Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) believes Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) abrupt and devastating refusal to back President Biden's flagship Build Back Better agenda to be "an egregious breach of the trust of the president," she told MSNBC's Morning Joe during a Monday morning appearance.
On Sunday, Manchin announced he will definitely not be voting for the $1.75 trillion legislation, garnering a "furious" response from the White House (Manchin's vote is needed for the bill to pass the Senate).
"I think what Sen. Manchin did yesterday represents such an egregious breach of the trust of the president," Ocasio-Cortez said Monday. "It's an outcome that we had warned about well over a month ago ... it's why we insisted on having the bipartisan infrastructure plan coupled and passed together with the Build Back Better Act."
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"Of course" lawmakers have "every right" to be angry at Manchin, AOC continued, but the burden now falls on Democratic leaders to get the party out of this mess.
"It's really about time that we take the kid gloves off and we start using them to govern for working families in this country."
Regarding working with the White House moving forward, the New York representative then reflected first on her and other progressives' skepticism that Biden could rally Manchin around the two-part legislation in the first place.
"With respect to the president, ... no one can really promise a Manchin vote," she said. "So we really need to figure out what the solution is."
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