Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator and thorn-in-the-side of President Joe Biden, was sitting with Republicans during his State of the Union address.
Mr Manchin was pictured sitting with Republicans for all of Mr Biden’s speech from the House chamber on Tuesday night, with Mr Biden using his State of the Union address to rebuke Russia’s Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine.
Mr Biden also sought to appeal to Mr Manchin – a holdout among Democrats supporting his Build Back Better Act – for his support in passing the trillion-dollar package on climate and social spending.
Talking to reporters afterwards, Mr Manchin said “nothing’s changed” on his opposition to Build Back Better, according to The Hill.
“There might be parts they want to talk about. I don’t know. That was a little bit far,” he added in apparent reference to Mr Biden’s appeal for Mr Manchin to back his Build Back Better Act because it would lower inflation.
Another opponent of Mr Biden’s social spending plans, Republican senator Mitt Romney, meanwhile added: “You can’t say it better than that”.
Both senators sat together during the State of the Union address, “to remind the American people and the world that bipartisanship works and is alive and well in the US Senate”, a spokesperson for Mr Manchin told NBC News.
While seats are not usually allocated for a State of the Union speech, the political spectacle did have allocated seating for both leaders and lawmakers.
It remains unclear however if Mr Manchin was supposed to sit with Republicans.
On Twitter, many Americans meanwhile tweeted with little surprise about the centrist Democrat – who in recent days has refused to support a Senate bill to secure abortion rights.
“That’s where he should be sitting. He’s doing their bidding every dang day,” argued Community actress Yvette Nicole Brown.
“Switch parties, Joe. For the good of the country,” wrote immigration lawyer Matthew Kolken.
“Has Joe Manchin developed oppositional defiant disorder?”, asked comedian Sean Kent. “Because he seems to revel in being a rich a****** who lives on a yacht and blocks the poors from having anything.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to the US was a guest of honour at the State of the Union address, which also saw many lawmakers seated without masks for the first since the outbreak of Covid.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
