A stark contrast to the last mission that ended in an explosion. This time the booster returning safely to earth, an event spaerx founder elon musk is calling revolutionary. Mistaken universe. More fallout for the Miss Universe pageant and the blund their crowned the wrong winner. Does this video show it wasnt all Steve Harveys fault. And whiteout christmas. Much of the west pummeled with snow making driving treacherous but skiers very happy, while here in the east its a very efferent story, today, tuesday, december 22nd, 2015. Announcer from nbc news, this is today with matt lauer and Savannah Guthrie live from studio 1a in rockefeller plaza. So, welcome, everybody, to today on a Tuesday Morning. Im matt lauer in with hoda kotb while savannah enjoys some vacation time. Look outside to the crowd. Some people dont have jackets on. I say break out the thong in new york city. I was afraid you were going to say that. Anyway, well talk more about snow out west. Well talk about that as well. Let us get to our top story on this Tuesday Morning. President ial can idates donald trump and Hillary Clinton bypass their immediate competition entering what seems like a general election grudge match. Last night at a real trump spewed venom towards clinton who refused to back down from her claim that he has become isis best recruiteder. Nbcs katy tur is in grand rapids, michigan. Katy, good morning to you. Reporter good morning, matt. The rhetoric on this campaign trail, particularly with this candidate, has never been mild, but donald trump took it to another level last night when describing Hillary Clinton, begging the question what if anything is surprising when it comes to donald trump anymore. The stage may have looked festive, donald trump and his were anything but merry and bright, at least when it came to pr esters. Really are a loser. Reporter press. By the way, i hate some of these people but id never kill them. I hate them. No, these people, honestly. Ill be honest. Ill be ho st. I would never kill them. I would never do that. Ah, lets see. No, i wouldnt. Reporter and above all, Hillary Clinton. Shes terrible. Reporter with supporters cheering h r onedhe billionaire lasered in on the former secretary of state for claiming that his rheto c is being used as a recruiting tool for iies. And it turned out to be a lie. Shes a liar. Reporter Intelligence Experts say isis hasnt sed donald trump videos to recruited, but the clinton camp isnt backing down saying hell no to trumps demand for an apology. The person that needs to apologize in this matter is donald trump for his hateful bigot the rhetoric towards muslimamericans. Clinton for using the bathroom during a break in saturdays debate. Sory. What happened to her. Im watching the debate, and she disappeared. I know where she went. Disgusting. Reporter and recalling clintons 2008 primary loss with a vulgar term used to describe the males anatomy. She was going to win and she was favored to win and she got [ bleep ], she lost. Reporter five weeksed to th iowa caucus and its already starting to feel like the general electron. A general election, as matt said, in the sense that both of the frontrunners are focusing in on each other and ignoring their immediate competition. Add another twist to this rivalry. As you know, ivanka is pregnant with her third child and now Chelsea Clinton is pregnant as well, announcing her second pregnancy on twitter, and shes due sometime next summer. Back to you. The katy tur, thank you very much. Mark halperin is managing editor of bloomberg politics. Good morning, matt. Youve been covering politics a long time. This, a candidate, these are slips of the tongue who goes out of his way to be outrageous, demeaning, degr ing, sexist, juvenile and continues to gain support . Never seen anything like it. In the Trump Campaign they say let trump be trump. Thats trump being trump and as weve seen thats worked for him. As we get down towar p voting in a nomination fight, as we head towards the general election if hes the nominee, this version of donald trump i dont think has as good a chance of winning as some other versions weve seen. I he is today to say this because ive asked the same question to you and others so many times but was there a misstep . He scored some points on this show yesterday demanding an apology on hillary cninton for his remarks about him bork an isis recruiteder . After that rant last night, i dont hear anyone talking about that potential apology anymore. I think both of them, you know, katy mentioned they are both about to have new grandchildren. Neither of them want to look have their grandchildren hear about how they ran and have the last 48 hours of it. This country needs a highminded debate. Will this hurt him, every trump supporter even when he says crude things, well take that. You talk about a highminded debate. This is anything but. When you talk to the people behind the scenes of the Clinton Campaign, do they think she can benefit from this short of dialogue . In the short term they want to show she will stand up to him and make him the face of the repu ican party so that the images hes leaving behind will carry over to the general election. Thats a shortterm benefit. You hear some people saying this may be a little out of control. This is not the kind of thing we want to deal with day in and day out from a guy, donald trump, who will say what it what he thinks it takes to win. You also have contacts in the Republican Party, so when you talk to the people behind the scenes in the Republican Party, debate or rhetoric is going to impact their party in the long term . Well, this is a nightmare for the Republican Party between