Joe Manchin on Trump, the Dems & the Filibuster

I don't know if you know this, but my family's from West Virginia.

No, I don't.

You sound like my grandfather.

When they play Country Roads, you sing the whole thing?

I do.

I know the entire song.

Me too.

Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.

My guest today is former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

Manchin was elected in 2010 as a Democrat, and in 2024, after announcing he would not be running again, he changed his affiliation to Independent.

It wasn't a huge surprise.

Manchin has been called a dyno Democrat in name only.

He had a long history of not voting the party line, and in fact, his resistance cost Democrats some big legislative wins, including President Biden's $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act that made him a target of Democratic vitriol and a friend of many Republicans, including President Trump.

In his new memoir, Dead Center in Defense of Common Sense, Manchin lays out his reasoning for siding on occasion with the other side of the aisle.

Interestingly, if you look at the cover, he's way to the right.

So there's that.

I thought it was a really interesting memoir.

He's a very complex person, and actually, he is making sense in that we need to find a way to find common ground.

Although, at the same time, I think he probably enjoyed being in the center so that he could use that center position for power.

It's really complicated, so I want to talk to him about his book, about his defense of the filibuster, and why he still thinks there's an opportunity for bipartisanship in Washington.

It's an important question in these increasingly divisive times.

Our expert question this week comes from Congressman Greg Kassar of Texas, chair of the Progressive Caucus.

Manchin is a Spitfire, so this should be good.

And in case you want to watch instead of listen, we have a full-length episode of the show on YouTube now as well.

So stay with us and maybe check us out there.

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Hi, Senator Matcham.

Hi, how are you, Karen?

Thank you so much for coming on I really appreciate it.

So let's start with the news.

Last week, conservative right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at the University Rally in Utah.

It was the latest in a spate of politically motivated violence, including the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, the arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro, the assassination attempts on President Trump, and the assault of Nancy Pelosi's husband.

In your memory, are you right about these bipartisan dinners with D.C.

lawmakers at your house vote, almost heaven, as of West Virginia?

To be honest, it doesn't, that seems a little quaint at this moment.

As someone who said he's, quote, dead center, what's your solution for a populace that has become so polarized?

Well, first of all, you have to understand how the system works in Washington, Congress 535.

First of all, we don't know each other.

So you're not building relationships.

Very few people live there anymore.

So they come in on Monday night at 5.30.

You come in, you vote, and then boom, you go your own way.

Tuesday and Wednesday, if you have committee meetings, you'll run into them.

They're always having fundraisers.

All 435 congresspeople are in cycle every year.

It's two years, but they start campaigning the day after, okay?

So they're always busy.

The Senate, you have about a third of the Senate that's always in cycle every two years.

So with that being said, Karen, then to know each other and to be able to socialize and all that.

So I would always try to find some time to invite a few down

to my boat.

It's a big trawler, and everyone seems to enjoy it, but I always had kind of a rule that you need to bring both sides.

So if we're talking to three or four Democrats, we have to find three or four Republicans.

I don't want to have a partisan, just a partisan get-together.

It doesn't prove anything.

And we were successful at that and had a good time.

And I saw just that little effort we were making, people were talking, people were doing amendments together on bills that they would have never done before.

So all that's very possible, but you said, what's wrong with Washington?

Is it going to change?

Let me just say this to you.

One of the most difficult times of my career being in the U.S.

Senate from 2010 to 2025 was the Sandy Hook shooting, the massacre of these little children.

That went through me.

I just, you know, I just still can't get over the fact that so many of those parents couldn't even have an open casket for the child.

You would have thought we could have at least had what we call background checks, just a reasonable approach to something saying we're doing something.

And that horrific tragedy, like this is a horrific tragedy, Charlie Kirk and his family, whether you agree, whether you paid attention, whether you even knew, but to have a young man who was willing to go to campuses, speak his mind, and ask for debates back and forth, right, wrong, or indifferent, okay?

But to be taken out like that, it's just unbelievable to me.

Just the

visceral attitude that people have towards the political dynamics today is just something I've never seen.

Aaron Powell, so talk about that because this is something you've tried to say, if only we went to the center.

This is not happening.

I mean, do you put it at any one place?

We were talking, Kerry, and I think the way you could probably fix it is, first of all, I tried to pass a piece of legislation, just an ethical violation, if we campaigned against each other.

If you know someone, it's hard to say no to your friend.

And when you do say no, it's almost like with a tear in your eye,

I don't want to give you the news that you don't want to hear as much as you don't want to hear it.

