Donald Trump responds to his critics
The Republican presidential frontrunner sounds off on the prospect of a brokered convention and his controversial call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.
This is a rush transcript from "Fox News Sunday," December 13, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: I’m Chris Wallace.
Today, Donald Trump fires back at top Republicans who were talking about a brokered convention to block him from the nomination.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: Do you have a warning for GOP leaders?
Trump on the firestorm over his call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.
You've been called a bigot, a fascist, a demagogue.
And on a candidate who's becoming his top rival.
What do you think of Ted Cruz?
And the GOP front-runner takes us behind the scenes of his campaign headquarters only on "Fox News Sunday."
Then, a new Fox poll on who's leading in Iowa, just 50 days before the caucuses.
Plus, world leaders announce a climate deal. We'll ask Secretary of State Kerry whether it will hurt the U.S. economy.
Also, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel apologizes for how he handled the police shooting of a teenager.
But protesters are still calling for him to resign.
Our Sunday group on whether the mayor can hold on to his job.
And our power player of the week, finding new ways to treat terrible disease.
All right now on "Fox News Sunday."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: And hello again from Fox News in Washington.
We'll have our in-depth interview with Donald Trump in a moment, but first, a new Fox poll which shows there's a tight battle for the lead in Iowa. Among likely caucus-goers, Senator Ted Cruz now stands at 28 percent, and Trump at 26 percent, within the poll's margin of error. Marco Rubio and Dr. Ben Carson are the only other candidates in double digits.
But when the results are narrowed to Republicans who say they will definitely attend the caucuses, Cruz's lead over Trump expands to seven points, 32 percent to 25.
Still, when Iowa Republicans are asked who is likely to beat Hillary Clinton, 32 percent say Trump, far more than pick Cruz or Rubio.
On Friday, I sat down with Trump at Trump Tower in New York City to discuss his campaign and his explosive call to ban Muslim from coming to the U.S.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: Mr. Trump, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."
DONALD TRUMP, R-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you.
WALLACE: Top Republicans met in Washington this week and discussed the possibility of a brokered convention to block you from being the GOP nominee. Your reaction to the idea that members of the establishment, some members are talking about trying to stop you?
TRUMP: Well, I think they're making a big mistake, number one. I think I’m going to be the one that beats Hillary. You know, the Fox poll, your own poll came out and said I beat Hillary rather easily. I think they are rather kidding themselves. I’m leading in virtually every state. I’m leading in Iowa, a Des Moines Register does a poll, and I’m sure that will be negative when they announce their poll.
WALLACE: But when you say they’re kidding themselves, meaning what?
TRUMP: They’re kidding themselves, I’m going to win. I think I’m going to win. You know, I’m not one of these other guys that goes down. I don't go down. I go up. My whole life has been about winning. I’m going to win.
WALLACE: You say that you make break your pledge and run as an independent if the party doesn't treat you fairly. When you hear about leaders talking about a brokered convention, when you hear about the New York GOP, some people saying let's throw him out, do you have a warning for GOP leaders?
TRUMP: Look, I understand what they're going through. I wasn't supposed to be here. I was a member of the establishment seven months ago. I gave $350,000 to the Republican Governors Association. I’m not supposed to be doing this. You see I’m supposed to be on the other side writing checks and having people do whatever I want, puppets, like puppets.
WALLACE: So, what do you say to the Republican leaders?
TRUMP: I say, folks, you know, I’m sorry I did this to you, but you've got to get used to it. It's one of those little problems in life.
Now, I'll see whether or not I’m being treated fairly. I want to run as a Republican. I’m a conservative guy. I have great ideas. I’m going to make our country great again. I’m going to make it great again. It’s a mess.
Right now, our country is a mess, so I think they'll be very happy. I think if I win in two years after I win, I think we're going to have the happiest people in the world, OK?
But I understand -- Chris, I understand where they're coming from. This wasn't supposed to happen. They were supposed to pick a governor, a senator, you know, a puppet, where they control them 100 percent. This wasn't supposed to happen.
WALLACE: Some of the things as you said haven't made people happy. You say the Muslim ban is about security, not about religion, but you would block all foreign Muslims. That's 1.5 -- let me just finish.
TRUMP: Go ahead.
WALLACE: One and a half billion people from coming into this country. Are you saying that all of them are potential security threats?
TRUMP: We have people flying airplanes into World Trade Centers. We have people shooting people in California like happened last week.
We have big problems, problems that nobody understands. You don't understand. I don’t understand -- people don’t understand them.
The Muslims have to help us figure out this tremendous hatred there. There's tremendous hatred. Where it comes from, I don't know.
WALLACE: I think here's the point, Mr. Trump -- I think people would understand it if you were basing it on countries, saying don't let people in from Syria or Libya, war areas, but --
TRUMP: Well, I’ve done that also.
WALLACE: But there are 200 million Muslims in Indonesia. There’s --
TRUMP: I’ve done that also.
WALLACE: There's a Canadian businessman who is a Muslim. Are you saying they can’t come in?
