Outrageous Statement From Donald Trump Launches Him Further Ahead In The Polls; Some Insight From Voters Who Are Willing To Follow Trump  Even Away From The Republican Party If They Necessarily Need To
DR. DREW PINSKY, HLN HOST: Another -- well, should we call it outrageous statement from Donald Trump launches him further ahead in the polls. And, tonight, we get some insight from voters who are willing to follow him, follow him even away from the Republican party if they necessarily need to. Listen to why Trump thinks he stays on top.</s>DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am a person who happens to be very smart, and I happen to have a certain street sense. And, I know where things are going.</s>DON LEMON, HOST OF "CNN TONIGHT" PROGRAM: Why not just sit on your big lead and just let it ride?</s>TRUMP: Because, Don, I have to do what is right. We need a dialogue in this country and throughout the world. We have a big problem. I want safety for our citizens. They deserve it. They deserve it, and they are not getting it.</s>TRUMP: I am leading in every poll by a lot. It looks like I am going to win. My whole life has been about winning. I am not like so many of the other people that you talk to that are essentially losers, OK. I know how to win. I intend to win.</s>PINSKY: Joining me our friend, Jane Velez-Mitchell, author and founder of Janeunchained.com; Loni Coombs, former prosecutor, author of "You`re Perfect and Other Lies Parents Tell"; Mike Slater hosts of "The Mike Slater" show at KFMB radio; Christine Choe, Police Psychologist and Ernie White, Civil Rights Activist. Trump`s plan to ban -- well, he claims to put a stay on Muslims entering the United States but has been met with outrage throughout the world. Here, though, how he clarified this plan to Don Lemon.</s>LEMON: Are you racist?</s>TRUMP: I am the least racist person that you have ever met. If it is not Muslims, if it is another group, I would look at them too. I am about safety. I want safety for this country. I want safety for our citizens. All it is a break until our politicians, who are grossly incompetent, by the way, can get their act together.</s>LEMON: Figure out what? What is there to figure out?</s>TRUMP: Why is there such hatred and such viciousness. Where does this hatred come from? Why does it come? We have to figure it out.</s>PINSKY: And, Trump supporters seem unfazed by this plan for the Muslim immigrants. One more tape. Listen to this.</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST OF "NEW DAY" PROGRAM: He did not say terror suspects, he said Muslims. What do you think of that?</s>JOHN HIKEL, DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER: I do not think that is unreasonable to do, because we need to make sure that the people here are safe.</s>WILLIAM BAER, DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER: It is not like due process or constitutional rights apply to people outside of the country coming into the country.</s>JOSH YOUSSEF, DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER: Immigration is not a right. It is a privilege. And, you have to meet certain criteria in order to be able to emigrate to the United States. And, it just seems that the majority of terror activities that have taken place over the past couple of decades and more specifically since 9/11 have been perpetrated by people of the Islamic faith. And, so, I would say that when you see the propensity of terrorist attacks being committed by Christians or Buddhists and we start blocking them as well.</s>GERRY DELEMUS, DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER: When Jews come to America or Christians come to America, they are not trying to reinvent America because they meld in. We are a Judeo-Christian nation. Islam, if you read the Quran or the Hadith , they are in conflict with our constitution.</s>PINSKY: All right, Jane. Safety, safety, safety, but are they sacrificing our values on behalf of that safety?</s>JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, FOUNDER, JANEUNCHANGED.COM: Well, you know who is in conflict with the constitution? Donald Trump, because what he is suggesting is totally unconstitutional. This man is frightening. He is a bigot. He is a xenophobe. And, you know, he does not have all the support that everybody is saying he has. Two-thirds of Americans just polled said they are frightened or concerned about the prospect of a Bush presidency. What he has --</s>PINSKY: A Trump presidency?</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: Sorry. Maybe that was a Freudian slip. Maybe that was a Freudian slip. A Trump presidency. What he does have is the support of approximately 35 percent of republicans. Republicans are only 25 percent of the electorate. You are talking about a relatively small group of people.</s>PINSKY: Mike, what do you say?</s>MIKE SLATER, CONSERVATIVE TALK SHOW HOST: Jane, do you really think the U.S. constitution applies to Muslims in Pakistan?</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: It applies to people coming into the United States.</s>SLATER: Why? How? Based on what?</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: We are a nation of immigrants. OK? Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free --</s>SLATER: You want to blow people up?</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: You know what? There is more than one mass shooting every day in this country. And, the majority of those mass shootings are not Muslims. Take a look at Adam Lanza. OK? A privileged Connecticut boy living with his mom. He was not a Muslim. He killed 27 people, including 20 children.</s>SLATE: What I am hearing is we have enough of our own problems. We do not need to be importing more.</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes, our problem are guns.