If you ignore somebody's record and only focus on something that happened 25 years ago when all they were doing even then was trying to stand up for a minority group that felt excluded and discriminated against, then I don't - I think that is a distortion of a person's record. I mean, a person's record is full, not just the parts that you want to use against them.

The First Amendment says that we can protest and call to - on our government to address grievances.

I'm an optimistic guy.It's just as much the case that people will come to me and ask my opinion about how to properly include the Muslim community, as it is that people will come with some hateful stuff too. When people come to me about my religion, it's not always a thing of "we don't want people like you here," which happens sometimes. But mostly it's people who would like to know more. I get a chance to help people understand the religion better.

I don't feel that I've been hampered by [ racism or discrimination], and the reason why is that we reach out to people on the basis of where everyone meets, and try to build common cause on that basis. Because of that, I think we've cut through some of the issues that normally divide people.

Our message of strengthening the middle class, working people, we just didn't penetrate well enough and we didn't have the kind of turn out that we really needed or expected.

All I want to say is that anybody, well, from the Democratic side of the fence who thinks that - who's terrified of the possibility of President [Donald] Trump better vote, better get active, better get involved, because this man has got some momentum and we better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican ticket.

Over the course of the last quarter century I've learned a lot. And the main thing I've learned is that we're better together and that our society needs inclusion - right? - not exclusion.