defeat isis.

josh rogan says what he is proposing is intensification of what obama is already doing and what hillary clinton proposes. >> if you listen to what marco rubio is talking about, this administration is not pursuing that. they are doubling down on policies -- what we are doing for streamlining and to the approval process that has resulted in 3/5 of our arms not able to deliver on a target. and that is up from a couple of months ago, this is only the past weeks we have seen this increase. talking about, in congress we have been talking about this idea of a safe zone. a humanitarian zone. that is not something the president is considering pair but if we will address this issue of refugees from syria. if we want to get to the bottom of that, it is not about how many millions of people the world will take end, this is about syria and ending the disaster in syria. and that will take a new

direction from this president and i believe we are here in this mess because of hillary clinton's foreign policies and i do not think she can create a whole new direction. host: you think that assad has to go? >> yes. host: those countries where we got rid of these dictators, they are now more chaotic than they were before. >> i do not think that is a fair comparison, particularly if you look at iraq is what happened, there was a direction made to really build up our success and a political campaign occurred, a promise of withdraw was

announced. and all of a sudden -- when president obama made a commitment to pull out. they moved forward with the surge and allowed, and he understood the importance of injuring an agreement that would allow us to continue to go forward with a presence necessary to provide security and training in iraq. host: look at libya, it is a terrorist haven. i guess the overall point is post-assad, why do we think that syria will look better than iraq or libya? >> he is terrible. isis is certainly somebody that cannot take leadership, that is why we need to destroy isis and that is why what is happening right now with the direction of this president is not for --

host: we like an american -- >> i think we need 65 nations and more -- host: different than what is in iraq? >> i think we need a major that we end the civil war and do not allow an assad-like regime that is not kill its own people and we need to make sure -- to the syrian people so that they cannot face consequences of death. host: i tried very hard to pin you down on donald trump. and you very artfully made it hard in many ways. i will ask you again. this is no longer just one month or two months, he for six months has led. and he is about 20 points ahead of everybody. he is going to stay for a while. how much is he hurting the party?

>> i think his policies are dead wrong. the idea we would create a religious test for entry into the country is absolutely wrong. in fact, i find it interesting that there are some people who would agree with this and would allow president obama to create this and enforce it. they would not like this idea. but that is what he is offering. i made that clear. it is very clear to more and more, each day, that there are others who could do a better job of representing this country as president. you see that in the numbers others are experiencing. marco rubio's rise. and i think people -- host: trump does not drop. >> i think you'll see him starting to spread his supporters to others in the race.

host: is he hurting the party? >> i think when you present a message of hate, you'll have an impact. i think the democrat party wants somebody with fresh ideas, but those ideas cannot make it look like you are opposed to good people. and blanket policies that are based on bad policy, like he has proposed, can make it look like you are against people and that is not good for any party. host: during your campaign in 2014, you reached out to latinos and he talked to me in january saying we need to do something constructive on immigration. it looks like this environment, part due to trump and other factors, it looks like something needs to change. but now it seems like it has vanished.

>> it has changed dramatically. you have this coming from different candidates. it has changed dramatically because of global developments, whether that is central america and the crisis of the children we have seen over the past years and the inflow from central america into the united states. host: but there are fewer people come across the board. >> some people have said we have seen a decrease from mexico or however you want to see it. i think that the studies show, it is also about refugee situations, concerns about who is coming into the country, proper background to make sure that people are safe. questions about the visa waiver program. this hasn't changed the debate on immigration -- this has changed the debate on

immigration and it is being lumped together, so it is a challenging thing to a conflict. host: you worry about donald trump, how about ted cruz, do you worry about him? >> i think he is intelligent and talented. i think he has a lot of different policies than donald trump on but i think the best person to lead our party and share values of our party is marco rubio. host: that brings me to a very respected columnist and analyst who flirted with the idea last month that the perfect running mate for marco rubio would be cory gardner. i know what you will say. he will say it is silly. yet, you think of the parallel, bill clinton and al gore, both in their 40's, both from the

same region, wouldn't a marco rubio and cory gardner ticket be exciting? >> i think i made the comment, the article said something about a short list, and what i meant to say was i was the only person as short as marco rubio. so, it would be an incredible honor to serve the country and i think that marco rubio will be a great president of the state and it will support him throughout this effort. whatever i am called upon to do, i will do. but my first obligation is to the state of colorado. host: less than assuring. we will see what happens. you are convinced marco rubio will be the nominee? >> i am. and as the months unfold,

whether it is new hampshire, iowa, the other primaries, i will see people gravitate toward marco rubio. he is currently leading in colorado. and we see that reflected nationwide, he is one of the only one or two that can win nationwide and being the nominee, hillary clinton. host: when you were sworn in, your grandmother inadvertently told joe biden that she was too busy to talk because she was watching you being sworn in. have they had communication since then? >> what people do not know is a couple months later, i thanked the vice president for calling her.

and he said, let's call her again. i dialed the phone, they had a great conversation. i am glad the joe biden is not running for president because i think that my grandmother would be a voter. host: happy holidays. thank you for joining us. and thank you for joining us. ♪

angie: prices rose sharply in korea. inflation remains below the official target of 2%. at least two foreign banks have been banned from cross-border trading in chinese currency.