Thursday night on MSNBC, ReidOut host Joy Reid did what she does best in not only peddling far-left propaganda, but show her deftness at lying and spewing hatred toward her opponents. And as has been the case for sometime now, Reid continued her crusade against Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) for not supporting the For the People Act by falsely claiming he hasn’t met with so-called voting rights activists and African-American groups.
Unfortunately for Reid, she actually had to face someone who’d debate her in a former Manchin aide and, when it didn’t start off on the right foot, she kvetched that Manchin won’t come on her show.
“But up next, Joe Manchin wants to singlehandedly decide the future of voting rights for people of color. He’s making major concessions to Republicans, which could portend very bad things for other Democratic priorities,” whined Red in a tease.
Having already labeled him racist, sexist, and caring more about Jim Crow then America and voting, Reid again branded him as a Republican and part of “the shady underbelly of GOP politics” because he spoke to “billionaire donors” (which was actually the moderate group No Labels) about the filibuster.
Shifting to voting, Reid noted that Manchin’s attempt at a compromise involves “making Election Day a public holiday, banning partisan gerrymandering,” and national voter ID, but quickly dismissed it because “[t]here's been a lot of skepticism about Senator Manchin's role, to be honest, and whether he is playing above board.”
This set a rather stacked deck for Jonathan Kott, who was a longtime Manchin aide and former communications director. Reid then went to him by claiming he’s never “talk[ed] to the people who would be affected by voting rights, to, you know, black lawmakers like Raphael Warnock, who, you know — have got to run in these elections” and instead “rich folks.”
A quick Google search would have rendered this claim pants on fire. On June 8, Manchin met with major Black organizations like the NAACP, the National Action Network (led by Al Sharpton), and the National Urban League.
But seeing as how Reid had also said he’s a “southern Democrat...underboss” from a state of degenerates and sat by as a guest said Manchin probably wanted all his colleagues dead on January 6, one would say her mind is clouded by hatred.
Nonetheless, Kott did his best and, when Reid interjected, she griped that Manchin won’t talk to her and thus Kott’s argument wasn’t valid (click “expand”):
KOTT: He’s certainly talking to the people directly affected by the legislation, the thing I found out after a couple of weeks working for Joe Manchin and certainly after seven years is he will literally talk to anybody. His phone does not stop ringing. Mostly, I would say, 90 percent of the time, it's from 304 numbers in West Virginia because, if you’ve met Joe Manchin, you probably have his cell phone number. But he will talk to anybody. That was one hour of his day. I'm guessing he spent another 15, 16 hours of his day talking to other people. He works the aisle — both sides of the aisle. He is talking to his moderate Republican friends and that paid off this week when you saw infrastructure come together. So, I don't think it’s — he’s talking to one group of people and not the other. It's just an example of him literally talking to everybody.
REID: Well, he — not everybody because we’ve tried to get him to come on the show and talk with us and he won't do that. He’s very selective about the TV people he’ll talk to. He really only goes places, I think — I would say where he — he feels that he won't have to get into more of a debate. But I will — I will keep leaving that to my producers to try to get him to come on. We’d love him to come on here. He won't do it. He won’t even — he said no.
KOTT: I will say, as his former communications director, he rarely said no to TV interviews, even when I tried to get him to say no. He did everything from the Young Turks to Sean Hannity, so he is willing to talk to anybody. But I’ll see what I can do.
REID: Give him a call.
KOTT: I’ll see what I can do.
REID: Yeah. See what you can do cause he would love him come on here.
The Root’s Michael Harriot was also on-hand and he was more willing to tell Reid what she wanted to hear, trashing Manchin’s proposed compromise as “a light version of the voter suppression bills that we’ve been seeing all around the country with a few compromises thrown in that no one was asking for.”
He also mocked the idea of voter ID, saying it would make as much sense as demanding blood tests or retina scans from people before voting to make sure they’re not cyborgs or have the ability to go invisible and skirt by poll workers.
Going back to Kott, Reid insisted that Manchin was wasting his time (click “expand”):
REID: And — and let's be clear, Mr. Kott. It doesn't matter what Stacey Abrams would have said. If she said the bill — the idea is terrible, he would have said, that's why I don't like it either. You know, there's nothing — it's not about her. This isn’t just about him. Is there any point to having bipartisan conversations about voting rights when you just heard Mitch McConnell say, you will get zero Republican votes?
KOTT: I think that's just a challenge that Joe Manchin is happy to accept and he’s going to work tirelessly to see if he can get —
REID: But has he —
KOTT: — his colleagues to —
REID: — has he ever —
KOTT: — come onboard.
REID: — let me ask you, has he ever succeeded? Because he couldn't get it on gun reform. Hasn't been able to get it on anything else. Has he ever actually delivered ten Republican votes for anything ever? Can you name one thing?
KOTT: Six months ago, he negotiated a bipartisan COVID deal that got billions of dollars to the state and he just this week —
REID: I don't think that was — that was on him? He gets the credit for that?
KOTT: — I’m not saying — I'm not saying it's all him. You’re asking times that he’s negotiated and been part of deals. That’s one of the times he was part of it. He’s part of a group of 20 senators that just came out with a bipartisan infrastructure package, so —
REID: How many Democrats voted for that big COVID relief bill that gave people the stimmy? How many Republicans voted for that?
KOTT: No, I’m talking about the one that passed in —
REID: I mean, they didn’t vote for it.
KOTT: — I’m talking about the one that passed in —
REID: — oh, the one that Trump did.
KOTT: — in December, yeah.
REID: Yeah cause none of them voted for the — none of them voted for any — they won’t do — if it’s Trump, they’ll do anything. I mean, they would lay down in front of a truck for Donald Trump. They’re — easy to get, you know, Republicans to vote for something Trump’s going to sign. You know, if the bill was, you know —
KOTT: Sure.
REID: — to lock their mothers in the basement, they — they’d vote for that.
With this fruitless effort over, Reid closed with Harriot, who told her that “Republicans won't sign on to anything” that Democrats would want on voting and thus “I don’t know why we’re in this fruitless effort and Joe Manchin isn't going to get it done because he’s never, ever done it.”
Reid’s latest lie and act of war against Manchin was made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as Dove, loanDepot, and Roman. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from June 17, click here.
