On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) responded to a question on if he’s waiting for President Joe Biden to move to the center to get an endorsement by stating that Biden needs to move to the center and people want him to acknowledge, “we made a mistake at the border, a big mistake at the border, but he’s willing to fix it.” Manchin also stated that Biden should have shut down the influx at the border earlier and that he’s “begging him now, if this can’t be fixed in Congress, to basically do and declare a national emergency, because the border is of a national concern and a national emergency.”
Host Katy Tur asked, “So, are you waiting for him to move, is that what you’re holding your endorsement for?”
Manchin answered, “I think he needs to move. I really do. I think the people want [him] to say, we made a mistake at the border, a big mistake at the border, but he’s willing to fix it.”
After Manchin praised the Senate immigration bill, Tur asked, “[W]hen you’re asking about immigration, what more do you want Joe Biden to do?”
Manchin responded, “Well, first of all, if you want to blame Joe Biden, it’s his fault for what happened, but he did it [in] a sympathetic way, basically empathetic towards what was happening after a pandemic. He tried, and he saw we were getting overrun, we should have shut it down. So, now he comes to an agreement…a border security bill, that would work, and Donald Trump moves in and says, oh, I’m sorry, I can’t do that, because it’s not good for my campaign or my politics, let’s wait. That’s as bad, if not worse, than making a mistake [in] the beginning. So, with that, I said, okay, let’s fix it. I’m begging him now, if this can’t be fixed in Congress, to basically do and declare a national emergency, because the border is of a national concern and a national emergency.”
Later in the interview, Manchin stated that he’s “never sat on the sidelines. So, we’ll have to just wait and see how it goes.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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