are going to have to explain why that they haven t wanted to protect the vulnerable people we re all here talking about. we re talking about everything except doing something for the daca kids. you know, i would vote for a path to citizenship, which isn t very easy for me, but i would do it just as an effort. but there s certain things that you ve got we ve got to we re going to do. will be brought up. i really believe that will be brought up as part of what we re talking about at some point. it s an incentive for people to do a good job. if you want to know the truth. the whole path is an incentive for people. and they re not all kids. we weren t used to talking about kids. they re not really kids. you have 39 years old in some cases. but it would be an incentive for people to work hard, do a good job. that could very well be you talk about legalizing people here that didn t break the law because their parents who broke the law brought them here. we ought to be talking abo
in to a comprehensive immigration reform procedure like we did back i remember when kennedy was here. it was really a major, major effort. and it was great disappointment that it went nowhere. i have no i think that s basically what dick is saying. we re going to come up with daca. then we can start immediately on phase two which would be comprehensive would you be agreeable to that? i think a lot of people would like to see that. i think we have to do daca first. mr. president, you need to be clear, though, i think what senator feinstein s asking here, when we talk about just daca, we don t want to be back here two years later. you have to have security as the secretary would tell you. i think that s what she s saying. i think she s saying something different. what do you think i m saying? i think you re saying daca without security. are you talking about security as well? well, i think if we have some meaningful comprehensive
diane, go ahead. do you really think that there can be agreement in all of of that quickly to get daca passed in time? i wanted to ask mr. mccarthy a question. do you really think there can be agreement on those three difficult subjects you raised in time to get daca passed and effective so yes, because you have heard from leader mcconnell and speaker ryan who said they will put the bill on to the floor if the president agreed to it. and us getting to the room, i haven t seen us be this close and having this discussion in quite a few years of the last four years. so i think yes, we can make this happen. we all know it. we ve done it before. you and i spent a long time. water. i believe we can get there. and we can just keep working each day on this. mr. president i think what we re all saying is we ll do daca and we can
you heard him keep going back to the idea of wanting the u.s. immigration system to be merit-based. and wanting to improve border security. broadly speaking, those are things that i think members of both parties can agree to. we don t know what happened when the cameras left the room but i think the people who are going to walk out of that meeting very pleased with the white house officials who have the president just sort of control that room for the better part of an hour with the cameras on and looking like he wants to make a bipartisan deal. democrats who now will see an opening and republicans have to get in the game here because as the president said, he s going to sign what they can agree to so now republican legislators have to play a little bit of hard ball here. i want to point out one stylistic thing, not a policy thing. people should go back and watch i think how lindsey graham addressed the president there. you see the difference of lawmakers who are learning how to operat
but the president said he was thrilled to be in that room of distinguished republicans and democrats. said that any deal on immigration had to include three things. border security. including that wall. more resources for i.c.e. agents. and ending chain migration. ending the visa lottery. we also heard the president there use a term that is politically loaded over and over again. comprehensive immigration reform. it would seem to folks who are watching that go down that a daca deal is going to get done here long before the march deadline. and then after that, the president said he would prefer to tackle this comprehensive immigration reform. let s bring in our chief white house correspondent halle jackson and msnbc capitol hill correspondent garrett haake. hallie, let me start with you. let s just start with the optics. sure. the president of the united states there in a light that we don t always see this president.