Four months ago, after weeks of intense negotiation between my staff and Democrats and Republicans, we came to a clear — clear bipartisan deal that was the strongest border security agreement in decades. But then Republicans in Congress — not all, but — walked away from it. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to. He told the Republicans — it has been published widely by many of you — that he didn’t want to fix the issue; he wanted to use it to attack me. That’s what he wanted to do. It was a cynical and a – extremely cynical political move and a complete disservice to the American people, who are looking for us to — not to weaponize the border but to fix it.
I just think it’s unproductive, has no basis (feel free to show me some data points on this truly), and requires no risk on your part to make this prediction. I could easily say “based on the long lasting impact of Bernie Sanders just entering the election for a few cycles I predict the democrats will be a far more progressive party in 20 years.” It’s equally valid and safe because like you, I don’t really need to show anything to back it up. I’m just kind of gesticulating at what happened from 2008-2016 with bernie.
I mean this really and truly: feel free to make all the predictions you want, and I hope you push the Democratic party to be more progressive or are currently working to get progressive candidates on ballots. These are good things to do. But these kinds of discussions we are having are really not productive. They’re not even academic or interesting. They’re just so vague and long-term and unsupported that we’re just kind of throwing darts at a bar. Which I mean sure it’s fun I guess but at some point you need to start keeping score and having a basis for how you’re throwing them unless you’re truly just there to kill time, which does not seem like the case for you. You seem passionate about this and like you want to have productive discussion.