National security, the government is in charge of that. And you better have a president that understands the threats we [the state] face and what we have to do about it and if you can't articulate that as a candidate, you cannot be commander-in-chief.

There is not a single person in the national defense apparatus of this country that can guarantee you are going to be 100 percent right. And that's why as president, I'll take this very seriously.

Bashar Assad has been so brutal toward the Sunni within Syria that he created the space that led to the people of Syria themselves to stand up and try to overthrow him. That led to the chaos which allowed ISIS to come in and take advantage of that situation and grow more powerful.

I haven't thought about aspirations for the future. I like politics, I like serving the public, and we'll see if God offers us another opportunity in the future.

Voters decided otherwise [on me as a president candidate] and I will focus on my work here in the Senate because I have nine months left. And after that, later, as a private citizen, I will continue looking for a way to contribute to the cause of political conservatism to help our state and our country and the issues that interest me. But I really don't want to be nor do I think that I will be invited to be any candidate's vice president.

We should be the pro-legal immigration party. A party that has a positive platform and agenda on how we can create a legal immigration system that works for immigrants and works for America.

Our government does not exist to decide the rights, nor to grant them. Our government exists to protect them. And that is why we have a constitution that limits the power of the federal government to a few specific, but important things and we have abandoned that. We have abandoned it in both political parties.