Is GOP Ready To Unite Against Donald Trump?; How Do Trump's Muslim Comments Impact 2016 Race?
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (via telephone): I have no doubt that we have no choice but to do exactly what I said until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on because we have a problem in this country.</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: That was Donald Trump defending his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States and once leaving the Republican Party grappling with how to handle Donald Trump. Is it possible for the party to unite against him? Let's ask Christine Todd Whitman. She is the former New Jersey governor, former EPA administrator under George W. Bush, and she is the president of Whitman's Strategy Group. Governor, great to have you in here. So Donald Trump has a point. We're not perfectly vetting people. Obviously one of the terrorists in San Bernardino came in on a fiancee visa. So what do you make of his suggestion to temporarily ban Muslims from coming into the U.S.?</s>CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN (R), FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR: I think it's counterproductive. Right now we still make mistakes, people still come through with all the best intelligence we have. I still don't think we're sharing with the rest of the world the way we need to.</s>CAMEROTA: So why not shut it down?</s>WHITMANN: That's not going to solve the problem. We are a country of immigrants. You have people coming in. We want them here. We want them here because we want what they can provide and give to our country. And they come here for good and positive reasons. Donald Trump keeps citing the -- what FDR did during the second world war in tearing the Japanese. We saw that as a huge mistake, one of the best of the units that fought for the United States and Europe was a Japanese unit that they finally allowed in toward the end. People are not defined solely by their religion. If you start on this jihad of its own, identifying Muslim, if you're Muslim, you're automatically bad, you'll drive other people into the campus saying this is just wrong and we're going to take it out on you because language shapes behavior. That's what scares me about his language.</s>CAMEROTA: So this has left the Republicans in a pickle trying to figure out what to do about him. Donald Trump has pointed out that what they usually do is follow his lead. That's what we've seen so far in this race.</s>WHITMANN: I don't know that we can say they follow his lead. He is not the Republican Party. Right now he is defining it. That is the issue for the Republicans. He is who people think of when they say Republican and that to me is -- I worry about it. It's a tragedy. It shouldn't be because he is on an ego trip and the language he's using is extremely dangerous. I'm very worried that we'll see people take action. I think he is giving them approval to act out against. The head of the college in Virginia, who encourage his students, everyone go out and buy a gun, and then if they saw Muslims to do something about it. That is just -- that's just wrong. It's against what this country stands for and it's certainly against what the Republican Party stands for.</s>CAMEROTA: When I say that people are following his lead, his Republican rivals have sometimes taken a page out of his playbook and he recognizes that. Let me play for you what Donald Trump told Barbara Walters about this last night.</s>TRUMP: The worst thing that's ever happened to ISIS, the people in my party fully understands that. They're running against me. For the most part they have no poll numbers. I'm leading by a lot. They get it. They're trying to get publicity for themselves. When I came out against illegal immigration, everybody thought the same thing. Two weeks later everybody was on my side including the members of my own party.</s>CAMEROTA: To his point, he starts the conversation and often his Republican rivals then pick up the conversation and follow his lead. Something feels different about these Muslim comments. What do you think the party is going to do with Donald Trump?</s>WHITMANN: Well, you've seen it already. You've had people who have stayed out, the head of the Republican National Committee, the leader in the House, who haven't been commenting on the presidential race finally saying this is too far. This is the kind of language that's extremely damaging. Not just to the party. We have to think beyond party. Think about this country and care about this country, and this kind of language is enormously eroding and very, very dangerous.</s>CAMEROTA: I don't know if you just saw this little clip. I sat down with a bunch of Donald Trump supporters yesterday and they are passionate.</s>WHITMANN: They are. He's tapped a vein. There is no question. First of all, if you look at your history and read your history in the lead-up to the Second World War, this is the kind of rhetoric that allowed Hitler to move forward. You had people who were scared. The economy was bad. They want someone to blame. We're in a different situation because we have seen that there is a -- we're in a radical -- we have a war going on in a sense, a different kind of war than we've ever faced before. There's a group of people out there, they're not all Muslims. It's not just Muslims. It's radicalized Muslims, terrorists, they're different than the average Muslim shall we say, because they have a passion. They're not going to be satisfied until they see Sharia law all across the world. Look at Russia. Putin now is having to do rethink. I hope the president is quietly, but we need a more visible effort to sit down with our all lies, including the Arab countries, including Russia, saying look, guys, they're after all of us. We need to share intelligence. We need to have a policy where we're working together to try to address this. Mr. Putin if you are just going to continue to try to do away with only those who oppose Assad, we're going to double down on the sanctions which are already causing him problems. I think you can get him to the table. If it were me, I'd want to see us create safe zone on the border of Turkey in Syria, saying we're going to protect you. We're working with the other allies on a no-fly zone. We can't just impose one on an independent country. You can't do that. Do it with others. Then keep those people safe but train the men that are there and the women who want to go back and take back their countries. They're the only ones who can do it. We can't do it. But to just say we're beginning to stop all Muslims is not addressing the problem and is, I this I, driving people into their camp because it is an attack on a religion.</s>CAMEROTA: Christine Todd Whitman, great to have you on</s>NEW DAY. WHITMANN: Pleasure.</s>CAMEROTA: Thank you so much for being here. Let's get over to Chris.</s>CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Of course, all of this theoretical discussion is balanced by the practical in what we just saw in San Bernardino. We have new information that the male terrorist was planning an attack as early as 2012. How did he slip under the radar? Who should have known? Next.