Manchin: Biden's coal comments are 'divorced from reality'

JOLIET, Ill. (AP) — President Joe Biden on Saturday was criticized by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democratic antagonist and ally, for being “cavalier” and “divorced from reality” after vowing to shutter coal-fired power plants and rely more heavily on wind and solar energy in the future.

The powerful coal-state lawmaker said Biden's words “ignore the severe economic pain” for people from higher energy prices and are why Americans “are losing trust” in Biden. Manchin's stinging rebuke of his party's leader comes at precarious time for Democrats on the final weekend of campaigning before Tuesday's elections that could put Republicans back in power in Congress.

Biden raised Manchin’s ire with his reference to coal power during a speech Friday in Carlsbad, California, to spotlight his $280 billion plan to boost the semiconductor industry and scientific research.

“I was in Massachusetts about a month ago on the site of the largest old coal plant in America. Guess what? It cost them too much money,” Biden said. “No one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant. So it’s going to become a wind generation,” Biden added. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”

Biden had visited a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts in July. The former Brayton Point power plant in Somerset is shifting to offshore wind power manufacturing, and Biden chose it as the embodiment of the transition to clean energy that he is seeking, including in the sweeping climate-and-health law he passed with Manchin’s help in August.

Manchin, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement that Biden's...