Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines on Wednesday advised Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) to give all her cash to the Democratic National Committee.
Reines appeared on MSNBC, where he discussed the Democratic primary and how some of the Democrats are wasting their time campaigning based off recent poll numbers.
"Does there come a point, Philippe, where sticking around in the race hurts the party?" host Craig Melvin asked.
"No, it doesn't hurt the party except it's just kind of pointless," Reines said. "I think people should do what they want and in a weird way, I wish one more person had qualified for the debate because then we would have had six and five. These 10-person debates really are not serving anyone."
He went on to say Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson can stay in the Democratic primary as long as she wants because he doesn't see an opportunity cost with her, but he said Gillibrand has approximately $8 million in her campaign funds.
"She is spending money on ads to try to get her the debate that she didn't get into," Reines said. "Now she could pull out. She could give that money to the DNC or the Senate arm, so while everyone is telling people, you know, you should drop out, Steve Bullock was just asked on your air whether or not he would drop out and run for Senate."
"There are many ways to help the party including giving all your cash and I think that's something Sen. Gillibrand should think about," Reines continued.
While Gillibrand qualified for the first two debates, she has failed to gain enough donors to reach the required benchmark of 130,000 individual donors. In an email she sent to supporters on Tuesday, she said she needed less than 15,000 unique donors, according to the Hill.
Gillibrand tweeted out a last-minute plea for help on Wednesday morning looking to pick up more donors, saying, "If we want issues that often get brushed aside to be in this debate, I need to be there to voice them."
https://twitter.com/SenGillibrand/status/1166694817071542272?s=20