Bernie Sanders Shares the Time He Snubbed Donald Trump

As President Trump unveiled his much-anticipated tax plan, buses arrived at the White House with senators ready for a briefing on North Korea. All 100 members of the senate were invited, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stayed behind. 

"The highly—supposedly highly—classified briefings always take place in what is called the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) room in Congress, which is a very well-designed room to prevent any cybersecurity issues or security issues in general," the Vermont senator told MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Wednesday.

"What I did not want to be is part of a photo opportunity or a political effort on the part of the White House. The issue of North Korea is enormously important and we need bipartisan efforts to control North Korea's very aggressive nuclear efforts. But I did not want to be part of a roadshow for the White House," he explained. 

Similarly, the New York Times chalked up the move to Trump's smoke-and-mirrors approach to governing. 

"Maybe the president believes that when you can make an entire chamber of Congress ride around like so many tour groups, the world will understand that you’re a can-do kind of guy," wrote op-ed columnist Gail Collins. 

As for Trump's tax reform bill, Sanders slammed the one-page document for giving "huge tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations."

"Here is the Republican Party mantra," said Sanders. "Billions of dollars in tax breaks for the top 1 percent, cuts in heath care, trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, throw millions of people off of health insurance, cuts to programs that working people desperately depend upon... same old, same old."

"And how they manage to win elections should tell us something about the state of the Democratic Party," Sanders added.

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