Americans should hope for their president to do well, even if their candidate didn't win, and it was "great" for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to congratulate Joe Biden as the president-elect on the Senate floor, Sen. Joe Manchin said Wednesday.
"You should always want your president where you voted for them or not, whether it's the person you would have chosen or the political party, you want them to succeed," the West Virginia Democrat said on CNN's "New Day." "If they succeed we succeed. ... We will have a lot of challenges if they don't do well. Why don't we all work together so we can all benefit from it?"
Manchin added that in his opinion, McConnell, R-Ky., should have made his comments sooner, but he acknowledges the pressure Republicans have been under while President Donald Trump's challenges to the election continue.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell has warned fellow GOP senators not to join Trump's attack on the results of Monday's Electoral College vote, and not to join House members to object to the results when lawmakers convene on Jan. 6 to ratify the results. Manchin said Wednesday that he hopes Republicans rise above the fray.
"We all have the same goal," he said. "Everybody has a different way of getting to it," Manchin added, but he hopes patriotism can rise above political bitterness. "It's too long. People are tired of this. We're getting a little reprieve now. We don't see the animosity coming in as it has through the tweets and attacking people that don't agree. That's not who we are. It's never who we've been and it can't be who we're going to be."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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