Member of any party for quite a long time. Butties may land a punch. They may leave a mark but they have never not once in the history of our United States managed to match the strength and spirit of a People United in defense of their future. Thank you and god bless america. Good night. And good morning to you now on the east coast. Good evening on the west coast. Continuing coverage here of the state of the Union Address for an hour and 20 minutes, the nation watched as President Donald Trump gave his First Official state of the union speech declaring the state of our nation to be strong. The president cheering the tax cuts passed by his fellow republicans, celebrating the American Flag and National Anthem and declare agend to what he called the war against clean coal. He boasted about the economy and the state of American Business and he asked congress to work on infrastructure and also made a pitch for unity. Tonight, i call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out Common Ground and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people of this is r. The key. These are the people we were elected to serve. The president probably not surprisingly said nothing in the speech about the ongoing russia investigation. But what will make the most headlines from this speech it seems likely the issue of immigration. The president saying he wants a path to citizenship for the 1. 8 million undocumented immigrants brought to this country as minors but also making clear he sees this as a concession, something to be given in exchange for some hard line policies. Tonight i am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, democrats and republicans, to protect our citizens of every background, color, religion, and creed. My duty and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber is to defend americans, to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the american dream. Because americans are dreamers, too. Meanwhile, congressman joe kennedy iii the grandson of robert f. Kennedy gave the official democratic response. His speech delivered in front of a crowd in fall river mass. It touched on topic President Trumps speech left out. A government that struggles to keep itself open, russia knee deep in our democracy, an allout war on environmental protection, a Justice Department rolling back civil rights by the day. Hatred and supremacy. Proudly marching in our streets. Bullets tearing through our classrooms. Concerts and congregations targeting our safest sacred places. And this nagging sinking feeling no matter your political beliefs that this is not right. This is not who obviously we are. And joining us now john editor of commentary magazine, john barrett and Maria Teresa Kumar from voto latina, all three msnbc contributors. Josh, i was reading your writeup up on this. You said this was the kind of speech a president aiming for about a 55 Approval Rating would be delivering. Trump closer to 35 right now. What do you mean by that . This wasnt a unity speech in trying to bring together 100 of the country. Particularly on the tax plan and immigration proposal hes trying to get congress to do something, it was a pitch that more people ought to like these things than do. On tax plan, it was basically youre getting a tax cut. The vast majority of americans who obviously pay taxes will get a tax cut from the recently enacted tax plan. So the president s trying to reinforce that idea and trying to make a claim that the economy is doing really well now and this is a morning reason why. This makes sense for him to harp on. This is a policy that could be more popular than it is. Its not going to be popular with the whole country. More people could like it than do right now. On immigration he tried to make the case a down the middle proposal which it isnt. He was trying to make a case that he has a reasonable compromise pitch out there and if democrats dont do a deal with him on it, it will be their fault. I thought a weaker argument there than on taxes because his proposal is extreme in various dimensions and not an offer designed for democrats to get to yes on it. The sort of over the top fearmongering that he does about Public Safety concerns related to immigration, we saw this in the virginia governors race in november where the republicans made that a central theme. It didnt serve them well. They ended up losing by nine. You talked about the about the ms13. Let me talk about immigration. A lot of things i want to bring up. It was the most fascinating part of the speech. John, josh mentions dwelling on crime, dwelling on ms13. What i thought i might be hearing there is a president who is worried about his base priming them for something they may see as a sellout. That is the legalization for nearly 2 million degreers. That is exactly right what you heard in that speech was not a pitch to democrats but to republicans and conservatives. Hes saying i want you to accept a path to citizenship for almost 2 Million People and in exchange, im going to talk to you about all the things that you hate and fear and im going to talk about how the other aspects of this proposal that im putting forward are going to address that. So ending chain migration and various other he had four planks. I cant quite remember what they were. Democrats are going to misunderstand the speech and liberals will plys understand this element of the speech without understanding that the rubicon has been crossed, the most conservative on immigration figure in American History has essentially called for amnesty for 2 Million People. That is an enormous movement as he said, like, its three times the number of people that obama had featured under his handling of the dreamer matter. Thats the big take away because eventually, he is breaking the back with this proposal of a core philosophical and prop gan disic view on the right that the worst thing that