TRUMP: There's a sickness. They're sick people. There's a sickness going on. There's a group of people that is very sick. And we have to figure out the answer.
And the Muslims can help us figure out the answer.
WALLACE: Here is what Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. PAUL RYAN, R-WIS., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: This is not conservatism. What is probably today is not what this party stands for, and more importantly, it's not what this country stands for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Ryan says you would violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.
TRUMP: Look, I like Paul Ryan. Very, very weak on illegal immigration, big on amnesty, very, very bad on our southern border, let people pour in.
It's not the kind of thinking we need. We need stronger thinking than that. And I like him, he's a nice person, but we need stronger thinking than that.
I want the Muslims to help, I knew there’d be a storm. I’m a very smart person, I knew there would be a storm. But we need the Muslims to help us figure it out.
WALLACE: This week, you've been called a bigot, a fascist, a demagogue. I looked up the word demagogue in the dictionary and it says someone, a public official who seeks support based on appealing to people's fear and prejudice.
TRUMP: Not me.
WALLACE: Is that what you’re doing?
TRUMP: It's the opposite. It’s called "Make America Great Again". It’s the opposite.
I want to make our country safe. In fact, I want to add to it, make America great again, make America safe again.
It's not safe. We're living in fear. I’m not creating the fear. People are living in fear.
I have friends who don't want to fly in airplanes anymore. OK? Now, look, there's a problem. You don't have to admit it, you never will, because you always want to be politically correct. Your father would have admitted it, OK?
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: But you're catching your father very rapidly, certainly in the ratings, you’re catching him, we'll do it together.
But look, look, there's a fear out there.
WALLACE: Let's talk practically about how your plan would work. Someone wants to come to the U.S. How do you find out if they're Muslim? Do you ask them?
TRUMP: No, you do more than that. You have a surveillance system and you check things, you have papers, and you have documents, and you go through a process, which we don't do well right now.
Do you know that in Syria, I hear they're making false passports? I have heard that ISIS -- and I’m pretty good at this stuff, Chris -- in Syria right now, they have people that are making false passports for the migrants and it's ISIS making the passports, OK? And we have people coming in through the migration, coming into this country with false passports.
Now, I'll tell you why. It's got to stop. We've got to get tough and we've got to get smart.
WALLACE: You say this is temporary unless we figure out, in your words, quote, "what the hell is going on."
TRUMP: It's temporary. Chris, they’ve got to help us.
WALLACE: I understand. But you call on our leaders in Washington losers.
TRUMP: I didn't say losers. I said they're stupid, OK?
WALLACE: OK, but my point is --
TRUMP: Losers is not a strong enough term.
WALLACE: OK. So under those circumstances, isn’t this going to take Donald Trump years as president to be able to sort out the good Muslims from the bad Muslims?
TRUMP: I know the Muslims. I’m partners, they're friends of mine, they're very smart, they’re great people. They’ve got to help us. They’ve got to help us.
So, you had these two people, everybody knew what these two were going to do. They have pipe bombs all over their apartment, sitting on the floor, you had the mother knew, you had the neighbor knew, you had the one guy who bought the rifles, they all knew.
And the one person said, oh, I knew, but maybe racial profiling. He didn't want to be a racial profiler. So people are laying dead all over a certain place, good people, great people. I think it's disgraceful.
We need help. We have to have people turn other people in. Once they're radicalized, it's too late.
Now, we have another problem because we have many radicalized in the United States. We have to do something about that.
WALLACE: Let's turn to the campaign. You lead in almost all the polls, except for a couple in Iowa where Ted Cruz is slightly ahead of you. This week, Ted Cruz apparently told some supporters that he questions your judgment to be president.
What do you think of Ted Cruz?
TRUMP: Well, he is -- do you notice he said it behind my back, somebody taped that conversation. He said it behind my back. And that's OK.
Look, I don't think he's qualified to be president.
WALLACE: Why not?
TRUMP: Because I don't think he has the right temperament. I don’t think he’s got the right judgment.
WALLACE: What's wrong with his temperament?
TRUMP: When you look at the way he's dealt with the Senate, where he goes in there like a -- you know, frankly, like a bit of a maniac. You never get things done that way.
Look, I built a phenomenal business. I’m worth many, many billions of dollars. I have some of the greatest assets anywhere in the world. You can't walk into the Senate and scream and call people liars and not be able to cajole and get along with people.
He'll never get anything done. And that's the problem with Ted.
WALLACE: Most of the so-called experts are now saying maybe Trump wins the nomination, but he’s still going to get swamped in the general election by Hillary Clinton. And they point to this, among women, 27 percent have a favorable view of you, 62 percent unfavorable. Among blacks --
TRUMP: Here's your problem. Here’s your problem --
WALLACE: Can I just read --
TRUMP: No, no, I think this. You're quoting one poll, because there are other polls where I’m very favorable with women.
WALLACE: No, but not among all women.
TRUMP: Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.
