Bible Toting Donald Trump Attends Iowa Forum.
BLACKWELL: Important poll numbers set to be released this morning on CNN in less than two hours now. Comes on the heels of the second GOP debate and could be a major indicator to see if other candidates are gaining ground on the front-runner Donald Trump. Trump attended a faith and freedom forum in Iowa and he walked onto the stage with his personal bible there in his hand, even showed the crowd a picture from his confirmation. Trump also addressed the latest controversy over his handling of town hall participants' claim that the president is Muslim and not an American. Listen.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I had quite a couple of days, as you noticed. I did a very innocent town hall with about 3,000 people at least and the first question I said this can only happen to me. You all know what the first question was. The press is going crazy and they all wanted to see me. I said for the first time in my life, I got in trouble by not saying anything. I didn't say anything.</s>BLACKWELL: All right. Let's go to CNN's MJ Lee in Des Moines, Iowa, who is following the Trump campaign. MJ, Trump went to a homecoming event last night. You were there. The students who were there were, obviously, pretty tied into the current events because one of them asked a question that went directly to the heart of this controversy.</s>MJ LEE, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: That's right, Victor. Donald Trump was unable to avoid this controversy, even at a high school homecoming where the student body wanted to have a presidential campaign come and address their homecoming. That when I spoke to the principal of the school, he said the students were able to arrange for Trump to come earlier in the month. There was a lot of excitement. The students were having a presidential candidate talk to them before their big homecoming dance. As you mentioned, one of the students actually asked Donald Trump about his views about Muslim Americans and we also caught up with him as well to ask him about the latest controversy. Take a listen to what he said.</s>LEE: Do you personally think that Muslims pose a danger to this country?</s>TRUMP: I love the Muslims. I think they are great people.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I consider Muslim Americans to be an important asset to our country and society. Would you consider putting one in your candidate or even on your ticket?</s>TRUMP: You consider what?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Putting one in your candidate or on your ticket, a Muslim-American.</s>TRUMP: Muslim?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Uh-huh.</s>TRUMP: Oh, absolutely. No problem with that. Would I consider putting a Muslim American in my cabinet? Absolutely, no problem with that.</s>LEE: Victor, this has become a hot political topic on the campaign trail. Democrats have really pounced on Donald Trump, saying that this basically shows he is an outright racist. On the other hand, Republicans have given a more mixed reaction to the controversy saying that it's not always the candidate's responsibility to correct a voter when they say something that is incorrect. Donald Trump, obviously, agrees with that as we saw on the number of tweets he sent out on Saturday.</s>BLACKWELL: All right. So, I wonder if you could kind of give us an idea of how voters who were there at this Faith and Freedom Forum reacted to the confirmation bible he brought with him, the confirmation photo.</s>LEE: Right. I mean, it seemed clear that Donald Trump was on a mission to make a strong appeal to the evangelicals in this state which is significant in a state like Iowa where there is a big population of born again Christians. He said repeatedly that he is a Christian. As you mentioned, he was holding the bible in hand. He really said that as president, his top priority would be to protect people's religious liberties. This is a sort of different side of Donald Trump that we are seeing over the weekend. From a couple of weeks ago, maybe over a month ago, when Donald Trump sort of made jokes about talking about taking sips of the little wine and having a little bit of the cracker for communion and on Donald Trump's mind recently.</s>BLACKWELL: All right. MJ Lee there for us in Des Moines, thanks so much.</s>PAUL: All right. Let's bring in CNN political commentator, Errol Louis, along with CNN senior politics reporter, Stephen Collinson as well, because I want to get back to this and talk about Trump's entrance with the bible in his hand at this forum. And just to give us a good sense of what we are talking about, take a listen to this.</s>TRUMP: I brought my bible. See? I'm better than you thought, you see? And, actually, this was given to me by my mother and I was just noticing yesterday, and she wrote such a beautiful inscription. That is Mary MacLeod from Scotland. Very religious, and something I thought I would bring along today because this is a group that fully understands bibles and respects everything that it says. I also brought my confirmation picture because nobody can believe it. Nobody believes this!</s>PAUL: I will commit that when we heard he brought a confirmation picture, everybody in the newsroom said, oh, he had a confirmation picture. Let me get your initial reactions, Errol, to that.</s>ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hi, Christi. It looks to me about as clumsy as one could be at trying to establish of hey, I'm sort of like you. It was, I guess, the religious equivalent of going to an Iowa farmer in some overalls and some brand new boots and said I sure like to eat food from the farm. Donald Trump has, in fact, been trying to sort of do better with evangelicals because if you look closely at the polls, he is not strongly favored by people who are actual church-goers and lots of certain flavors of Christianity and when you drill down into the polls, it's people are strong believers and go to church at least once a month, about 21 percent, much lower than any other kinds of support, even among evangelicals. So, he's got some ground to makeup. It's the right thing to do, it's a logical thing to do in a place like Iowa.</s>PAUL: OK. So, Stephen, in his defense, he, obviously, was confirmed. He has some sort of religious background in his years of growing up. Was there anything about this that you felt was possible disingenuous?</s>STEPHEN COLLNSON: I don't know. It's -- in a way, it's Donald Trump's style to be brash and take this head-on. To Errol's point if you want to win the Iowa caucuses you have to speak the language of evangelical voters. If you look at the last two Republicans who won the Iowa caucus, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum have been able to do that. Donald Trump has not shown he is able to do that. By doing it in this kind of such an open, light-hearted way and takes aim at the issue that he is not religious enough for Iowans and almost makes a joke out of it and sort of brings the crowd along this. So, in some ways, I think this was kind of effective politically.</s>PAUL: Yes, with the Christian conservative, as you were saying, Errol, we believe the numbers are -- Trump 21 percent there and Carson has 27 percent, so he is in second place in that particular poll with Iowa evangelicals. Thank you both, gentlemen, so much, Stephen Collinson and Errol Louis. And we'll talk more, too, here coming up about this poll that's coming out to get a better sense of what happened at that second debate and how that might be driving people and voters to what they believe and who they believe and they will vote for. Thank you so much, gentlemen.</s>LOUIS: Thanks, Christi.</s>BLACKWELL: Yes, those numbers coming out at 9:00. Also at 9:00 on "STATE OF THE UNION," we are going to hear from Donald Trump. But let's talk about the devastation across California now. Two major wildfires responsible for the destruction of more than a thousand homes and that number could grow. Plus, live pictures now of sunrise at revolution square in Havana. Tens of thousands of people expected. Maybe hundreds of thousands of people as the hours go on. About 90 minutes now from the beginning of the pope's mass. Live coverage continues in a moment.