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Rep. Weiner Agrees: Sen. Lieberman Is ‘A Dick’

N.Y. congressman gives Jon Stewart ‘naches’

by
Marc Tracy
February 05, 2010

Okay, so admittedly there was a slight smile on the face of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-New York) when Jon Stewart asked him last night, “Is Lieberman a dick?” and he answered, “Yes, Jon.” But he didn’t qualify it! And certainly Weiner might feel sourly toward Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut), given the latter’s brazen health-care flip-flopping.

Weiner was on the The Daily Show to talk about his far more progressive plans for reform: his signature issue is the Medicare buy-in, which would allow certain additional folks—recent college grads, the newly unemployed, the pre-retirement middle-aged—to purchase Medicare, the government-run senior citizens’ insurance program, for themselves. While Weiner had kind words for President Barack Obama, he also made a pointed, sophisticated criticism: “The President has been too much LBJ here,” he said, referring to the former president and Senate majority leader’s legislative savvy. “We’ve been focusing on getting 60 votes in the Senate, and we’ve forgot that 100 million Americans are watching this debate wondering what it means for them.”

Stewart and Weiner also chatted about how they have been friends since the 1980s—apparently they used to go to the beach together. “I don’t know what you’ve done with Anthony Weiner, the one that I knew,” Stewart told him at conversation’s close, “but this new cat, this guy right here, in front of me? It gives me naches. That’s all I’m saying, it gives me naches.”

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.