CNN: Tapper & ABC: Raddatz grilled Sen. Joe Manchin with inconvenient questions & got naive

Both Jake Tapper & Martha Raddatz grilled Joe Manchin on why a Senator from a poor state would limit their income and on the filibuster. He gave willfully naive answers.

Joe Manchin: Willfully naive answers

Jake Tapper immediately pointed out the inconvenient truth about Joe Manchin’s constituency.

“After changes that you pushed for, enhanced federal unemployment benefits now expire about a month earlier, and there’s a new income cap for writing them off on your taxes, I have to say, you represent one of the lowest-income states in the nation,” Tapper said. “Why were you fighting for less help for citizens during this cruel economic time?”

The only answer Joe Manchin could come up with is that he wanted to target the stimulus. Of course, in effect, he was parroting the Republican desire to deny poor and middle-class people help from the government when that restriction is never afforded the wealthy people and corporations when given them tax breaks.

Martha Raddatz went for the jugular in the manner in which she asked her first question. Manchin responded as expected.

“Senator, you brought the Senate to a standstill for 10 hours on Friday, threatened to side with Republicans, and did not budge until a call from the president and significant concessions were made,” Raddatz said. “In the end, you got $300 a month, instead, for $400, for benefits. So, in this pandemic economy, you don’t think people need more money?”

Manchin first tried to put lipstick on the pig, reducing unemployment from $400 to $300/week.

“I think that, basically, what would have happened, going from $300 to $400, there’s going to be a glitch where people are going to go without an employment check for a while,” Manchin answered with a likely lie. “$300 kept us systematically and kept a smooth transition through there.”

He then started to highlight all the good things the bill does. Unfortunately, these are the things his “Republican Friends” are calling socialist wishlists and other nice adjectives on other cable networks.

Sadly, Manchin continues with his willfully naive notion that there can be some semblance of bipartisanship. Worse, however, is his false narrative that good governance comes from some mythical center. The bills Democrats are passing are bipartisan. The policies are loved by both Democrats and Republicans. We should not define bipartisanship by what the fraudsters-for-hire, I mean Republican politicians, are holding Americans hostage for all of the time.

America has been governed from the center for the last 40 years. We have gotten income inequality, wealth transfer to a select few, poverty, polarization, and many other negative results. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It is time to stop the insanity.