Nate Silver says “the media’s obsession over the daily fluctuations in the polls — even when the polls don’t predict very much about voter behavior and don’t necessarily reflect people who are actually likely to vote — may help enable Trump. Republicans are afraid to criticize Trump in part because it rarely produces instant gratification in a ‘win-the-morning’ political culture that keeps score based on polls. Without seeing any repercussions, Trump goes farther out on a limb, shifting the window of acceptable discourse along with him and making it harder to rebuke him the next time around.”

GOP strategists tell Bloomberg that Donald Trump’s proposal to bar Muslims from entering the U.S. “won’t destroy his candidacy—but would severely threaten the party’s chance at the White House in 2016 if he’s the nominee.”

“His plan ignited a firestorm among rival Republicans, Democrats, and party chairpeople in the three states that will hold the first nomination votes next year. But GOP voters’ antipathy toward Islam and frustration with President Barack Obama, plus competitors’ inability to outmuscle Trump so far, suggest this won’t be the uproar that finally ends his bid and clears the way for stronger nominee to face Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic standard-bearer.”

Wonk Wire: Trump’s comments appeal to majority of Republican voters

St. Petersburg, FL Mayor Rick Kriseman said that he was banning Donald Trump from his city “until we fully understand the dangerous threat posed by all Trumps,” the Tampa Bay Times reports.

Explained Kriseman: “You make a ridiculous statement, so you answer with a ridiculous statement. There are some people who thought I was seriously going to ban Donald Trump from St. Petersburg, and that’s obviously not something I would try to do. But his statement was kind of ridiculous, so I thought that it deserved an equal response.”

Harry Enten notes that the GOP establishment may need religious voters to stop Donald Trump from marching to the Republican presidential nomination.

“To beat Trump, the establishment may have to defeat him in Iowa, but recently, the Iowa caucuses have been unwelcoming to establishment-approved candidates. Still, there’s a way to square that circle. The GOP establishment doesn’t need to win Iowa — it just needs Trump to lose. And the establishment may have to rely on an old frenemy to make that happen: born-again and evangelical Christians.”

A defiant Donald Trump warned that there “will be additional attacks on the U.S. if his temporary ban on Muslim immigration is not put on place,” CNN reports.

Said Trump: “You’re going to have many more World Trade Centers if you don’t solve it – many, many more and probably beyond the World Trade Center.”

He added: “They want our buildings to come down. They want our cities to be crushed. They are living in our country and many are outside of our country.”