Manchin on House Republicans’ efforts to investigate Manhattan DA: ‘Can’t we just do our job?’

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Sunday said he wants lawmakers to “just get along” and “just do our job,” dismissing House Republicans’ efforts to investigate the Manhattan prosecutor investigating former President Trump.

Asked whether he thought it was a mistake for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to direct House Republicans to investigate Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), Manchin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he’s talked with McCarthy about the budget, energy and other national topics, and Americans are “tired” of “these tangents.”

“We’re talking about, how do we run our country? How do we do our job? Which we’re not. So when you get off on these tangents, and you get the extremes, the right and the left, that’s what people are tired about,” Manchin said.

“They’re tired of seeing the political parties retreat to the extreme right and left and say, ‘Okay, pick your side.’ That’s why people are saying, ‘Enough is enough. I can’t take it anymore.’ I mean, can’t we just get along? Can’t we just do our job?”

House Republicans have called for Bragg to testify before Congress over the probe, and Bragg has pushed back, saying it’s “not appropriate for Congress to interfere in pending local investigations.”

In the lead-up to last week’s indictment and afterward, Trump and others in his party have bashed Bragg over the case and argued it’s politically motivated as Trump seeks the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Trump accused Bragg of “interference in a presidential election” and claimed the prosecutor, an elected official, was “taking his orders from D.C.”