WALLACE (voice-over): We wanted to ask Trump about a USA Today poll last week which shows him with high unfavorable ratings among women, blacks and Hispanics.
TRUMP: You released a poll, Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton, and I win by four points. It's a Fox poll. It's not a Quinnipiac or whoever it is. It’s a Fox poll.
So, Fox and Roger Ailes pays for a Fox poll. In the Fox poll, I beat easily Hillary Clinton. Why don’t you talk about that poll?
WALLACE: Trump is right. There was a Fox poll that showed him beating Clinton by five points. But it was a month old, not two or three days.
(on camera): How do you answer the question, are you too divisive? Hispanics --
TRUMP: No, I think I’m great. Look --
WALLACE: -- blacks, women?
TRUMP: I think I’ll win the Hispanics, I employ thousands of Hispanics, they love me, I love them, and I think I’m going to do great with women.
And one of the reasons I’m going to do great with women is that I’m a leader. I’m not Hillary Clinton. She’s got no strength, she’s got no stamina. Everything she does is theatrical. Oh, Donald Trump said this. He -- actually it was interesting. She said -- I watched her last night. It looks like, she practices in front of a mirror for two hours, Donald Trump said, I think he's dangerous.
I’m dangerous. She's the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies. You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria. Look at Egypt. What happened with Egypt, a total mess. They don’t back -- we don’t back any of our allies.
You look, she was truly, if not the -- one of the worst secretaries of state in the history of the country. She talks about me being dangerous. She's killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity.
WALLACE: What do you mean she's killed hundreds of thousands?
TRUMP: She was secretary of state. Obama was president. The team -- two real geniuses --
WALLACE: Right, but killed hundreds --
TRUMP: Two real geniuses, of course. Look at what happened. The Middle East is a total disaster under her.
She traveled back and forth, but look at the problems. Look -- as an example -- Iraq, total disaster. They didn’t get us in, but they got us out badly, OK? Total -- we spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, wounded warriors all over.
Look at -- look at Libya. Look at Benghazi, our ambassador. He wired her 500 or 600 times asking for help. She'll take her friends' call every time.
Hillary Clinton doesn't have the judgment. She doesn't have the strength or the stamina to be president. She will be a terrible president.
And I think I’ll win.
WALLACE: Finally, let's talk money. Should congressional Republicans put policy riders in a bill to keep the government funded? And if so, what issues are worth risking a government shutdown.
TRUMP: If you had leadership you wouldn't have to talk about a government shutdown. And one of the things I’m so disappointed with the Republicans is that we have a budget and then they go to sleep for two years. They don’t do anything. And they start talking about it just before the budget comes up. It doesn't work that way.
WALLACE: Are there policy issues you would shut the government down over?
TRUMP: I don't want to say and I’ll tell you why I don’t want to say. There are certainly things to talk about, but I don't want to say because they have to think of us as unpredictable.
Let me tell you, Boehner said, we will never, ever shut down the government. What happened? He gave away all his cards by saying that.
In other words, he gave Obama all of his cards. OK, it's fine to say that, know Obama sat back and got everything he wanted. So, I don't want to say what I'll do.
WALLACE: Finally --
TRUMP: It's called the art of the deal, in all fairness. I mean, nobody in our government understands the art of the deal.
WALLACE: Finally, the Federal Reserve meets this week. Should they raise interest rates and what do you think of Fed Chairman Janet Yellen?
TRUMP: Well, she's always been known as very low interest, and as a developer, I like low interest rates. As somebody that loves our country, you’re going to have to start raising them. She should start raising them a little bit at least.
WALLACE: Why?
TRUMP: Look, I’m getting free money. By doing this, it’s a form of printing money.
But -- and I think she's fine. She’s a very low interest rate person. I think she's probably going to raise them. And if she does, it’s going to be a small raise, and I don't think it’s going to have much of an impact.
WALLACE: Mr. Trump --
TRUMP: Thank you.
WALLACE: -- thank you.
TRUMP: Thank you very much.
WALLACE: Always a pleasure.
TRUMP: Appreciate it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: Up next, Trump takes us inside his campaign headquarters. You'll be as shocked as we were.
And then our Sunday group joins the conversation about Trump’s week and that new Fox poll.
Plus, what would you like to ask the panel about his Muslim ban idea? Just go to Facebook or Twitter @FoxNewsSunday, and we may use your question on the air.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: A look at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan where Donald Trump lives, manages his real estate empire, and now runs his presidential campaign.
Trump took us to the fifth floor for a surprising look at the nerve center of his campaign?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We gutted it out and we have a great location, 57th and Fifth.
WALLACE: But this is your campaign headquarters?
TRUMP: It is. And we have other space, but this is it. Now, this is our central headquarters.
WALLACE: I’ve got to ask a question. Headquarters are usually bustling with hundreds of people. You’ve got a few of them.
TRUMP: Well, I have people -- no, this is our central headquarters. We have a number of people in offices. There's Corey, our man.
WALLACE: Right.
