Sent sense of security. Marco made the choice to go the direction of the major donors to support amnesty. This is the lie that teds campaign is built on. We should have a path to legal status for the 12 Million People that are here illegally. Securing our borders is not antiimmigrant. If you guys ask one more mean question i may have to leave the stage. I guess impart of the establishment because barbara bush is my month. The days for the clintons in Public Housing are over. Republicans want at it last night over immigration, terrorism, Hillary Clinton and a whole lot more, but even though he skipped the debate donald trump still dominated the night and now voters in iowa get one last weekend to think it all over before mondays caucus. Lets get to Peter Alexander, kristen we will ter, Steve Kornacki, and bill karins. Lets start with our team out on the trial. Peter and kristen in iowa, carry in New Hampshire. You were waiting for trump to begin a rally. What is tare they saying about decision to script the debate . They are confident they made the decision in part because last night kurnd into a three screen night. Usually its people watching the television and with their cell phones or computers doing google back and forth as it goes on. It was a threescreen night because you had the cellphone or computer and two channels could bounce back and forth from. During the debate or flipping over to watch donald trump. It appears the early numbers indicate that this debate was the Second Lowest watched debate of somewhere between 11 to 13 Million Viewers, compare that to the highest rated debate back in august which was 24 Million Viewers. Donald trump during his rally for the veterans says that he raised more than 5 million and while during the debate his name was only mentioned seven times, during his rally he took a moment to talk about jeb bush. This is what he had to say. You look at a guy like jeb bush, he has taken low energy. He has taken 120 extremely low. I shouldnt say, hes debating right now, maybe hes doing great. Hes probably looking for me. Hes saying, has anyone seen trump . Where is trump . Where is he . Where is he . Reporter so while it was an event to raise money according to donald trump to raise money for veterans, it was also very much a political event, as is the case right here. He will be here in about an hour. This is a little bit of a surprise, you can see that there are some empty seats here, granted its 10 00 in the morning, its during a workday, but not the typical kind of standing room only, people being turned away at a donald trump event. I can show you outside this morning in the cold there were still a very long of people and many of those who are here who were standing in line are veterans or retirees and those that i spoke to say that they are solidly behind Donald Trumps decision to boycott the debate. Well hear what donald trump has so say in about an hour. Kerry, thanks. Peter, was anyone on the stage able to capitalize in a debate without trump . The person who was hoping to best capitalize of course was ted cruz. He is number two in the polls, but quickly became the number one target on that stage. Look at this, you will get a kick out of this, this is the headline, this is what iowans are waking up to this morning, it reads, rough night for cruz. Clearly he had a tough experience when all the fire was turned on him, one of the reasons that donald trump wasnt there is that he didnt have to be that target last night. But it did provide an opportunity for others, including jeb bush and marco rubio to try to make their case, but the two men both from florida got into a Good Exchange on the topic of immigration after an interesting montage was played that showed marco rubio in the past vowing that he would fight amnesty and of course ultimately supporting the gang of eight immigration bill. Take a listen. When you led the charge with the gang of eight i supported it because you asked me to and you ask people to support, you shouldnt cut and run, you should stick with it and thats exactly what happened, he cut and run and thats a tragedy. I wrote a book about this called immigration wars, you can get it on 2. 99 on amazon. Its not a best seller. You can get it, its affordable for everybody. We should have a path to legal status for the 12 Million People that are people illegally. Interestingly that jeb mentions the book, that is the book where you changed your position on immigration because you used to support a path to citizenship. So did you. In the book so marco rubio of course there you saw found himself on the defensive his campaign has been trying to get the twitt twitter moek joe mentum trending right now and he has been growing. He has been moving up from third, as far away from ted cruz in second as ted cruz is from donald trump. It will be interesting to see what happens to marco rubio and what we see on a caucus night. He is a candidate that a lot of people believe he has the potential to be the antitrump candidate going forward. Also interesting to see the emergence somewhat in the debate of jeb bush, someone who trump is, you know, recently as last night calls low energy and i think thats affected him, certainly in the peoples eyes. Did he capitalize on the fact that trump wasnt there and on immigration, you know, he has policies. Reporter i think a lot of people will say that hes one of the people that best benefited by trumps absence last night. He opened up with a oneliner that he could deliver finally unchallenged about donald trump, joking about how he finds donald trump to be a teddy bear and the two have gotten along well. He got a laugh from the iowa crowd when he made that point right now. So he a guy who likes to cast himself as a proven leader with a proven record from his years of service in florida, a person