A group of young protesters, demanding that Sen. Joe Manchin "fight for us," rather than oppose the Democrats' multitrillion-dollar spending bill, tried to block him from pulling his Maserati crossover vehicle out of its parking spot in a D.C. garage after following him there from the houseboat he keeps on the Potomac River.
According to a video tweeted by John Paul Mejia, a spokesperson for the protest group "Sunshine Movement," the West Virginia Democrat is seen surrounded by protesters while walking Thursday from his houseboat to the garage, reports The New York Post.
A second video, posted by a different user on Twitter, shows small groups of activists standing behind and in front of the senator's vehicle in the garage. The video claims Manchin tried to hit them with the Maserati. The senator's security guards were seen on the video clearing the protesters away so he could leave.
The senator hasn't commented about the incident, the latest in a series of harassments he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have faced over their objections to the Build Back Better Act, which started at $3.5 trillion and is now slated for a vote after its price tag was slashed to $1.75 trillion.
In September, protesters in kayaks met at Manchin's houseboat, and a few days later, activists followed Sinema into a women's bathroom after she tried to give a lecture at Arizona State University to demand her support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants through the spending bill legislation.
The Sunrise Movement staged its protests Thursday after ending a two-week hunger strike, reports Business Insider.
Before cornering Manchin in his Maserati, the group gathered outside the Capitol Yacht Club, where he docks his houseboat, Thursday morning, posting a banner that said Manchin "is burning our future for profit."
They called for the spending bill to be passed without cuts that address climate change and demanded that Manchin be removed from chairing the Senate's Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, given his ties to the coal industry.
Manchin accrued $500,000 in 2020 through stock dividends from Enersystems, the coal brokerage he founded in 1998, reports Business Insider. The firm is now run by his son, but the senator still holds an estimated $5 million stake in the company, reports The Guardian, quoting the Center for Media and Democracy.
The Post reports that Manchin appeared to be driving a Maserati Levante, which reaches top speeds of 156 mph and can go from 0-60 in approximately six seconds.
"Because the most effective way to protest carbon is to force a senator to idle and release more carbon into the air," joked Jorge Bonilla, director of the conservative MRC Latino media watchdog group.
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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