TRUMP: But we have terrific people, but I’m looking at the money these people are spending. You don't have to spend so much money.
I looked at Hillary Clinton's place in Brooklyn. The money she's spending, millions and millions of dollars. Would you rather -- I’m in first place, so here's the story. I spend less money than anybody else and I’m in first. Other people spend $30 million, $40 million, $50 million and they're not doing well. Who do you want running the country?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Talk about doing more with less.
And it's time now for our Sunday group. Syndicated columnist George Will, Neera Tanden, president of the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress. GOP strategist Karl Rove, author of the new book "The Triumph of William McKinley", and Charles Lane from The Washington Post.
Well, George, have it. Your thoughts about what Donald Trump had to stay.
GEORGE WILL, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, Gene McCarthy, the late senator, once said that the role in Washington is that anything said three times is a fact. So, he subscribes to that. He says, "I’m going to win, I think I’m going to win, you know, I’m not one of those others guys that goes down, I don't go down. I go up. My whole life has been winning. I’m going to win."
There’s three times, so it must be true.
(LAUGHTER)
WILL: At one point, you said, you’ve called, Trump has called the leaders in Washington losers. He said, no, no, no, I called them stupid. And then he says that Ted Cruz is now ahead of him in Iowa, is a little bit of a maniac, the gradation is interesting.
And he’s a maniac because he can't get along and cajole people the way presumably Trump can, who calls them stupid. You didn't even have time to get to the latest Trumpism this week that demonstrated his invincible ignorance of how our government works.
He said, "As president, I will issue an executive order requiring that anyone who kills a police officer gets the death penalty."
How does that work in our system? Starting with the 19 states who have no death penalty. He just -- he lives -- if you liked President Obama's use of executive power, you're going to love President Trump.
WALLACE: Neera, you have a top policy adviser to Hillary Clinton for years. We want to play out in the Fox poll Clinton has moved out to a big lead among Iowa Democrats to 50 percent to 36 percent for Bernie Sanders.
But I want to ask you about Trump's charge that Hillary Clinton has killed hundreds of thousands of people with her policies.
NEERA TANDEN, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Yes. I think it's an outrageous thing that he said. I mean, it's one of the million outrageous things he said. I look forward to a general election debate between the Republican nominee Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on foreign policy or any other issues, actually.
So, you know, I mean, I think it's part and parcel of kind of irresponsible rhetoric he has, and he doesn’t -- as you went through the interview, he doesn't have much to back it up. But that's part of what he does. He attacks Democrats, Republicans, women, every group in America, and I think that's a losing strategy.
But so far, he's been gaining strength in the Republican Party. I'll concede that.
WALLACE: You concede you'd like to make the Republican Party the Trump party.
How much is he hurting the Republican Party, Karl?
KARL ROVE, FORMER BUSH WHITE HOUSE ADVISOR: Well, that depends on who the nominee ends up being, and -- but I thought it was interesting when he came out on a statement on Muslims, every other Republican candidate said in one way, shape or form, that's a really bad idea. We saw it in your interview.
How do you keep the Muslims out of the country? He said we're going to use surveillance papers and documents. So, the Canadian businessman whose passport does not say he's a Muslim, are we going to surveil everybody in the world to figure out whether or not they are Muslim or not?
Look, he grabs the angst of the American people about a situation and has a good sound bite, but the substance is completely devoid. And doing these things, he creates damage to himself. He lives in a different world in which the good polls matter and every bad poll doesn't.
If you look at, for example, since October 1st, he says I’m beating Hillary by a big margin. There being 12 polls since October 1st, he beats her in two, losses to her in nine, and ties her in one. And she has in the Real Clear Politics average, a 3.3 percent lead.
And worse, you get into the internal of all of these polls. Take the Quinnipiac poll, which he dismissed. If you go into the internals, it represents what you see in a half dozen other polls in the last couple of months. Unfavorable numbers among all critical voter groups that are disastrous, you know, he can’t even get the margin among white voters that Mitt Romney got in 2012 to offset some of his loss among some voters.
WALLACE: So, Karl, how serious is the talk among Republican leaders that we heard this week about a brokered convention to stop him? And what about Ted Cruz -- and what about Ted Cruz, who in that "Des Moines Register" poll, which he discredited before he had even seen it. Cruz now leads Trump by 10 points in Iowa.
ROVE: Yes. Look, Cruz will win Iowa. This is not -- this has been building for a while. Trump is going to have to deal with the fact he's based his entire campaign on "I’m leading the polls, I’m winning the polls, therefore I’m the winner." And what happens when he loses Iowa?
But here is the other thing that is going on, and that is that -- look, I wrote about this three, four weeks ago. What does a brokered convention mean? What it means is that nobody arrives in Cleveland with a majority of the delegates.
That's likely to happen, because we have 28 contests between February 1st and March 14th, which are all proportional except one. And as a result, in the early contest, when we got a lot of candidates -- I mean, Carly Fiorina is going to get a delegate out of the Iowa, because all you got to do is get 3.3 percent, and you get a delegate.
