'There is no playbook' to get Kyrsten Sinema to stop obstructing Biden's agenda: Lawrence O'Donnell
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell was visibly frustrated by the actions of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) as she continues to hold up President Joe Biden's infrastructure package.
O'Donnell, who got his start in politics as an aide to legendary Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and rose to staff director for the Senate Finance Committee.
The host reported, "there is a bit of a mutiny under way with two Democrats blocking the other 48 Senate Democrats and the Democrats in the House from reaching an agreement on the Biden infrastructure package."
But O'Donnell noted that Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) were approaching the situation far differently.
O'Donnell said Manchin "has an experienced senate staff" and is "accustomed to high level negotiations in private, but he also believes that he owes a public explanation of his position to the voters of West Virginia and in this case, to the country."
He contrasted that with Sinema, whom he said had only been in one high-level negotiation.
"She is not an experienced legislator and she's not highly experienced in the way the Senate works," he explained. "She does not have an experienced staff who can fill in the gaps of what she might not know."
O'Donnell said Sinema, "does not seem to believe in any form of public accountability at all."
He played a clip of her flippant reply to a reporter.
"It's something that no senator with the slightest sense of accountability to voters would ever say," the former Senate staffer explained. "Sen. Sinema clearly does not understand the full range of responsibilities of a United States senator. And unfortunately for the people of Arizona and for the people of the United States, there is no one working on Sen. Sinema's staff who can tell her what is so grotesquely wrong about what she said tonight."
"I have never seen a Democratic senator behave anything like that. Not once. Not ever," O'Donnelll said. "There is no playbook about how to negotiate with a senator who talks like that."
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