Reid downplays reported Obama snub, says they talked and 'everything is fine'

Published December 20, 2015

FILE: Nov. 7, 2012: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (AP)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he spoke Tuesday with President Obama and "everything is fine" following a newspaper report describing him as feeling snubbed during a recent White House meeting.

The Nevada Democrat said he had a long conversation with Obama. He did not refute Monday's story in The New York Times that begins with an account of an Oval Office meeting in which the president apparently cut off Reid when he tried to complain about Senate Republicans blocking presidential nominations.

However, Reid, the Senate’s top Democrat, downplayed the significance of the story, the larger narrative of which was that Democrats are frustrated with Obama’s hands-off approach to Capitol Hill’s daily partisan wrangling.

The story also reported that interviews with nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers and senior Hill aides suggested Obama’s strategy had left him with few congressional allies on whom to rely when trying to resolve a succession of national and international problems.

Among those interviewed was West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, whose home state vote in the 2012 president election went 62.5-to-35.5 percent for GOP nominee Mitt Romney over Obama.

Manchin told The Times that his connection to Obama is “fairly nonexistent.”

“There’s not much of a relationship,” he added.

Manchin aides confirmed to Fox News the quotes attributed to the senator, whom they said is on vacation away from cellphone service and TV cameras.

URL

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/reid-downplays-reported-obama-snub-says-they-talked-and-everything-is-fine