WALLACE: So you could end up with a brokered convention.
ROVE: But a brokered convention is a different thing. A brokered convention is one in which, in the smoke-filled back room, people are going to get together and cut a deal and something magical is going to appear. I bet you whoever goes into that convention in the lead, as long as they're close to a majority ends up being the nominee, regardless of who they are.
WALLACE: We ask you for questions for the panel, and we got this on Facebook, from John Plus Mary. They write, "Why is it OK for a Democrat named Jimmy Carter to stop Iranians, aka, Muslims, from coming into our country? And why are they attacking Trump for trying to keep our country safe?"
Chuck, how do you answer John Plus Mary?
CHARLES LANE, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, I would say that it’s comparing apples and oranges. First of all, it's true, that the immigration law gives the president very broad authority.
WALLACE: Let me just quickly say, the immediate reaction from a lot of Republicans and Democrats, unconstitutional, a lot of learned scholars this week said, maybe not.
LANE: No, no, hold on a second. The law gives the president very broad authority to ban this or that category of people from coming into the country, OK? But that power, like many others, can be abused. And what Donald Trump is proposing to do is to abuse that power grossly.
And the contrast with Carter is very stark. Carter picked a nationality, a particular category of people who carry a certain passport, very easy to identify, and by the way, he included a humanitarian exception, implying that people who were legitimate refugees from that regime could still enter the United States.
Donald Trump said total and complete ban. It would be as if Carter in response to the hostage-taking in Iran and said, I’m banning all Shia Muslims, because the Ayatollah Khomeini is the head of the Shia movement in the United States, regardless of whether they come from Iran or not.
And so, this is a very -- I know this is out here. People are saying, well, it’s OK for Jimmy Carter. This is media bias. But the two cases couldn't be more different. In fact, the contrast illustrates how poorly thought out and how overbroad the Trump proposal was.
WALLACE: Quickly?
ROVE: Constitutionality, the question was when he initially announced that he said American who are more Muslims abroad could not get back in the country. He would make an exemption for the military, and then when all heck broke loose, then he stepped back from, I hate to say, it’s stupid.
TANDEN: I mean, the fact we're debating this six days later on Sunday when it happened on Monday tells you how much Donald Trump is driving the debate in the Republican Party and why it’s legitimate to say it is the party of Trump right now because he is the one driving this conversation in --
ROVE: It's the media of Trump.
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: Very quickly.
(CROSSTALK)
TANDEN: Support among Republicans.
WILL: In the Monmouth poll, which is well-regarded, if you look at their data on repeat likely caucus-goers, Trump is fourth.
WALLACE: All right. We have to take a break here.
Up next, we’ll discuss the new global deal to fight climate change with Secretary of State John Kerry, and then we'll break it down with our panel.
Plus, what do you think, does the agreement go too far or not far enough? And what effect will it have on the U.S. economy? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter @FoxNewsSunday and use the #fns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: Coming up, President Obama hails is the global accord to fight climate change.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This agreement represents the best chance we've had to save the one planet that we've got.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: But what does it mean for the U.S. economy? And will other countries keep their pledges? I’ll ask Secretary of State Kerry, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Paris agreement is adopted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: World leaders from almost 200 countries erupting in applause after adopting the first global agreement to fight climate change. Among the deal's key points, countries commit to lowering, then eliminating greenhouse gas pollutions, some time after 2050. The goal is to keep global temperatures from rising another 1 degree Celsius or 1.8 Fahrenheit between now and the end of the century.
We spoke with Secretary of State John Kerry early this morning in Paris.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, there are no sanctions in the new agreement. Given that there are none, how much can we count on any pledge that a country makes?
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, there's mandatory reporting. There is a universal system by which every country, all 186, each of whom have submitted an independent plan, have to report on what they're doing, what their emissions are, on the total carbon print. And that reporting will be used by one country to measures against another, and it will be a great way of exchanging information about technologies, about approaches. We'll all learn from each other's lessons.
I think it actually sends a very powerful message to the marketplace, but one of the reasons why there's no enforcement mechanism is because the United States Congress would never accept one. So it has to be voluntary. And a lot of nations resent that, but we have accepted that, because we believe it's going to move the marketplace, and already you see countless new technologies, a lot of jobs being created. And I think it's going to produce its own form of oversight.
WALLACE: But is there anything binding, sir, that would force a country like China, which is the world's biggest polluter, to make specific reductions in carbon emissions?
KERRY: The answer is, by virtue of the transparency mechanism, which is broad based here -- President Obama was determined to try to get an agreement here that would move the world in the right direction, and the president has taken enormous initiative in order to move us to engage with other countries, including China, and bring them to the table.
Some countries, Chris, simply wouldn't accept the mandatory mechanism. We among them. So the best thing we can do in an effort to try to change people's thinking, is to do this mandatory reporting requirement. And the mandatory reporting requirement has to be updated every five years. And every five years, it is mandatory that countries retool their reduction levels in order to meet the demands of meeting the curve of reduction to which they have committed. So that is a serious form of enforcement, if you will, of compliance, but there is no penalty for it, obviously. But if there had been a penalty, we wouldn't have been able to get an agreement. So we did the best we could to set the world on a new course towards energy independence, alternative renewable energy, towards a lower carbon footprint, greater health, greater security.
