As president, I wouldn't be making the day-to-day combat decisions. The job of the commander-in-chief is to lay the objective out and then you rely upon the generals and admirals and commanders to give you their expert advice on the tools needed to carry out that objective.

What Obama did wrong with executive power is he tried to change the law. He tried to ignore the law. And under the Constitution, Article I, all legislative authority is vested in Congress.

Nidal Hasan communicated with Anwar al-Awlaki, a known radical cleric, asked about waging jihad against his fellow soldiers. The problem is because of political correctness, the [Barack] Obama administration, like a lot of folks here, want to search everyone's cell phones and e-mails and not focus on the bad guys. And political correctness is killing people.

Instead of being a Woodrow Wilson democracy promoter we ought to hunt down our enemies and kill ISIS rather than creating opportunities for ISIS to take control of new countries.

Two-thirds of Americans think our kids will have a worse life than we did. That is a powerful indication we are on the wrong path. I think we can change that, but I'll tell you, that's what I'm going to fight to do, and the reason so many grass-roots activists poured so much into it is they believed in our country. They believed in liberty.

Lets us all have an open conversation about what this might mean if [Donald] Trump gets his way or how we might be able to adjust that and make American people safer.

I do believe, in the long term, we will either get back to the principles that built America or we lose this country. And I'm an optimist.