</s>PINSKY: Wait.</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: Guns are the bottom line here.</s>PINSKY: Hang on. We are not jumping into guns. But, Loni, let us get back to the constitution.</s>LONI COOMBS, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Right. Right.</s>PINSKY: You are nodding your head at constitution, but we have done this before. We have restricted immigration in the past.</s>COOMBS: Right, we have.</s>PINSKY: And, sometimes ignominiously so. Sometimes we wish we had not, like Jews in the second World War.</s>COOMBS: Absolutely. That is exactly right.</s>PINSKY: Those people went back to the camps because of us.</s>COOMBS: That is right. We got the Japanese camps --</s>PINSKY: Yes.</s>COOMBS: Internment camps here in America, which Donald Trump is citing as a wonderful example backing up his proposed ban here. Look, I find it so ironic that Donald Trump is going, "Where is the hate coming from? Where is the hate coming from?" Look in the mirror, buddy. Everything you say is hate speech. And, he just picks one group after another to pick, to marginalize, to stigmatize. And, then, they are the ones that are going to be banned, that are going to be kept out, that are going to be kicked out. And, it is extremely frightening. It has nothing to do with safety. That is not going to make this country any more safer.</s>PINSKY: Well, he thinks as well.</s>COOMBS: He thinks, and that is the frightening thing is he thinks in his mind that if he bans big groups of people that will somehow make this country better. There is no evidence of that.</s>JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL: The shooter was born in Chicago.</s>PINSKY: And, Ernie -- That is right. And, Ernie, though, is not the problem that, you know, in the past we have had countries with governments that were coming after us were the enemy. Now, we are talking about a people, a certain religious -- you know, a sacred sort of thing in this country is religious freedom. Now, we are signaling out people of a certain religious faith and saying, "Well, those people cannot immigrate." Is not that the hot button we are getting into here?</s>ERNIE WHITE, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: It may be the hot button, but there are a lot of Muslims that agree with Donald Trump, and I will tell you why. This is about Sharia Law. And, Sharia Law in the Middle East is a lot different than Sharia Law here in America. Sharia Law is the law of Islam. And, they cannot have another law, which means you cannot even have a constitution.</s>PINSKY: But, Ernie, but you are saying then the people that would flee that are the very people we should not let into the country.</s>WHITE: But, here is the problem. When you are talking about ISIS, when you talk about al-Qaeda, look what happened in San Bernardino? What do they look like? We do not know. But, what we do know is when you import Sharia Law from the Middle East, pure Sharia Law, not the softened Sharia Law you see here in America, pure Sharia Law, there is no in between. It is either Sharia or nothing else.</s>PINSKY: And, Christine, are we -- I get so -- I have a strange feeling through all this. I feel lost. I feel like I do not know what is good, and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, what is a reaction to something that we are overdoing or what is something that a reaction that we need to have to the world situation we are in. How do people navigate through this?</s>CHRISTINE CHOE, POLICE PSYCHOLOGIST: I think people are stressed.</s>PINSKY: Yes.</s>CHOE: For a good reason.</s>PINSKY: But is it out of fear that somebody is going to put a vote down for Donald Trump, or is it out of reason?</s>CHOE: I think the overarching question is safety. I think when we see tragedies like the San Bernardino shootings, the overarching question is can that happen to me? Can that happen to my family? Can that happen to us? And, that is a scary thought.</s>PINSKY: But, Mike -- I mean, Mike. Yes, Mike.</s>SLATER: Yes.</s>PINSKY: The question is, are we then reacting out of fear? And, is that how we should react or are we being irrational?</s>SLATER: Totally.</s>PINSKY: Do you understand the question I am asking you?</s>SLATER: Absolutely.</s>PINSKY: Yes.</s>SLATER: So, you mentioned the qualifier that Donald Trump put on until our country`s representative can get their act together. Did you know there are 72 employees at the Department of Homeland Security, who are on the terror --</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: That is nard, yes.</s>SLATER: Jane. Jane, Jane, come on now.</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: That was actually disputed --</s>SLATER: The Department of Homeland Security could not even vet their own employees and you think we are going to properly vet refugees?</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: I am not saying the government is competent.</s>SLATER: There you go!</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: No. No. Wait a second. Instead of doing a mass sweep and stereotyping and condemning a large group of people in and an entire religion, let us talk about why they did not catch this one woman. And, what is wrong with our government. And, I will tell you what it is. Mass surveillance. Because they are so busy listening to all of our phone calls that they did not catch the one person they should have caught.</s>PINSKY: All right.</s>WHITE: But, you just made a clear point. If they could not catch that one person, how are we going to catch 200,000?</s>PINSKY: All right. We are going to stop. We are going to stop. We got to stop, because we are going to get into details about this woman, about the couple and some other plans that they had at least the husband had to kill. Back after this.