And frankly, the president I think deserves enormous credit for his outreach to China, putting the two largest emitters and the two largest economies together to set an example to the world.
I very much doubt we would have had an agreement at all if President Obama hadn't initiated the effort with China and undertaken his own climate action plan in the United States, which has now seen the United States reduce our emissions more than any other country in the world. That gave us great credibility here. And that is part is what is driving people's commitment to make this work.
WALLACE: A couple of times, Mr. Secretary, you've talked about Congress wouldn't accept it. The last global climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, was a treaty, it was never ratified by Congress, but in this case, as with the Iran deal, it's not a formally treaty, and you're cutting Congress out. Why?
KERRY: Well, Congress, Jim Inhofe today said it doesn't need to be approved by the Congress, because it doesn't have mandatory targets for reduction, and it doesn't have an enforcement compliance mechanism. So in fact, we did exactly what Congress said we had to do for them not to be able for them to need to endorse it. But it's a plan that can work. And everybody in the world feels it will start us down the road. Is it going to get us to the final level? No, but what it will do is send the right message to the marketplace that 186 nations in the world came together to submit a plan, all of them reducing their emissions, most of them already engaged in the effort to do so. That is going to change the marketplace, and it's also -- we've already seen the curve of emissions beginning to come down. If we can stay on that track, we have a chance to avoid the worst damage of climate change.
WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, thanks for your time. Safe travels, sir.
KERRY: Good, thank you, sir. Good to be with you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: And we're back with our panel to discuss the climate deal. Karl, what's wrong with this agreement? And is there anything in it that's useful?
ROVE: Well, two things. I was interested in the comment of Dr. James Hansen, sort of the high priest of global warning, who said it was B.S., because it didn't have targets. It calls for no new net emissions, that's the target, 2050 to 2080. We'll all be dead, and very few of the people who are sitting in Paris will be alive at that point, I suspect, when we hit the 2080.
Look, the United States has reduced its greenhouse emissions. It has done so not because of some international treaty, but because for more than a decade, we've put the focus on energy efficiency. We're a market economy, we're a wealthy country that can afford to do this, and we have done it.
What we are now doing is saying to emerging economies, keep your people poor, keep them in poverty, because you cannot use cheap fuels, namely natural gas, coal and other fossil fuels, to power your economy. And it's ridiculous. I think it made everybody there feel good, but I think Dr. Jim Hansen is right, absent compulsory targets, which nobody in the world would accept, either the emerging economies or a country like the United States, this is the best they can do, and now they're going to try and browbeat us into beggaring our economy.
WALLACE: I want to talk about this lack of sanctions, which is a dramatic fact. I mean, a lot of pledges, no sanctions. And one of the concerns is that an open society like the United States will in effect have to keep its pledges, but a much more closed society like China will renege, and there's nothing we can do about it.
TANDEN: The agreement has -- the strongest provisions are its accountability provisions, so everyone has to report what's happening.
WALLACE: Report, but there's no enforcement.
TANDEN: Right. And I think that the issue there is that it's hard for international climate agreement, in part because as Kerry said, our own Congress to have that level of teeth. I think China's a great example. For years, years we heard from people like Karl Rove saying that China would never agree to take any action. They're the world's biggest polluter.
ROVE: When did I say that exactly?
TANDEN: In 2008, 2009 and 2010.
ROVE: Oh, sure, right. Okay.
TANDEN: And then China, then the administration took action and China took action. And that has led to this agreement.
WALLACE: Wait a minute, China has built about 100 coal-powered plants around the world in the last couple of years. The last five years.
TANDEN: And China actually also adopted a cap and trade program in China.
WALLACE: But it is still building the coal-powered plants.
TANDEN: Absolutely, and that's why this agreement is important, so that we can actually see what is happening around the world to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. End of the day, 197 countries are a party to this. 180 have come up with their own agreement. I think that is something we should celebrate, because the world -- maybe not the Republican Party in the United States -- but the rest of the world recognizes that climate change is a threat to the planet and is taking action.
WALLACE: George, I want to pick up on that. And I'm confused, because sometimes I hear it's 196, sometimes 197, but anyway it's a lot of nations, almost 200. Rich and poor, open, democratic, some repressive, have all agreed to something. Does that in some way discredit the climate change deniers?
WILL: No. First, any agreement about any subject involving 190-some nations is going to be necessarily at a high level of generality, and almost entirely voluntary in all its provisions. Climate deniers, no one -- I don't know anyone who denies that the climate is changing, because it's always changing.