who has had detailed plans throughout, really performed well and looked much more comfortable without the sort of bully of donald trump as it were on stage last night as one person described it its like that kid going out to school when their bully had finally been expelled, he felt a lot more like himself it appeared, but its unclear exactly how much he will benefit from what was a Strong Performance last night. Hes not even going to be here in iowa for caucus night. The campaign acknowledges they dont expect to do all that well in this state, theyre putting a lot more chips on the deck in New Hampshire, but in New Hampshire our new poll shows trump is at 31 , jeb bush trailing way behind at 8. Thank you, peter. Lets go to Kristen Welker who is covering the democrats for us this morning in nare final push in iowa. Kristen, how is that looking . Reporter well, it is a tough fight to the finish here in iowa, thats for sure, jose. What were seeing is the rhetoric really ramp up in these final days leading up to the caucus. Bernie sanders the underdog has been gaining momentum, gaining ground in the polls. He had vowed that he wasnt going to go negative in this campaign, but were seeing him really walk right up to that line, he released this ad, for example, slamming Hillary Clinton for her close ties to wall street and he is also make taking a much sharper tone, attacking her, trying to paint her as a flipflopper. Interestingly, secretary clinton trying to showcase her softer side and letting her top surrogate, former president bill clinton, her husband, defend her in the strongest terms. Take a listen to some of the heated rhetoric from the trail yesterday. It is great to be against the war after you vote for the war. It is great to be for gay rights after you insult the entire Gay Community by supporting doma. It is great to finally kicking and screaming come out against the tpp, but where were you on all of the other trade agreements . What all of this is about, what its about, is that what leadership means is not simply following the majority. Everything she ever touched she made better. And so next time you hear somebody say shes part of the establishment, and planned parenthood and Human Rights Campaign fund are, too, because they support her because of what shes done, you ought to think about that. You ought to think about how she was the only candidate running to went to wall street before the crash. Reporter and together a sense of just how close this race is, jose, lets take a look at the past five polls. Three of them show secretary clinton with a small lead, two of them show senator Bernie Sanders with a small lead. So ultimately on monday this is all going to come down to turnout. I have visited the Campaign Head quarters of both campaigns, they are in high gear trying to make sure people turn and caucus. A lot of focus in the Bernie Sanders campaign those young caucus goers, they want to make sure they do turn out. This final result in iowa could be determined by those younger caucus goers. Lester holt will have an interview with Hillary Clinton tonight on nbc nightly news. Thank you very much. Im here with Steve Kornacki. I want to touch on the democrats and republicans, but lets start with the republicans, the debate last night, Peter Alexander was showing us the headline in the local paper saying not a good night for cruz. That is a damning headline for ted cruz, thats the major newspaper in that state, we are three days away from this thing and theyre telling iowa cruz went into the debate last night he was already starting to lose momentum. He had the lead a month ago, donald trump has overtaken him, hes 7 points ahead in our poll. Its now marco rubio moving up, rubio is seven points behind cruz and there was cruz taking heat from rubio, from the moderators and donald trump wasnt there. Donald trump wasnt taking heat so ted cruz had the big target on his back last night, not a good place to be at this point for him. Lets talk about the democrats, you saw Bernie Sanders what a clear distinction of what his definition of leadership is versus obviously Hillary Clinton. You know, iowa is clearly so important for sanders. Is it a new Campaign Style for sanders . This is the dilemma for the Sanders Campaign in this final few days right now. Theres all this talk they have a negative ad made, are they going to put it on the airwaves, will we see them attack Hillary Clinton bluntly. Remember, Bernie Sanders when he got into this race in burlington back in may he said i have never run a negative political ad in my career. You listen to that clip right there, thats a guy who is doing a different kind of campaigning than he has ever done before. Lets go over to after ri melber. Good to si you. Good to see you. I love this. Lets talk a little bit about this whole issue when the candidates were talking about immigration last night, i think that was a poignant moment, an interesting moment. Where actually policy was discussed. A lot of policy, for people who want to know what these candidates will going to do which includes that small universe of 100, 125,000 iowans that are going to caucus. Donald trump wasnt on that stage but a lot of people got into it. Lets listen to some of that. I do not support blanket amnesty. You said more than that, snier no, i said i do not support you said earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty. It was. At the time in the context of that was in 2009 and 2010 where the last efficient for legalization was an effort done in the senate, it was an effort led by several people that provided almost an instant path with very little october stack als. The amendment is one sentence that said anyone here illegally but it the bill the bill you were amending allowed the bill was 1,000 pages, i introduced a series of amendments