What the USA Freedom Act did is it did two things. Number one, it ended the federal government's bulk collection of phone metadata of millions of law-abiding citizens.

I am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody. Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians. I’ll work with Martians. If — and the if is critical — they're willing to cut spending and reduce the debt.

Here at home, we need to do two fundamental things. Number one, we need to recognize that technology has moved on. The Patriot Act was signed in 2001, roughly. The iPhone was invented in 2007. The iPad was invented in 2011. Snapchat and Twitter, all the rest of it, have been around just for several years. Technology has moved on, and the terrorists have moved on with it.

I'm not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends in the U.S. Senate. Given the choice between being reviled in Washington, DC, and appreciated in Texas, or reviled in Texas and appreciated in Washington, I would take the former 100 out of 100 times.

I introduced bill saying we need more security, we need more scrutiny. Once again, Marco [Rubio] opposed this. So Marco can't have it both ways. He thinks he wants to be this, "Oh, I'm great and strong on national defense." But he's the weakest of all the candidates on immigration. He is the one for an open border that is leaving us defenseless.

One of the specific powers and responsibilities of the federal government is to secure the borders. Property can be taken with due process of law and just compensation.

Let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media. This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions - "Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?" "Ben Carson, can you do math?" "John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?" "Marco Rubio, why don't you resign?" "Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?" How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?