you don't see her. >> you don't know that. >> i think so. >> joining us now, republican presidential candidate donald trump. donald, good morning. >> good morning. >> how's it going? >> it's going well. >> yeah, do you like putin's comments about you? >> sure. when people call you brilliant it's always good especially when the person heads up russia. >> well, also a person that kills journaleist and political opponents and invades countries. also, that would be a concern, would it not? >> he's return running his country and at least he's a leader. >> but again, he kills journalist that don't agree with him. >> i think our country does plenty of killing also, joe. you know. there's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now, joe. a lot of killing going on and a lot of stupidity and that's the way it is. you didn't ask me the question.

you asked me a different question. that's fine. >> i'm confused. so you obviously condemned putin killing journalist and political opponents, right. >> oh sure, absolutely. >> so how would america's relationship with russia change if you were president? >> well, i think it would be good. i've always felt fine about putin. i think he is a strong leader. he's a powerful leader. he's represented his country the way the country is being represented. he's got popularity within his country. they respect him as a leader. certainly the last couple of years they've respected him as the leader. obama's in the low 30s, upper ho 40s and he's in the 80s. >> what would you do as president as commander in chief

to drive putin's forces out of cr ukraine and make sure he doesn't move further west and move those troops? >> you know, pretty strong views. many, many freentds friends fro and they're fantastic people but when i see those countries not engaged and we're totally engaged and i ask myself, here's this big monsterous country, germany, and they hardly speak up, they accept his oil and gas and lots of other things and here we are fighting like hell and oh 19 trillion in debt and nothing but problems in this country and we're sitting on a big fat beautiful bubble that's ready to explode, financial bubble, i'm talking about. and we're always at the forefront of leading the charge.

i think other countries have to get involved with that, joe. you have the crew crane and it effects other countries a held of a lot more than us. >> if it's strong american leadership, other countries will follow. >> would you consider giving the missile defense system? >> i would consider that, absolutely. when you say follow, i think that's great but maybe we should do a little bit of following and let the neighbors tell us like let the neighbors take more of an active roll in the ukraine. i don't see a lot of active roll from the neighbors around ukraine. i see us saying get out of ukraine and i would like to see enthusiasm from the people directly effected. >> i think that a lot of americans would agree with you but wouldn't some obama critics say that sounds a lot like

leading from behind. >> i don't think it's leading from behind. i want to see our country get rebuilt again. our country is falling apart frankly. our infrastructure is a disaster. our bridges are falling down. 61% of bridges are in danger. our whole country is a mess and you know, you're asking me a question. there's lots of things we can do. but one of things i want to do is make america great again. >> you're talking about limiting america's reach here. much like george bush in 2000 before 9/11 talked about having a more humbled foreign policy. if that's the case, do you think we've spent too much in defense spending and it's a good idea and we should use that money we're not spending on the pentagon to rebuild our infrastructure? >> i think we have to rebuild our military.

that doesn't mean we have to use it. we've used our military far too much on certain things and not well. i think we have to rebuild our military frankly. i think our military is in shambles. today we have to be the most prepared. i'm very pro and strong on the military. i'm also strong on rebuilding our infrastructure in our country and rebuilding stochool and education systems. >> mow >> how do we pay for that? >> we spent $5 trillion in the middle east. probably close to 3 trillion in iraq. we have nothing.

nobody's done to a country what iran has done to us. we have hand and gift wrapped iraq. by the way, the second largest oil reserves in the world. so iran made one deal better than the nuclear deal by a factor of hundreds. >> i want to ask you about a ban that's been going for weeks. cords asking whether you agree or not. i'm asking if you could speak to the muslim american population and tell them what you would do

or say as president to make sure they feel that they are as much a part of this country as everyone else is. >> sure. i have many friends that are muslim. there's a lot going on. i seen various polls where 25% of the people would support and really, you look at some of the numbers, 25% of the people would support very, very substantial violence from within. that's not acceptable. the type of violence we're talking about is extraordinary. >> i'm asking what you would do or say to the muslim american population to make sure they feel welcomed in this country as much as any other american. i'm not asking you about what it

is that's going on or something going on, whatever. i'm asking about the positive message that you have for muslim americans who live in this country. >> you can't ask that question without saying there's something going on and everybody knows it. when i first brought that up, i didn't do anything for polls. i assumed it would be bad for polls. i don't care about polls from that standpoint. i'm doing what's right. it's a dialogue and has to be discussed. there were numerous people that knew what was going on, mika. why weren't they reported? why weren't these people reported. one thing i think the muslim population in this country has

to do -- >> i don't understand why you keep going to the part of the story you know has already touched and struck a cord with the primary voters. i'm asking about the muslim american population, the peaceful citizens of this country. >> i'm all for them. when they see something going on. >> they are getting harassed. >> mika. >> they are getting pigeon holed from the comments. is there a positive message you have for peaceful muslim americans? >> yeah, there's a positive message but we have a problem and the problem is a very severe problem and they have to help us to solve this problem. they have to help themselves because they are actually helping themselves. we do have a problem with radicalization within that community. they have to report it, they have to let us know about it and if they don't, it's just going to be a continuation. they say there are many, many

cells like you have with the two people. the one came in the ridiculous visa program. all they had to do was check, if they checked her facebook account they would seen she was radicalized and wanted to do great harm to our country. could you imagine hiring somebody if you ran a good business and not checking a facebook account? >> john. >> hey donald. it's john. >> hi, jon, how are you? >> i'm all right. i want to ask you a few questions about the debate the other night and about your friend ted cruz. your moderator said the other night you called cruz a maniac. when you were asked that on stage you responded by saying i have gotten to know him over the last three or four days and he's got a wonderful temperament. can you explain in what way you've gotten to know him and what did you learn?

