It’s now been a week since Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) went on Fox News Sunday and tanked President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, drawing audible sighs from the mostly liberal panel on ABC’s This Week. A week later and they still have not gotten over it. They spent the latter half of the so-called “Powerhouse Roundtable” railing against Manchin for not going along with their agenda. With one panelist claiming the Senator “represents plutocrats.”
Fill-in host Jonathan Karl and his panel which consisted of ABC political director Averi Harper, and ABC senior national correspondent Terry Moran, spent the first part of the segment analyzing the fallout from the defeat of Build Back Better. After that, the topic then inevitably turned to Manchin’s announcement the previous week, as well as his reasons for tanking the bill.
Karl turned to Averi Harper asking: “there was some reporting about what Manchin was saying about how the child tax credit would be used or was being used in West Virginia. What was that all about?”
Harper then brought up comments Manchin purportedly made about potential taxpayer abuse of the child tax credit:
There were reported comments from Senator Manchin in which he privately expressed concerns about parents using the child tax credit payments to buy drugs or if family paid leave was initiated that folks might use it or exploit it in order to go deer hunting. Effectively, you know, resurrecting the myth of the welfare queen, that Reagan era trope used to argue against entitlements, implying that the poorest among us are inherently irresponsible and incapable of using government services for their intended purposes, and that is such a glaring statement that outraged folks who heard it, and illustrates just how out of step Joe Manchin is with this Democratic Party.
After Harper whined about Manchin being out of step with the Democratic Party, Karl did make the point to Terry Moran that even though Manchin may be out of step with his party, he is in step with his home state of West Virginia which voted for former President Donald Trump over Biden by almost 40 percent: “And as you know, Terry he's from a state that Biden only got, what was it? 30 something percent in?”
Moran apparently didn’t see it that way claiming Manchin represents “one of the poorest states in the union, and he seems to represent the plutocrats a lot”, while complaining that West Virginia is focused on issues like “inflation, pandemic, crime, the border.”
It’s clear Terry Moran doesn’t see the disconnect in what he is saying. Yes, West Virginians are more concerned about inflation and crime than the more liberal social issues that “Build Back Better” is supposedly addressing.
This remarkably out-of-touch segment was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Crest and CarFax. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about the biased news they fund.
Read the relevant transcript below by clicking "expand":
ABC's This Week
12/26/2021
9:38:58 AM(...)
JONATHAN KARL: Yeah and there was some reporting about what Manchin was saying about how the child tax credit would be used or was being used in West Virginia. What was that all about?
AVERI HARPER (DEPUTY POLITICAL DIRECTOR): Right. There were reported comments from Senator Manchin in which he privately expressed concerns about parents using the child tax credit payments to buy drugs or if family paid leave was initiated that folks might use it or exploit it in order to go deer hunting. Effectively, you know, resurrecting the myth of the welfare queen, that Reagan era trope used to argue against entitlements, implying that the poorest among us are inherently irresponsible and incapable of using government services for their intended purposes, and that is such a glaring statement that outraged folks who heard it, and illustrates just how out of step Joe Manchin is with this Democratic Party.
KARL: And and as you know, Terry he's from a state that Biden only got, what was it? 30 something percent in?
TERRY MORAN (SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT): Yeah, so he’s got that to deal with. He does represent one of the poorest states in the union, and he seems to represent the plutocrats a lot. But, look Manchin is just part of the problem. This is a hugely ambitious bill to restructure health care, education, immigration, climate, all different kinds of things. The public in West Virginia in other words, in other places focused on inflation, pandemic, crime, the border.
KARL: Alright, Terry. Unfortunately, we are out of time. Thank you for the roundtable. We’ll see you next year.
(...)
