Trump defends call for banning Muslims from United States

Republican front-runner Donald Trump defended his provocative call for banning Muslims from the United States in Dec. 15 night's presidential debate as the candidates pushed their own plans for fighting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants.
     
The debate was dominated by national security, reflecting the reshaping of the 2016 presidential 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.
     
Trump insisted his proposal, which was roundly condemned by his rivals, wasn't an attempt to discriminate.
     
"We are not talking about isolation, we're talking about security," he said. "We are not talking about religion, we are talking about security."
     
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." But Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said they understood why Trump had raised the idea and avoided directly criticizing the front-runner.
     
Instead, the two senators debated at length their differences over government surveillance programs. Rubio has accused Cruz of weakening the government's ability to track terrorists because he voted in favor of legislation to eliminate the National Security Agency's bulk phone-records collection program and replace it with a more restrictive effort to keep the records in phone companies' hands.
     
Cruz insisted the new law gives the government more access to cellphones and other technology that terrorists are more likely to use - a contention Rubio disputed.
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