On Jonathan Capehart's The Sunday Show on MSNBC, Boston Globe columnist and associate editor Renée Graham furiously ripped into Sen. Joe Manchin for opposing the "clean-energy" portion of the $3.5 trillion spending proposal.
Graham called Manchin "dirty-coal Joe," and implied he was bought-and-paid-for by the coal industry, saying:
"He wants to make sure that all that good money he's got coming in from coal in West Virginia keeps coming in, and there's no way he is going to compromise that for something, as, in his mind, minute as saving the planet."
Graham also displayed a weak grasp of our constitutional system of government, expressing outrage that Manchin thinks "he is the person who is going to have a say in what goes in this country and what happens in this country."
Um, yeah: senators do have a say. Graham seemed to imply that only the president had such a say. Nope.
BONUS UNINTENTIONAL HUMOR: Jennifer Rubin was also on the panel. At one point, Capehart said that although Rubin's a "former Republican, you are a conservative." Rubin, a conservative? Can anyone remember the last time she strayed from the strict liberal line?
On MSNBC, Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham calling Sen. Joe Manchin "dirty-coal Joe" and implying he was bought and paid for by the coal industry was sponsored in part by Dell and Procter & Gamble, maker of Tide.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
The Sunday Show
10/17/21
11:18 am EDTJONATHAN CAPEHHART: Let’s just – Renée, stick with the Joe Manchin situation here. Because Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of Senate Banking [Capehart later corrected himself, saying Sanders is chairman of the Senate Budget committee.] I mean, he – well, he put out – he did an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette, the West Virginia newspaper.
. . .
Manchin responded to the Sanders’ op-ed by saying, this isn’t the first time an out-of-stater has tried to tell West Virginians what is best for them despite having no relationship to our state. No op-ed from a self-declared independent socialist is going to change that. Ooh, the burn. Renée.
RENEE GRAHAM: I mean, what if find interesting is that Joe Manchin is so deeply offended that this outsider, the senator from Vermont, would try to tell West Virginians what's best for them, while Joe Manchin is trying to tell 49 other states what’s best for them. The hypocrisy is off the charts with this man.
But that's what we're looking at, right? I mean, he doesn’t want a clean-energy bill. Well of course he doesn’t. He’s dirty-coal Joe. He wants to make sure that all that good money he's got coming in from coal in West Virginia keeps coming in, and there's no way he is going to compromise that for something, as, in his mind, minute as saving the planet and helping the environment.
It’s really appalling that Joe Manchin is kind of swanning around as if the country elected him president, and he is the person who is going to have a say in what goes in this country and what happens in this country. There has to be some repercussion for this. I don’t know at this point exactly what that pushback is, but I think simply kowtowing to Joe Manchin and Sinema, for that matter, is not the way to go.
