WATCH: Maddow Makes Brutal Yet Flattering Appeal to Joe Manchin to Rethink Neera Tanden Confirmation Vote
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow made a brutally effective case to Senator Joe Manchin to rethink his opposition to Biden OMB nominee Neera Tanden by laying out the West Virginia Democrat’s past positions, and praising him as an “introspective guy.”
On Tuesday night’s edition of The Rachel Maddow Show, the host ran down a litany of Republican senators who are opposing President Joe Biden’s cabinet nominees using criteria under which they voted to approve Trump nominees, then turned her attention to Manchin.
“The other person who is playing that same bad faith game within the Democratic Party is West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin,” Maddow said, “Who was very concerned he says about civility, about temperament. Of all nominees. And he won’t vote for any of them if nominees do not meet his exacting standards about civility and temperament and comportment.”
She then played then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s “I like beer” moment, and then went to work. With veiled allusions, Maddow avoided explicitly calling Manchin a sexist as she critiqued his “double standard.”
“Joe Manchin voted for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court,” Maddow said, and then added “Senator Manchin voted for Trump ambassador nominee Ric Grenell, who had a rap sheet a mile long of insulting women online for their looks, women in politics. Insulting politicians’ family members. Ripping mostly Democrats and some people in the media, mostly women, and nasty sexist terms over and over again, for years. He was like a professional Twitter troll.”
“But he has decided this year, with a president of his own party, with a Democratic president in power, that he’s got a new standard now, now he says that Biden nominee Neera Tanden has a history of having said things like calling Mitch McConnell ‘Voldemort,’ or calling Ted Cruz ‘heartless,'” Maddow said.
“He has decided that is what violates this new line he’s just drawn for civility and comportment, a line that he did not apply or even reference when considering dudes nominated by Trump over and over and over again. But here, for Neera Tanden, nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, well, this young lady better watch her mouth. New standard for her,” Maddow said.
Maddow then noted that the White House and other Democrats in the Senate are standing by Tanden, despite the opposition.
She concluded with an appeal to Manchin’s ethical core, saying “It’s just Joe Manchin, it’s just him, presumably, hopefully thinking hard about his own ethical standards, and why this particular nominee felt so over the line for him, when he’s been very happy to vote for multiple Trump guys who were so far over that line, it didn’t even register as a line for him at the time.”
“I think that Senator Joe Manchin not only knows his power, but I also think that he is an introspective guy who thinks about his ethical role in the world,” she said. “And I find it impossible to believe that he is not reconsidering his position on this, given the starkness of the doubles standard that he is applying without even any effort to defend it.”
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
