Dem Sen Manchin on Gorsuch Filibuster: ‘I Want to Protect the 60-Vote Rule’

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Joe Machin (D-WV) said that although he has yet to make a decision on whether or not he’ll vote to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, it was his hope to preserve the U.S. Senate’s rule requiring 60 votes to confirm a member of that court.

Machin explained to co-host Mika Brzezinski he opposed doing away with a similar rule regarding other federal judges’ confirmations when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) did so as well.

“Judge Gorsuch, you know, I’m going to meet with Judge Gorsuch and make my final decision,” he said. “I haven’t done that yet. I want to sit down with him. Because I’ve heard his testimony. I’ve read through all of his basically transcripts. So there’s some things that we want to talk about in his rulings and his thought process on individual rights and basically people’s rights and labor rights and on and on and on.”

“But with that being said, everything you see about this man is a fine individual,” Manchin continued. “An upstanding individual of moral values, a family person. So with that we’ve just got to look and see what we can do. I want to protect the 60-vote rule. I’ve been very clear about that. I was against what Harry Reid did Joe. You know the nuclear option — we should have never gone there. We should be able to have, come to an agreement on the 60 rule, if we think that the filibuster is important.”

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