>> well, honestly, john in all fairness i was being cute and having fun and did it with a smile and of all the people running, i will say, i get along with most of them hard to believe. a lot of people would say that's not true but it is. i get along with most of them. one of the things amazing to me is off the stage it's like a love fest. that's politicians. that's the way politicians behave. you don't see the real person. with ted cruz, i've gotten along with him very nicely and i very cutely said it and it was well accepted. he said nice things about me. when people say nice about me, i generally reciprocate and i was being a little bit cute and got a big laugh and that was the end of that, yeah. >> let me ask you about something joe said the other day when he saw your behavior with senator cruz. joe said there's an inside deal

between these guys whether it's direct or indirect, donald and senator cruz have decided they're not going to go after each other because that's in their political interest. is that true? >> it's not true. we got along very well prior to the debate. we didn't talk about this, we didn't do that. we did speak. not about this. not about let's get along. it wasn't like that. but we got along nicely. i didn't know what to expect. i went out on that stage and if i would have believed all of the pund nts, most of who have been wrong about me for years but certainly wrong about me for the last six months starting with the fact that i won't run. i would have believed i was going to be attacked by 14 people viciously and i was ready for that. >> nobody attacked. jeb was the only one that attacked you. why do you think marco and everybody else stayed away from you? >> i don't know. i think they did a very smart thing but i don't know.

>> donald, if you were in second or third or fourth place and 20 points behind, it's confounding to me as a political analyst, that would be like kneeling if you're down 30 points at half time and just trying to run up the clock. why aren't they attacking you when they're down 20 points. >> most of them have numerous people to go through. you look at him. i think jeb copiieied his polls and remembered a couple of lines handed to him by his pollster. i think jeb makes a mistake because he has a lot of people to go through before he gets to me. i think that's true with most of them. so i think i probably would agree you have to go after the couple of people right in front

of you, frankly. >> hi mr. trump. four years ago mitt romney said russia was our biggest strategic enemy. president obama said he would reach out to adversarie adversa phone. could you understand why some would wonder for years russia has been our greatest adversary dealing with iran and syria and obviously, the actions. it would seem to be troubling to have putin praise you as he has and i understand your comments. tell me how you would work with him better to make us safer and perhaps make europe and the rest of the world safer. >> sure. look, i'm a deal maker. i make deals. really good deals. if you study what i've done, that's when i file my financials, people get it. i'm a deal person. sure, i could see if you want to

be tough guys and everything, i could see russia being a big problem and mitt romney making that statement, frankly. i can also see russia being a big asset to our country and i think that's the way it's going to be. they're a powerful nation and they have a big military base and force and i think they can be a lot of good things happen with russia if we get along well and they respect us. putin does not respect our president. a lot of people don't respect our president. our president does not like putin. there's tremendous. i see it, look. as a person that does deals all the time, it's all about people. everything's about people. i watch those two sitting in two chairs looking at each other and i say wow, that's really bad chemistry. i just look at it. obama and putinme. i look at it and say that's

seriously bad chemistry. nothing good is going to come out of that. there's a lot of bad chemistry there and it's been that way for years. it just doesn't work. i think russia can be a positive force with respect and can help us. we have a problem with isis. when russia started with we want to get isis, now, probably they knocked out as plain but putin doesn't want anything to do with isis. he doesn't want isis coming into russia. i think that's a real positive. when he starts bombing and been bombing the held of out them. he wasn't really bombing isis. he was bombing other folks that were not isis involved in theory. now he is and i think that's a positive force. anybody that wants to bomb isis, congratulations, join the line. i'm all for you. >> jonathan. >> mr. trump, on the front page of my paper, the washington post, trump's rally majority not

so silent. cheers, cheers, a slur and a punch. it makes me come back to your talk about leadership. you talk about leadership a lot. i wonder if you feel any responsibility for your crowds for keeping them and the passions that they clearly have and that you've tapped into keeping them in check whether it's black lives matter protesters being punched and assaulted or as in this story about latinos being yelled at. do you feel any responsibility being a leader and telling your followers there's a certain way the talk about these issues in this country? >> i haven't seen your stories so i don't know exactly. i can tell you all my rallies, the one you were talking about was a tremendous success and was great. there's a lot of love in those rallies. there's tremendous love there. the person that you're referring

to from black lives matter was really, really out of line. i mean unbelievable. i think in fact, the screaming, i think it was one person. we were unable to speak. his voice was unbelievable. honestly, wouldn't stop. then the police went and it was the police and they weren't my police, jonathan. these were the police that worked for the convention center or whatever. they were really not behaving well. really, really terrible. nobody talks about that side of the story. nobody talks. again, jonathan, these weren't my people. these were people that worked for the city.

now, with all that being said, my rallies has tremendous spirit and tremendous love. these are people that love our country. these are people that have watched and these are smart people, by the way. very smart people. these are people that have watched our country be like so foolishly run and so stupidly run at so many levels and these are people in great spirit. unbelievable spirit. i think his problem is i could have 15 or 20,000 people. if there's one person that's a prote protester. >> i thought it was interesting. sarah pay lin at the end of sarah's 2008 campaign, when joe biden was getting 200 people and getting thousands and thousands you would have people in the main stream media sweeping through the crowds desperately

trying to find people wearing a confederate flag. every sarah palin rally. not the fact she was getting 10,000 people or however many thousands. i don't know the exact number. i'm being told we have to go to break. we appreciate you being with us. good luck out there. be safe. say something nice about a muslim