now and iowa and New Hampshire and iowa because this shows more clearly than ever trump can dominate every day between now and the end the beginning of the voting, and hes got a lead so a guy with a lead who is dominating, hard to break long term, this is not the image the Republican Party wants to, have but its not the image the Democratic Party wants to have or anyone serious in public life or National Tents to have being discussed. Trump has a lead. He has a lead in the national polls. Hes behind ted cruz in the polling coming out of iowa. I talked to him on the show yesterday. I said why does it appear that youre using kid gloves when referring to ted cruz and youre bashing all. Other candidates and he said, you know what. Thereto will come a time when the peace has to end and hell have to go after ted cruz. How will they do that . Trump versus cruz will be an interesting fight because weve seen very little of it. We saw trump talking about when he went after cruz for a little bit, talked about him as a maniac and how he couldnt get along with people. Trump will put himself forward, if the two of them do end up as finalists as the guy people like and say they dont like ted cruz. There will be issue fights but trump and cruz are happy now with the status quo, happy facing off against each other as finalists rather than worrying about anything else and if you look at national polls, most of the state polls, those two guys are head and shoulders above the rest of the field. Mark halperin, always good to see you. Happy holidays. You, too, thanks. All right. Now to space history. It was made overnight as the private company spacex managed to launch and resupply a missioned to the space station and land the rocket back to earth. Nbcs tom costello covers space. Good morning, tom. Reporter yeah, good morning. The pictures were dramatic and exciting, but what spacex managed to pull off is truly extraordinary, and it now opens the door to an entirely new way spacex making history overnight with the falcon 9 rocket la nching 11 satellites and then return safely to earth. That is the first stage coming back down to land. Reporter its the first time an unmanned rocket has returned to earth successfully using a vertical landing, and it was spot on the gigantic 23story rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral air bores face at 8 29 p. M. A live webcast from the companys california headquarters captured it all. Its main mission, to supply the space station but also create reusable rockets to save on launch costs and make space more widely accessible. Spacexed is the brainchild of elon musk, the 44yearold billionaire mogul also behind tesla. This successful landing comes six months after a failed attempt in june with a mtssive explosion. Shortly after launch, the rocket to the space station disintegrated. Last night redemption and triumph with elon musk tweeting, welcome back, baby. Nasa weighed in, too, tweeting congratulations spacex on your successful vertical landing of the first stage back to earth. You know, as you know, several companies are competing for a piece of the pie to resupply the space station and eventually carry astronauts to the station. Competitor jeff bezos, the ceo of amazon. Com achieved a similar success, and couldnt help but gloat when he tweeted congrats on lnd g ing sub orbital booster. Welcome to the club, a little ribbing there. Their reaction in the control room. Oh, wow. The pressure on those people to have that happened successfully was enormous. Euphoria. Absolutely. Lets talk about new developments in the sandra land case, the chicago woman found dead in a texas jail cell three routine traffic stop that went dramatically wrong. Five months after the incident dr mew National Protests the grand jury on monday declined to indict yone, including the jailer in connection with her death. Grand jurors will reconvene in january to consider remaining issues. Blands family says they have no confidence in the grand jury investigation. And there are new details today about the deadly hitandrun crash on the las vegas city. Tate Lakeisha Holloway will be in court for a bail hearing. Shes the 24yearold woman who is accused of plowing i o pedestrian with her 3yearold in the back seat. One person was killed and 35 others were hurt. Holloway faces murder and attempted murder charges. Investigators say she did not appear distressed when she was arrested. She had afoarently been in las vegas for about a week living her car and running are out of today Sergeant Bowe bergdahl will be arraigned facing a courtmartial on c rges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Hes accused of leaving his post back in afghanistan in 2009 befoel being captured by the taliban. 259yearold from idaho was held for five heres and then freed in a very controversial prisoner swap for five prisoners held at guantanamo bay. He faces a maximum of life in prison convict the. The taliban is claiming responsibility for a deadly attack on u. S. Troops in afghanistan. Six troops were killed and one hurt on monday when a suicide bomber rammed a motorcycle loaded with explosives into a foot patrol. It happened near bagram air field, the largest base in the country. Amongag victims, a new York City Police detective on reserve duty, a 15year member of the nypd is survived by his wife and two children. And federal health o icials of e. Coli chases linked to chipotle restaurants to see if they are part of a larger outbreak that started back in october. The cdc says five people in kansas, north dakota and oklahoma got sick about a week after eating at chipotle outlets late last month. Chipotle believes the cases are related to