A climate activist group is bragging about a confrontation with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) at Harvard University, during which one of its members was thrown to the ground after denouncing the pro-oil and gas Democrat with an outburst of profanity.
“You sold our futures and got rich doing it, you sick [explicit],” one of the protesters shouted, prompting Mr. Manchin to stand up from his chair to face his antagonist. “How dare you? You have sold our—”
A member of Mr. Manchin’s staff quickly jumped between the two and held the senator back. Before the protester was able to finish his last sentence, the Manchin aide grabbed the young man by his jacket and tossed him out the door, shoving him to the ground.
With their peer thrown out, the protesters who remained inside the room were offered by Mr. Manchin an opportunity to “sit down and talk.” However, they refused and began shouting over him, accusing the senator of making millions of dollars in personal profit from the pipeline project.
“I’m not going to sit down. You’ve received more funding from fossil fuels than any other senator,” a protester shouted.
“You’ve made millions out of your position, you drive a Maserati,” an elderly female protester said.
According to OpenSecrets, a watchdog website that tracks money in politics, Mr. Manchin was the senator who received the most money in political donations from the oil, gas, and coal industries in the 2021-2022 election cycle. This year, he was ranked sixth on the list.
At several points, it appeared that Mr. Manchin tried to explain or defend his backing of the pipeline. The heavily edited footage, however, didn’t include much of the senator’s responses.
The video ended with the protesters being escorted out by campus police while locking their arms, chanting, “Support our futures, not your profits.”
Climate Defiance, apparently taking the interaction as a win for their cause, posted the video on social media platform X.
“BREAKING: we just called Joe Manchin a [explicit],” a post from the group’s X account read. “We humiliated him in front of a herd of Harvard elites. He squared up. We held firm. Barbaric murderer, hideous fiend, he torches humanity and laughs.”
The video was met with much mockery on X, with users praising the way the Manchin aide dealt with the unruly protester. The aide, identified as Jonathan Kott, joked that the Ivy League school might want to work with him to improve campus safety.
Mr. Manchin’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
According to the student newspaper Harvard Crimson, the incident took place on the morning of March 1, just minutes after Climate Defiance protesters interrupted a talk Mr. Manchin was delivering at the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the Harvard Kennedy School.
“A Harvard University police officer ordered the protesters to leave the Kennedy School campus, and the protesters complied. Senator Manchin continued his discussion with IOP students after the disruption,” a spokesperson for the university said.
“The Harvard University Police Department and the Kennedy School are reviewing the incident.”
Mr. Manchin was invited to speak by Alison King, a veteran journalist and resident fellow at IOP, as part of her study group to discuss the senator’s decision not to seek reelection.
Following a 25-year career in politics, Mr. Manchin announced last November that he would retire from Congress.
“After months of deliberation and long conversation with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I have set out to do for West Virginia,” said the 76-year-old Democrat. “I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for reelection to the United States Senate.”
Last month, Mr. Manchin said he is not interested in a White House run, either, although he has been weighing a potential third-party ticket.
“I will not be seeking a third-party run. I will not be involved in a presidential run,” he said at a Feb. 16 event at West Virginia University. “I will be involved in making sure that we secure a president who has the knowledge and has the passion and has the ability to bring this country together. And right now, we’re challenged. We’ve got to see if we can get people in that direction.”
“The Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party that I was born into and that I believed in all my life,” he added.
