A Logan County resident is getting national attention after asking U.S. Senator Joe Manchin some very direct questions during a recent town hall meeting in Logan.
Since last week’s meeting, video of the exchange that was captured on his friend’s cell phone has been gone viral and Shaun Adkins, a Marine Corps veteran, has suddenly found himself making the media rounds.
“I felt like what I said needed to be said and I feel like a lot of other people, I hope, have the same sentiments I do. I hope they’ll stand up and start saying the same thing, whether it’s in West Virginia or in California or in Florida or wherever,” said Adkins on Wednesday’s MetroNews Talkline.
He says he was not attacking the Senator.
“This country is on a downward spiral and, so many times, our politicians don’t hear the tough, hard things that I feel they need to hear and to be focused on to get us back in the right direction,” Adkins said.
Here is part of the transcript of the exchange between Adkins and Sen. Manchin:
ADKINS: I’m Shaun Atkins. I’m a [inaudible] resident of Logan County. I’m a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. And I know we’ve kind of gotten off-track here – the majority of this has been about the guns –
MANCHIN: Sure
ATKINS: I think we’ve finished a lot more issues than just the guns. As a citizen of Logan, West Virginia, and an American, I’m very concerned and very troubled about a lot of things that’s going on in our country today. I’m concerned about the future of our country. The future for my kids, their grandkids – or my grandkids. For the children we met a few minutes ago. They’re not going to be able to grow up in the same kind of society that you and I did. A free and secure society. Right now in Washington you guys are spending money in an alarming pace. It’s – I mean, it’s unsustainable. If it doesn’t get fixed, if somebody doesn’t do something to stop it, we will sink. That’s very troubling. We send billions of dollars a year to other countries, many of whom want to kill us, while we have kids in our own country going to bed hungry at night. That’s not acceptable. That’s totally unacceptable, okay? In the Marine Corps we had a saying: lead far and get the hell out of the way. That’s a common military saying. You know, we have one of the most anti-coal administrations in the history in the white house right now. And might I remind you, Senator, you happened to help put him in office. Back in 2008 you called him your partner. Okay? To this day I do not know any words from you that state anything different from that.
MANCHIN: Well, Shaun, every word since then has been different. In 2008 I knew the guy when he was a Senator from Illinois. We had a lot of West Virginians working down there in the coal fields. Our offices, when I was governor – I could work with him. I had no problem. Soon as he became president it shut down completely
ADKINS: But you knew his intent back then. You knew back then, that he was anti-coal – that he was anti-fossil fuels.
MANCHIN: Well if he did he camouflaged – I didn’t know that. If I’d have known that I would have – how can you be from Illinois and be a proponent of the coal industry in Illinois and then all of a sudden – I don’t know what changed. I don’t know, maybe that was always his intent, but it was camouflaged well. I didn’t know it until he got there in the future.
ADKINS: I agree with that. He camouflaged a lot of things.
MANCHIN: Okay. And then in 2009, that’s when I went toe-to-toe with him, and I said, “Mr. President, you’ve villainized coal. You’ve been very effective at villainising coal. And coal has basically gave us the country we have. You’re talking about all this other – Afghanistan War, Iraq War, okay. You know why? I’m up there now and we’re talking about Syria, weapons of mass destruction. I’m in a secured meeting and I’m looking at all of the Senators and it’s very secure meeting and we’re hearing what’s going on and I can see the doubt in senator’s minds thinking, “I wonder if they’re telling us the truth or not”. Ain’t that a shame? Because in Iraq we were lied to and Iraq about we had to go in there with mass destruction?
ATKINS: And one thing that I strongly agree with you on you said earlier about the D’s and the R’s. But I’ll be honest with you, I’m fed up with all of it. I’m fed up with the D’s and the R’s. Because we don’t have anything anymore. You know, we have people ignoring our borders. We have drugs, guns and illegal aliens coming across our border like it’s an 8 lane super highway. Okay? Like I mentioned, the anti-coal rhetoric from Washington is all in the name of Global Warming and Climate Change which is nothing but a hoax, okay? So we’re out there chasing unicorns and leprechauns while we have people that can’t put food on the table and pay their house payment and that’s unacceptable.