Chris, I'm from Illinois. 20,000 years ago, which is a geological blink, Chicago, what is now Chicago, was under a mile of ice. Of course the climate is changing. The question is, is the world sensibly obsessing about this subject when a billion people on this planet are off the grid, don't have electricity, and hundreds of millions of people on this planet have the most urgent problem, finding drinkable water.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: If I may, Chuck, I'd like to bring you in, I found that interesting that repeatedly in that interview, at least three times, so it must be true according to the rule of Trump, Secretary Kerry blamed the weaknesses of this agreement, the lack of enforcement on the Senate-controlled -- Republican-controlled Senate, the result of which is that once again, as with the Iran deal, it's not a treaty and Congress is cut out.
LANE: You know, I think if they had tried to do a treaty, something like what happened with Kyoto would have happened. Not only -- there would have been of course massive Republican objection, but there would have been some Democrats who would have been from coal-burning states who would have been on the spot, people like Sherrod Brown from Ohio and so forth.
But China and India would never have agreed to anything that had committed them in an enforceable way. That put the United States in charge of policing their energy. That wasn't going to happen. So I thought what you were going to say is he said three times this gives a message to the markets. Which is what they're sort of hanging their hat on in this agreement.
I think that's a really interesting point, but there's another message going out to the markets, right now, and that is that the price of oil is $36 a barrel. This thing is going to be determined based on which signal people out there in the real world actually listen to.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: This idea that the administration is talking abut is the message for the market is the idea that all of the venture capitalists, all of the big companies out there are going to decide, you know what? Our future and where we need to make the investments is not in fossil fuels, but rather in alternative energy.
LANE: If I could just say one point on that. To what Karl said about how the U.S. brought down its emissions, it's largely through the introduction of natural gas. Which was done through fracking, which a lot of environmentalists are against. There's going to have to be tradeoffs. Angela Merkel, the person of the year in Time, is also the same person who canceled Germany's nuclear power program. And that made her probably the biggest contributor to carbon emissions in recent years. So if we're going to get these emissions down, we're going to have to embrace certain technologies like nuclear and natural gas that many environmentalists are not comfortable with.
TANDEN: And also solar, which has grown and has -- actually had the largest increase in jobs domestically in the United States over the last several years.
ROVE: -- companies like Solyndra.
WALLACE: Well, I'm enjoying this. I hope you're picking up all the subtext here between Karl and Neera.
We have to step aside for a moment. When we come back, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel apologizes for how he handled the police shooting of a teenager. But protesters are still calling for him to resign. We'll ask our Sunday group if he can weather this storm.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL, D-CHICAGO: No citizen a is second class citizen in the city of Chicago. If my children are treated one way, every child is treated the same way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's emotional response this week failed to end protests over how he handled the police shooting of a black teenager. We're back now with the panel.
So let's start with the timeline of events in this case. On October 20th, 2014, Laquan McDonald is shot 16 times by a Chicago police officers. April 7 of this year Emanuel is reelected. The next day, April 8, city attorneys agree to a $5 million settlement with the family. November 24, the city finally releases video of the shooting and charges police officer James Van Dyke with first-degree murder.
Karl, emails show that the mayor's office knew about the possibility of a video in this case more than a year ago, so the question I have is, do you think that Rahm Emanuel slowed this case down, slow-walked it to get past the election?
ROVE: I don't know who slow-walked it, but yes, I think people said this would be explosive, it would be likely to damage his reelection chances, and somebody, I suspect it was not the mayor, but somebody said let's slow roll it. Now he's at a point where he's lost the moral authority to govern the city. The question is, does he leave? I think it's unlikely, because there is no mechanism to kick him out. And this now becomes a question of will, and if somebody has will, it's Rahm Emanuel.
WALLACE: Chuck, city officials fought for more than a year to keep this video away from the public, even after, as I point out in the timeline, they had paid a $5 million settlement to the family.
LANE: Having seen the video, I can understand why they would want to keep it quiet. Because it shows that their story was untrue. That police officers had basically lied, some of them had lied in written reports, that there was a vast cover-up of this obviously unwarranted shooting, and that there's a rot in the police department.
You know, Rahm Emanuel, I kind of agree with Karl. This wouldn't be one where necessarily we'll ever find a smoking gun showing that Rahm ordered some sort of a cover-up, but he presided over a government and a police department that covered up this horrible event. And I have to say, I think the people of Chicago have every right to be doing what they're doing right now, which is getting out in the streets, and so far peacefully, but in a very rowdy way, showing they're unhappy with that. I don't know whether Rahm has to pay for it with his job or not, but the whole rest of his political career, whether as mayor or anything else, is going to be defined on how he makes this city better. And it's got a lot of other problems. Its educational systems, its debt, its pensions, and everything else, and he's got a heavy load to lift.
WALLACE: You're being a little more gentle about Rahm Emanuel's involvement or lack of involvement in the decision to slow-walk the release of this video. Neera, over the last year, Rahm Emanuel repeatedly said this video had to be withheld from public view, because there was a criminal investigation going on. He may get choked up now, but is he getting choked up about the case or is he getting choked up about his political future?