could possibly happen is amnesty for anybody. Amnesty has been a dirty word on the right for almost 30 years, and hes basically just offered he has said im putting this on the table, amnesty for 2 Million People. Its a very big jump and it comes from him. This is the guy who obviously spent 2015 and 2016, he was going to throw 11 Million People out of the country. Maria, im curious, did you hear that . Is that how you interpreted the speech that hes packaging what could be portrayed as amnesty for 2 million inside rhetoric that his base might accept . I think he has to figure out how to pacify the breitbarts of the world saying hes and necessity don. Its not that he was trying to do that, he did it ungracefully when you try to equivocate ms13 with dreamers is poor and irresponsible. The other pieces he was talking about is not good for the country. Yes, he asked for 23 million 25 billion for the wall. Members of congress will perhaps give him that. They will realize they have to reauthorize it year after year. Thats fine. The bigger concern both among republicans and democrats is this idea of family reunification. The president himself is a beneficiary of family reunification. He wants to get rid of that. The visa lottery system he wants to get rid of. The American People needs to understand this proposal that the white house came up with basically slashes our current immigration levels in half and brings us back closer to levels of the 1920s. What we need is a smart policy to recognize what is it the future immigration flows, what is the mixed skill labors that this country needs and not trying to pit Daca Recipients here legally because they came out of the shadows, have them pit themselves against the rest of the immigrants in, some cases their own parents. The line that will get pored over most in the speech is when trump said americans are dreamers, too. And i imagine thats going to be subject to a lot of various interpretation. Whats your interpretation of that line . Its dee divisive, as well. Of course, americans are dreamers but also rooted in our immigrant experience. The reason the majority of us had rear with the exception of native americans and descendants of slaves came here with the idea they can become their possibility in this country. That is not any different 240 years later. This idea that he is trying to pit this idea of what dreamers are, that is our dma. Were talking about the ones that came here through their family unfortunately without the proper documentation, at the same time, theyre making Great Strides to achieve. These dreamers specifically have passed background checks and contributing to their local economy and what they want to make a case is, how do they participate in this america. I have to say that i think joe kennedy did a fantastic job delivering his speech. I would say though where he kind of went off guard was when he started to speaking to the dreamers in spanish. Most of them dont speak spanish. This is the only country they know. Interesting point. I just think you are underestimating the meaning of trump saying that he wants a path to citizenship for 2 Million People because think of who obviously he is, what he said on the campaign trail. This is a gigantic turn of direction. This is somebody whose line was im going to throw 12 Million People out of here. That was what he said for almost. I appreciate it. The reason hes saying that is to the majority of americans not deep seated into this policy issue, it sounds incredibly reasonable. You scratch the surface and recognize how draconian hes prenning. Hes trying to be the leader that most americans want him to be but in fact what hes doing is pushing us backwards instead of coming up immigration policy that looks at future immigration flows. The offsetting ask is so the offsetting ask is vague. Maria notes describes the plan as cutting immigration by half. A leading skip tick has been complaining this plan wont decrease immigration at all. They work through all the people who obviously filed applications. That will be more than a decade. Kra corian a hawk on immigration. He was criticizing what trump said about dreamers tonight. From the right hes still getting that. Its a proposal thats vague enough that people can see what they want to see or dont want to see in it. The white house will have to put more meat on that. If theyre proposing to reduce Legal Immigration by half a Million People, democrats wont look at that and say amnesty for 1al million dreamers is a fair trade to reducing immigration by half. If its a much more modest cut to Legal Immigration, you could have the basis for a trade that would be a down the middle trade where everyone felt they got something. Im concerned about this because im a skeptic about ending family migration or chain migration and but i think theres a lot to be said about this notion of getting high value immigrants who obviously come ready to sort of help the economy. Having said that, democrats and liberals are backing themselves into a corner if they think that they can simply reject and act as though its meaningless that trump has taken this step. If theyre not willing to negotiate, he is going to have very strong grounds to say we moved like we is the mountain came to mohammed and you are acting as though that Means Nothing and that is not a proper way to negotiate. But we have to take a break. Go ahead. I think what folks are saying is lets have an honest conversation. Theyre trying to mix, the administration is trying to mix future immigration flows with the issue he created, basically repealing daca. Where you have a good starting point and many republicans agree, lets figure out daka, the wall, but lets have a serious conversation on what we need from future immigration flows. Maybe its half we already have. Maybe its a third or 100 . That is very different than what the Current Administration is offering. This will be something that the government funding deadline, the latest one a few weeks away. This issue is going to intensify in the near future. John, maria, thanks to both of you. Coming up, how democrats are reacting to the president s state of the union speech especially on the issue as weve been talking about on the issue of immigration. Jeff merkley is going to be there. The president said the the word russia only once in his speech last night and didnt talk about what happened in the 2016 election. Democrats were quiet for the first hour of the president s speech but there was a moment as the president laid out his immigration plan that elicited some booze and hisses from democrats in the room. The president was talking specifically about ending chain migration. Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children. Some democrats took to twitter to criticize the president including arizona congressman Ruben Gallego who obviously tweeted trump blata blatantly lies. He has zero understanding how this works. Joining us now senator jeff merkley from oregon and Leonardo Reyes a daca recipient. He also attended the state of the union as senator merkleys guest. Thanks to you both for joining us. Leonardo, your status is in limbo here. The president addressed this issue of daca. Hopefully you can hear me. The president addressed the issue of daca tonight. He said look, he does want a path to citizenship for 1. Million dreamer whos came to this country with their parents as minors. He said quite a bit. Did he make that statement. What did you make of it . You know, its on one hand i want to be encouraged by the president s words. On the other hand, i understand that it is a more complex issue that we have to really take back and understand and look at the bigger picture. You know, when we talk about policy, i couldnt really speak to the policy of all of it but could speak to the families and individuals back in oregon and across this country who obviously are depending on a solution that we need to reach a d. R. E. A. M. Act, that we need to enact a dreep act for the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are at stake here and who obviously are constantly wondering and worried about what tomorrow looks like for them, whether or not theyre going to be able to stay in their homes, whether or not theyre going to be torn away from their families, if theyre going to be able to keep moving forward. So i hope that a solution is reached and i think you know that solution for us has been very clear for a long time and that has been the d. R. E. A. M. Act. Senator merkley, let me ask you what you made of this. Because the president , obviously its open to interpretation here. But one interpretation of what the president did tonight was try to prime his base that conservative base that he rode to the republican nomination with a hard line immigration view that he was trying to prime them for something they may view as betrayal. That is ultimately the legalization of folks like the man next to you, leonardo. You heard a strong reaction from democrats tonight because theres a number of things that President Trump just got wrong. When he was talking about family unification, this has been a very important thing to all of us in america who obviously are citizens if we have sisters or brothers abroad, we want to be able to bring them to the United States to share in this great nation that were part of. This is woven into the fabric of our nation. President trump wants to wipe it out which is not, not something consistent with who obviously and what we are as a nation primarily of immigrants. And what he also got wrong is when he said that this is an offer hes making that cuts it down the middle. And i think you heard a lot of reaction to that because its just such an absurd statement to make. Not only he did not acknowledge the dreamers who obviously were there and the important contributions theyre making to their community and the fact hes the one threatening to make their status illegal. Theyre legal now abhes taking that away. Hes saying ill restore it if you do all these other things that my right wring base really wants to happen like wipe out family unification. And so i think it was just not a serious proposal and everyone knew it in the room. That was why you got the reaction you did. Bigger picture though for a guy who obviously campaigned for the presidency the First Press Conference or the first speech he gave as aened candidate for president he talked about mexicans as wripists coming across the boarder, throwing out more than 10 million folks here right now. When you consider that candidate and as president tonight he did say among other things he did say he favors legalization for 1. 8 million, do you think thats significant at all . It wasnt new news that he says something good in that regard. He said before he had a big heart, a loving heart towards dreamers and wanted to address this. But that president youre talking about or that candidate youre talking about who obviously had this very ugly divisive strategy, we saw that again tonight. He repeatedly made the image of immigrants one of gang members, not ones of productive folks who obviously have grown up in our community, theyve been in our grade schools with our children and our high schools and our colleges and our workplaces. They are participants, full participants, full members of our community and then he equates them to gang members who obviously come and shoot and do terrible things. And so we saw that ugly side of President Trump once again. Very quickly, the clock is ticking on this, you know as well as i do, government funding running out in a few weeks. Some democrats were saying it was going to lead to a resolution of this issue by then. How confident are you to reopen the government this issue will be resolved in the comi