It is clear that the white house made a mistake by mounting pressure on Sen.Joe Manchin via the Harris Interview.
which is why it is more than a mere puzzling situation that vice president Kamala Harris gave an interview to a local west Virginia TV channel last week clearly to mount pressure on west Virginia sen. Joe Manchin to support Joe Biden administration on $1.9 trillion Covid-19 plan.
“To your point in West Virginia, one in seven families is describing their household as being hungry, one in six can’t pay their rent, and one in four small businesses are closing permanently or have already closed, so it’s a big issue in West Virginia and across the country,” Harris told WSAZ. “And that’s why the president and I are offering the American Rescue Plan.”
Manchin didn’t like the news and stated;
“I saw Harris’ interview, I couldn’t believe it. No one called me [about it],” Manchin told WSAZ over the weekend. “We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, but we need to work together. That’s not a way of working together.”
(Harris, it’s worth noting, also did an interview with a local station in Arizona to pressure Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on the same bill.
Made aware of Manchin’s annoyance, the White House reached out to the West Virginia Democrat over the weekend to smooth the waters. It’s unclear whether the outreach calmed Manchin down.
“We’ve been in touch with Sen. Manchin, as we have been for many weeks and will continue to be moving forward,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday. Psaki declined to say on Monday whether Harris’ interview was designed specifically to apply pressure on Manchin.
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