TANDEN: Look, I think people have a right to be suspicious of this. It's very damaging video. It was held for a very long time. I completely agree that the real issue here is not just the video itself or what happens on the video, but the number of police officers who obviously agreed to a particular story that turned out to not be true.
WALLACE: How about the fact that the mayor withheld or fought against releasing the video for a year, and just coincidentally while he was running in a very tight race for reelection?
TANDEN: Absolutely, and I think it's why it's totally proper that there is a Department of Justice investigation. And I think if the Department of Justice shows that Rahm knew ahead about this video and held it for his political -- his political campaign, to better his campaign, then I think he should be held accountable, but I think that's why we have an investigation, because we actually want to know what the facts are. I think that's why it's important that he's supporting this investigation, everyone else is, and I hope it is a speedy one. We should be able to determine this answer relatively quickly.
WALLACE: George?
WILL: Mr. Justice Lane says the people of Chicago are right to be upset. The people of Chicago are part of the problem. Abuse of power and collapse of confidence in civic institutions is a natural consequence of prolonged one-party government. The last Republican mayor of Chicago was 1931. 84 years of one-party government, and this is what you get.
TANDEN: What is the connection actually between a police brutality case and one-party government?
WILL: A culture of cover-up, a culture of entitlement, a culture of prolonged sense of invulnerability. That's the consequence.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Let me ask you, George, because as we found out this week, much to my surprise, there is no mechanism to remove the mayor of the city of Chicago, maybe part of this one-party culture you're talking about, but one state representative, who happens to be a Chicago Democrat, has now filed a bill that would create a recall system for the mayor. As somebody, lifelong Illinois -- how do you pronounce it, Illinoisan? Do you think that he survives?
WILL: I think he probably will. It's not clear to me that the Democratic controlled, heavily controlled legislature would pass it. It's not even clear to me that the governor, the Republican governor of Illinois, would sign it, because he is counting on for an extraordinarily complicated structural reform that Illinois needs, an alliance with his friend -- and he is a friend -- Rahm Emanuel.
ROVE: And all those structural reforms have been cast into limbo by this.
LANE: Exactly.
WALLACE: All right, panel, thank you. See you next Sunday.
Up next our Power Player of the Week. He's been called a modern-day Thomas Edison.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: Most likely you've never heard of him, but his work has almost certainly affected your life. In fact, it may have saved it. Here's our Power Player of the Week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERT LANGER, DAVID H. KOCH INST. PROFESSOR, MIT: Research is the starting point.
WALLACE: And the end point is?
LANGER: Creating products that are out there to hopefully change and improve people's lives.
WALLACE: Robert Langer is talking about the Langer lab, the world's largest academic biomedical engineering laboratory on the campus of M.I.T. If that sounds a little complicated, just think of it as an ideas factory. And Langer as a modern-day Thomas Edison.
WALLACE: How many biotech companies have you founded?
LANGER: 31.
WALLACE: How many patents do you hold?
LANGER: About 1,100 issued and pending.
WALLACE: Estimates are more than 2 billion people have been touched by technologies created by him and his team.
LANGER: We were able to develop ways to deliver drugs for a long time. That's led to a whole range of new things, and people didn't think you could do it.
WALLACE: Langer has been working on delivery systems since the '70s, coming up with polymers, and wafers and chips, that can be implanted in the body and release drugs for long periods. Then there's tissue engineering.
LANGER: We didn't even know when we started whether you could make a new tissue or organ.
WALLACE: Langer and his team of more than 100 researchers devised a plastic scaffold on which you can place cells.
LANGER: What that's led to are things like artificial skin, which is already being used, but there are many clinical trials for things like making new corneas, making possibly a new spinal cord.
WALLACE: Langer showed us something he's working on right now. Inside a pill is a starfish-shaped material.
LANGER: The idea of the shape is that it's big enough that it won't pass through the stomach. We actually have a drug in it, and while it is sitting in the stomach, the drug keeps coming out, keeps coming out, for whatever period of time we made it go through. Again, it could be a week, a month, a year.
WALLACE: Langer's discoveries have revolutionized treatment of some of our worst diseases.
LANGER: Different kinds of cancer, heart disease, mental health diseases like schizophrenia.
WALLACE: I understand you also came up with a hair-thickening technology?
LANGER: We've done that, too. We do a lot with materials.
WALLACE: As a kid Langer was fascinated by math and science.
LANGER: I had a Gilbert erector set, Gilbert chemistry set, in which you could mix chemicals together, and they would turn colors and you'd have reactions.
WALLACE: One thing he learned, don't let the doubters ever stop you.
LANGER: People will say, you can't possibly be right. And I think that's an obstacle for many scientists, when you go against conventional wisdom.
WALLACE: In October Langer received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering, considered the Nobel Prize for his field.
LANGER: You can take those principles and discoveries and take them to the point where they can really help people and create products that can change and improve their lives.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: This April Langer will receive another award, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences. Previous recipients include one of the Wright brothers, and Albert Einstein.
And that's it for today. Have a great week. We'll see you next "Fox News Sunday."
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