So it hurts me, too.

That's not fair.

It's easy to say no to someone you don't know.

When I first got to the Senate, I could not believe it November 15th of 2010, and I get there, and I thought there would be kind of camaraderie.

Everybody's having a great working together.

They might have a differences, debate on the floor, then go about your way.

That wasn't it.

You were expected to go raise money every day and make phone calls.

And the money you had in your PAC, Political Action Committee PAC, was supposed to be used to defeat anybody on the other side.

So if you have an R by your name, any D that's running, you are against.

Okay?

Even if it is your friend, or vice versa, if you are a D, in my case, being a moderate centrist, I guess, conservative Democrat, which most West Virginians were.

I said, now wait a minute, you want me to raise money and when someone is running against my friends, whether it be Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, whoever it may be, you want me to give that person, whoever it may be, just because they have a D by their name, money to defeat my friend.

Well, yes.

And I says, I won't do it.

I never did do it.

But understanding the situation and then doing something about it is one thing.

For example, speaking to all Americans from the Oval Office, President Trump had an opportunity to quell the violence and reach across the aisle, but he didn't.

Listen to this.

It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.

This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today,

and it must stop right now.

So I will confess I was shocked.

I'm not shocked by much of what Trump does, but I thought, oh, good, okay, he's going the right direction.

And then it shifted and he got even more divisive on Fox.

Just for people who do not understand, the ADL report that came out earlier this year, right-wing extremists were responsible for 76% of the politically motivated deaths, which is a large number.

And the demonization, which does take place on both sides,

is from the very top of the ticket there.

Let me say this, if I can, Kare.

I know Donald Trump, President Donald Trump.

The first two years, I was probably the only Democrat that he really spent any time with because I come from a centrist background.

He always said, well, you know, Joe, you're so moderate in your views.

Why don't you just be a Republican?

And I says, Mr.

President, why don't you just still be a moderate, centrist Democrat?

Okay.

So we had a big laugh about that.

I said,

the party shouldn't determine who you are as a person.

And I've never been a big party person, but I've always respected both sides.

In West Virginia, they were always kind of conservative and moderate in their thought process.

So

I know President Trump, and I can assure you, that's not the President Trump.

What you see on that, when he speaks and the cameras in the public, when you're with him, he's gracious, he's easy to work with, you can talk to him, it's reasonable, on and on and on.

So all I'm saying to everybody that's elected official, our democracy is based on a representative form.

That means we'll govern ourselves and we'll choose who we want to govern for us.

That's who we elect.

And

with that being said, I've always said whoever your president, whoever your elected official,

they're responsible to respond to all of us.

They're representing me.

West Virginia is looking to me.

Am I kind of speaking their language, speaking for them, or trying to make sure people understand who we are in West Virginia?

I think, and I've said this, we all have better angels in us.

I'm hoping President Trump's a better angel because it starts at the top.

The better angels speak to him, speaking to me and speaking to all elected officials, that this has got to be ratcheted down.

This visceral making it normalize, this attack and the way you speak about people.

I came from a little town of Farmington, West Virginia, a little coal mining community.

I was held accountable and responsible for my words and my actions.

Right, except that wasn't that.

No, I'm just saying that's saying he's nice behind the scenes.

This is public awareness.

I'm just saying I know there's another side of him.

Okay, where is it?

I'm hoping to see it.

Okay.

I think the public needs to see it.

And if not, then I'm wrong.

Okay.

I'd like for him to.

I like to think that about everybody.

I would have thought that, you know, we could have passed the Manchin-Tomey bill after the massacre at

very easily.

All we need is 60 votes.

We got 56 votes.

It was a no-brainer.

80% of the public wants background checks so we know who's buying guns and if they have a right to have one.

Couldn't pass that because of politics.

And someone says, do you think it's going to change now because of the murder of Charlie Kirk?

I said, if I couldn't change it with 20 children getting massacred, I'm not expecting it.

And it's not going to change unless the politicians, the elected officials, the representatives that we have in this form of democracy that we have, start speaking in a tone that we would want to be spoke to.

If you don't, don't expect anything different.

If this visceral atonement continues, you're going to have what you have now, maybe more of it.

It's horrible.

So how do you get back to that?

I mean, for example, the president should be trying to defuse the situation instead of inciting violence.

Hope for his better angels isn't exactly a plan.

It's not exactly.

It's the only plan I've got right now.

I'm hoping that all of us, Mr.

