Jim Sciutto Confronts Democratic Rep. Over His Claim That Joe Manchin ‘Doesn’t Care About Black People’

CNN’s Jim Sciutto confronted Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) Wednesday about comments he made early this week in which he called Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) a callous millionaire who does not care about minorities and women.

Bowman joined The Lead to discuss the Democratic Party’s strategy moving forward after Manchin said he would not support President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act as is. The announcement has all but killed the bill following negotiations between Manchin and progressives, such as Bowman.

Tensions following the loss of Manchin on Build Back Better culminated in Bowman attacking the West Virginia Democrat in a very personal way. Sciutto aired a clip of comments Bowman made to CNN host Laura Coates on Monday.

Bowman told Coates, “It’s tremendously frustrating for me as a Black man in America because once again, it’s an example of Joe Manchin as a White man showing that he doesn’t care about Black people. He doesn’t care about Latinos, he doesn’t care about immigrants, he doesn’t care about women, and he doesn’t care about the poor.”

Scuitto confronted Bowman about the remarks, and asked him if he stands by them. He also inquired if he believes they were helpful with regard to courting Manchin’s support for legislation in the future.

Bowman responded without addressing the comments specifically.

“So we have to have honest conversations about who we are as a country,” Bowman said. “And we have to have honest conversations about systemic racism and how it manifests in our country. The bottom line is, the majority of American policy that comes from Congress has a disproportionately negative impact on people and communities of color.”

Bowman also stated,

Remember, our communities were redlined by design and undervalued simply because they were Black. We’ve had to march for human rights and civil rights in this country. And now we have to reauthorize voting rights because that has been gutted. We have to do an honest analysis. The majority of Congress is White. And unfortunately, a lot of policies that come from Congress disproportionately negatively affect people of color. So, we need a racial analysis and an honest conversion, truthful conversation, about our history, where we are and where we’re trying to go.

So I’m open to having that honest conversation. And I’m opening the door to that conversation, because guess what. Our identity and our biases impact how we govern. My people were called the n-word and continue to be called the n-word in this country while we suffer from mass incarceration, while we suffer from police brutality, while we suffer from underfunded housing, underfunded schools, an opioid pandemic that’s killing us and killing poor people as well. So let’s be honest about who is privileged in this country and who suffers this country and then we can move forward as one nation together.

Watch above, via CNN.