White house press secretary Jen Psaki clashed with MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan during her appearance in the program last Thursday.
The press secretary was bombarded by questions over Biden’s sudden shift to support the idea of changing the Senate filibuster together with the president’s timeline as to why it took so long for him to change his mind. Hasan furthered his questions by citing a statement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. saying that “dragged his feet” on the issue.
Jen Psaki clashes with liberal MSNBC host over Biden's filibuster flip-flophttps://t.co/hFeA4NA52e
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“First, Mehdi, that wasn’t the first speech on voting rights he gave, hardly. He gave a number of speeches last year–” Psaki tried to answer Hasan’s question but the host interrupted her, pointing out that it is the first time that Biden came out publicly against the filibuster.
Psaki appeared frustrated after Hasan interrupting her and when on to say that she agrees with the host and continues with the issue saying that Biden signed an executive order about the voting rights when he took office and his statement about the filibuster issue before do not bear weight with the views of the senators behind it.
“I’m not saying it would have changed their minds earlier, but you’re telling me if he hadn’t come out earlier, if the President of the United States with the bully pulpit, the leader of the Democratic Party, had he not come out three, six, nine months earlier and said, ‘We need to get this filibuster out of the way for voting rights,’ that wouldn’t have helped?” the host followed.
Psaki repeated her statement that there are no apparent observations that Sen. Sinema and Manchin would change their minds about the issue.
The filibuster issue started earlier this month within the Senate which is a motion to change the filibuster process. The motion failed due to Republicans, together with Sinema and Manchin, voting against the filibuster change.