each designed to fix problems in the bill. A big standoff over obviously what went down in that famous gang of eight, compromised senate bill which did ultimately pass by 68 votes but did not become slaw. I want to put on the screen to remind people out of all of that debate what did you think, marco rubio did vote yes, ted cruz did vote against it. What you see is an attempt to try to spread the needle on the controversial part, what do we do about the policy dilemma of people who are here, do they become citizens or not . Whats interesting to me is that and bush, i think, got into it a little bit about rubio, that gang of eight bill was comprehensive Immigration Reform. Which. Which includes the border, tens of thousands of Additional Border agents to the border, you know, closing that porous border and then specific steps to be taken to deal with legal and illegal immigration, including the 12 Million People, but there are metrics involved. Why dont they talk about what exactly is in that bill instead of talking about whether they poison billed it or had an amendment or two. The reason they focus on the poison pill answer is that is a way to attack each other. Looking at the law what we know is that basically theres how you do it and theres when you do it. And one of the points weve seen throughout this debate and the primary voters will assess is this idea that the when, that you have to do the wall or the Border Security first no matter what else is distinct from what the senate actually did which was try to do it all together. There are metrics and issues that had to happen in that senate bill im not stream screaming at you but the senate bill i wish people would read it before they talk about it as you do always, but there are metrics. There are. Yes. Border agents on the border. There are issues of is the border secure before the rest of the bill takes effect and thats what i think is really getting lost in this. Right. Well, is it getting lost or for the people who are watching, theres a question of both, is everyone going to watch at the same level if donald trump is there or not. As a matter of iowa it doesnt matter because the debate was in iowa, everyone is covering t we heard a dald gate. Donald trump opted out. All people know about him eggs mr. Wall. Will that be a Winning Strategy . Time will tell. There was a nuanced discussion with different points on the map between bush, rub owe, cruz and megyn kelly who was raising some of the distinctions you just did. Thanks for allowing me into your office. Lets switch over to cal perry. Theyre doing the week in miami, weekend in new york. Thats what we do here, msnbc is life everywhere. Lets talk about the social media reaction to last night. I have to tell you it doesnt seem as though there was as much enthusiasm because trump was not there but there were policy positions discussed. Important ones as well. We dont know what the Television Ratings numbers will be, hopefully next hour we will have a look at the household numbers. These are the social media metrics, google, facebook and twitter. I want to tell our viewers the organization for trumps viewers was poor. It did not rate well compared to the dbchlt op debate hashtag. Here is your google trend. Normally you would see the candidates back and forth. Trump stuck at number one all night. What does this mean . Is that means that people were asking about it. Google trending more. They were searching him more on google than any of the other candidates and by a wide margin. The next thing is the twitter handle gopdebate. Trump trended more than the gop debate. During the gop debate. And he was not at the debate. I dont know what thats going to flush out for the tv numbers. Twitter growth trump number one, rubio number two, cruz third, paul fourth, Chris Christie, we were wondering how he would do, fifth. Fifth on twitter for christie and fifth on facebook. What about bush . Not even in the top five on any of these. Something else . No, thats it. Next hour hopefully a look at the household numbers, nielsen ratings, theyre starting to filter in. Trump saying without me its not going to be the same. That will be the issue all day. More on donald trump event, he arrived in iowa last night aboard his private jet, a 757 doubled trump force one. He then ordered to Drake University down the road from the Republican Debate where his supporters were waiting. I didnt want to be here, i have to be honest. I wanted to be about five minutes away and ive enjoyed that. Ive enjoyed that. All the online polls said ive done very well with that, with the debates and ive had a kick with it, but you have to stick up for your rights. When youre treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights. You have to do it. I want to bring in msnbc contributor New York Times correspondent josh baro. Good to see you. You say that what drumpd did last night was literally right out of his book art of the deal . So this is the book, the art of the deal. Look at this. This book which he says is his second Favorite Book in the world after the bible is the key to understanding what donald trump is up to, the things he describes about how he ran his real estate empire have been informing his campaign. There are a couple things that help us understand why he didnt show up to the debate. He talks about id rather fight than fold, he has folded a few times on this, he has made a number of these threats, he wanted cnn to give 5 million to veterans groups to get him to show up. He kept saying that, its like he kept saying he was going to run for president. He had to finally do it so people would believe him. Then he was going to sign the plenl not to run as independent, im not sure, yes, no, yes, he did. You sometimes have to follow through on these threats. I think the bigger thing for unde