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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) took a victory lap on Sunday on the heels of his surprise deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last week, explaining just why he agreed to it: he was tired of getting yelled at.
“I didn’t want to go through the drama that eight months ago… we went through for so long,” Manchin told Chuck Todd on Meet The Press, one of five Sunday TV appearances he made on his explanation-turned-adulation tour. Manchin was referring to his public tanking of Build Back Better, President Joe Biden’s once-marquee domestic bill.
It was that tanking that made Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, wary of working with Manchin again. “Here we go again,” Manchin recalled Schumer saying when, at one point in negotiations, Manchin said he brought up waiting for July’s inflation numbers.