Targeting Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith is ‘awful’ amid SCOTUS discussions: Sen. Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., told "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday that Senate Democrats' push to bring Judge Amy Coney Barrett's religion into the debate is a bad idea.

"I'm Catholic, OK. And religion should not enter into it. It sure doesn't with me," said Manchin, who doesn't support filling the Supreme Court vacancy left after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the Nov. 3 election.

Barrett, a Catholic who once clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, is on President Trump's shortlist and has been targeted for her Catholic faith.

In a memorable moment from Barrett's appeals court confirmation hearing in 2017, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told the prospective judge that "the dogma lives loudly within you."

"It's awful to bring in religion. It truly is," Manchin said.

The senator recalled as a young boy when John F. Kennedy. was running for president that "everyone said ... the pope's going to run the country and I looked at my mom and said, 'Mom, they don't know the Catholics we know.'"

Manchin said Barrett's Catholic background doesn't bother him: "The freedom of religion is one of the basic rights we all have as an American citizen."