“That’s New York talk,” Senator Joe Manchin said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “I look at it strictly as the New York language.’
It was just New Yawk tawk.
Sen. Joe Manchin thinks President Trump’s reported desire to fire special counsel Robert Mueller last summer can’t be taken seriously because New Yorkers don’t speak like everyone else.
“That’s New York talk,” he said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “I look at it strictly as the New York language they have that’s different than most other people.”
Trump reportedly wanted to fire Mueller last June, citing what he found were conflicts of interest, which was stymied when White House counsel Donald McGahn threatened to quit.
Manchin’s remarks on “New York talk” harkens back to Sen. Ted Cruz’s “New York values” slight against Trump during the Republican presidential primary.
Cruz (R-Texas) was widely vilified in the Empire State for implying New Yorkers have loose morals.
What exactly Manchin meant Sunday wasn’t clear, and it left “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd initially confused.
Manchin, a moderate Democrat, is up for re-election this year in West Virginia, which has become an increasingly red state.
“I get what you’re trying to do there — it’s a re-election year, I get that, you have to be anti-New York in West Virginia — but explain this to me,” Todd told Manchin.
The lawmaker responded that Trump, a Queens native who spent his adult life in Manhattan, struggled to elaborate. Instead, he said the President is having a tough time adjusting from his life as a businessman, where he “had total control.”
“Now all of a sudden he understands there’s equal branches and there’s equal powers,” Manchin continued. “He’s having a hard time with that. Hopefully, I think that will come.”
He said if Trump were to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who hired Mueller, he’d back legislation to protect the special counsel from getting the axe.
Manchin also made the case during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying “people from New York have a different way of talking and speaking.”
“I take that literally, he blew off about some things,” he said.
New Yorkers on social media, however, didn’t blow off Manchin’s remarks.
“I can think of a ‘New York talk’ I’d like to have with Joe Manchin,” @primesilver tweeted.