the earlier outbreak that sickened 50 p ple in nine states but the cdc says early evidence shows a different strain of the bacteria may be involved. Chipotles stock hit a 52week low on monday. A police ofnucer in michigan got a surprise after the driver of a car he had stopped for erratic driving on saturday night made a getaway. The incident was captured by the cruiserss dashcam but the driver didnt very far, losing control of the car and careening into the oncoming traffic. Thats when the driver, a 13yearold boy and his passenger, his 6yearold no one was more surprised than the pursuing officer. It turns out they took their dads girlfriend car out for a joyride. Look at kid running. I think the sister was 8, still, 13 and 8. Wow. Ridiculous. Yeah. All righty then. Lets get a check of the weather with dylan dreyer who is in while al is taking a vacation. Its officially winter. Not out there. If you forget what snow looks like, take a look. Lots of . Out in the high elevations of california, out neither sierra and up across oregon and into washington statement lots of folks enjoying the snow out there. This is muchneeded snow pack that they need this time of year to get through the later months. It did cause some delays on the road. Travel was very treacherous. The roadways were very slippery, besides the slopes were obviously slippery, too, always a good thing. Also a lot of rain along the coast of oregon. Winds so strong it knocked over they were gusting up near 65 miles per hour, downing trees and power lines and there are some power outages, one of many storms that has been making its way into the Pacific Northwest so weve got this weve got this moisture streaming in off the pacific, and you can see some of the heavier rain still falling across Central California right now. Weve got the mountain snow this. Will continue to accumulate as we go through the next couple of days. Great news for the ski resorts and higher elevations. Out east weve got the ridge in the jet stream. Were looking at record high temperatures possible across 30 states over the next three days. Were looking at temperatures to run about 15 to 30, even 40 degrees above average. Take a look as we go through the day today. Temperatures will continue to warm into the 509s, 60s, even some 70s up and down the east coast. Its not going to be nice and sunny. Does come with a lot of rain storms in southeastern texas. Getting closer and closer. Its mainly light shower activity to the west of us. Theres heavier stuff further south that could come on in late they are morning and in the afternoon hours. Take the umbrella. You need it from time to time. Just a gray day. Were starting out at 55. 58 at noon. A high of 60 degrees today. Tomorrow, same thing. More rain expected in the afternoon. 62. Warm on thursday. Christmas eve. 72. 62 Christmas Day with sunshine and back to showers by the and thats your latest forecast. Dylan, thanks so much. Turning now to the privileged 18yearold convicted drunk driver who is now on the run. Ethan couch dodged jail time in this case after his attorneys argued that he was too wealthy to understand the consequences of his action. This morning investigators say that controversial affluenza defense is now driving tips. Nbcs Kerry Sanders is in texas with the late on this story. Good morning, kerry. Reporter well, good morning, hoda. This morning the Fugitive Task force is checking flight manifests at the airport to see if ethan couch may have come here, hopped a plane and fled. With what they know right now they say its just as likel he took off behind the wheel of a car or a pickup truck. This morning deputies are searching for a harleydavidson edition ford f150 like this that ethan couchs moter tonya drives. Shes not a suspect, but because she went missing the same day as her son, authorities believe she may be helping him. Family. If youre wealthy in this country, can you continually elude law enforcement. I dont know about this country but not in tarrant county. Reporter in 2013 ethan couch driving drunk killed four people and injured nine in a horrendous accident. S defense, that he didnt know right from wrong because he grew up affluent. That led to probation instead of prison time and outrage. Investigators believe this video apparently of couch as a beer popping party is why hes on fhe run. Others told the d. A. Couch was there and even though hes not seen Drinking Alcohol it could be a violation of his probation. Tarrt county sheriff anderson finally says what was wrong, couchs probation, can now be made a right. I would really like for him to see up close and personal the inside w kings of the adult skrl Justice System and maybe, his life, learn something. Reporter the family members of those who died in the accident have chosen in the to talk, but the sheriff says when ethan couch is captured, if hes sent to prison, those family members, those victims family members may finally see some justice. Hoda . All right. Thanks. So much. More fallout for steve harvey as Miss Universe crown confusion raines supreme online. And yadda, yadda, yadda. President obama teaming up with Jerry Seinfeld as he dabbles in kids don t stay little forever. So help them get the opportunity they need. It s never too early or too late to save for college. 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But, if we didnt hoist you up in the air we wouldnt be carmax. We expect a lot from our cars and we need to make sure that youll make the grade. You have to admit, youre looking awfully nice. Oh just relax. Its gonna be a long time before anybody peeks at your undercarriage again. Wheos the rebel now . No way. Yes way savor breakfast any tim