President, and every senator and every congressional person, every local official, every governor, tone it down from the standpoint.

I might not agree with you, okay?

But I don't have to call you names.

I don't have to call you out and think it's all your fault.

The system has allowed it.

Let me give you another example, Kara.

After this horrible tragedy, last couple, two or three days, I've heard acquaintances and associates talking about they defriended this person.

I defriended 10 people.

I'm not big on social media, so the only thing I can tell you is this.

I know with a click you can eliminate that person being your friend.

I never grew up that way.

If you and I were friends and there was a problem, I'd come talk to you and say, Kara, I just don't agree with what you're saying.

Did you really mean this?

Or somehow we can work this problem out?

Today, you don't have to confront that.

A click.

So you want to look at the social media?

I think basically we should hold the social platforms accountable for this visceral language.

They allow everything to happen.

And then Section 230 of the Federal Code protects them.

You can't go after them.

That's wrong.

AI coming out now.

We have to hold people that allows this type of rhetoric accountable for the consequences.

That is what Governor Cox was talking about, the cancer.

He talked about the cancer, but we have all identified that.

But then he needs to pass it in his state then.

So why has that not been passed?

I have no idea.

This is something I talk about for decades now.

Yeah.

We tried.

We have tried, but

the lobbying is so hard from the tech industry.

They say, oh, no, if you do that, then we will not have the audiences that we have.

We will not have the attraction that we have now that you can almost do or say anything.

I said, you know, we have always been held accountable.

There used to be truth in advertising that way, many years ago, you couldn't say something with an inaccurate.

You'd be held accountable and liable as one of the broadcasters of the three major broadcasters back then.

That all changed.

So things have just gotten out of hand.

You know, you've got to hope that can we still

maintain this

experiment called self-governing.

We'll be back in a minute.

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Let's talk about your background a bit.

In Dead Center, you write about how both your father and your grandfather were small business owners.

You worked in their retail stores until well into your 30s.

In 1982, you ran for office for the first time.

In 1988, you founded your own business, a waste coal brokerage company called Intersystems.

Intersystems, yeah.

Talk about how they shaped you from an entrepreneurial point of view and how it influenced you when you were governor and then senator of West Virginia.

Well, I mean, I basically started when I got involved in the political arena called retail government.

Retail government means I treat you as a constituent, as a valued customer.

I want your business.

I want you to be happy with what I give you, the services, and I want you to tell your friends about it so I can help more.

In business, the word of mouth is the best advertising.

And I want the people to come to government being your partner, not your provider.

And I've always said that.

In a democracy, it only works if we all participate.

If you're not participating, you're not willing to get involved.

I have so many people here I can't even talk about.

Would you run for public office?

Heck no, I'd never get involved.

I don't want people beating me up, and I don't want people talking about me.

I don't want my whole past being flashed in front of me.

I said, that's a small price to pay for the great country we live in and the life you have.

Someone's got to sacrifice.

It doesn't work if you don't.

So if you're not willing to run, are you willing to help or

recruit people to get involved?

Or are you you just going to sit on the sideline and say someone else will do that?

And if we get more people sitting on the sidelines, if we get more people expected to get something out of government than they are putting into it, it won't work.

So people said, I think we might be at the end of this experiment.

I hope not.

We have been through difficult, challenging times before.

And we came out of that.

And there was a time I thought we wouldn't.

So those people who think it's dire right now and will never make it, we will.

Do you think it's dire?

Where do you assess it compared to it?

No, I'm saying you hear people talk about all this.

Yes, you do, but I want to know how you think.

Oh, not at all, because I've seen much worse, okay, and I've seen this rebound.

So let's talk first about how we got here.

In 2010, after being governor of West Virginia for five years, you ran for a seat vacated by the late Senator Robert Byrd and one.

It was two years,

but I did.

You did it.

So it was two years into President Obama's first term as governor.

You fought against the Affordable Care Act.

You admit in the book you were wrong on that one.

As governors, we were always homogenous.

We were always together.

If you went to a National Governors Association meeting, you couldn't tell who the Ds and the R's were.

We all had education problems.

We had road problems.

We had serviceability.

We had all the different things.

We had education.

We had to work through these problems, and we helped each other.

That bill started dividing us as governors because they started getting all these phone calls from Washington.

You are a Democrat, you've got to support this.

You're a Republican, you've got to be against this, and on and on and on.

And I'm talking and trying to make sense out of this and I said, well, let me just listen to what Max Baucus is going to basically give us a rundown of what the bill does.

And he spoke to us and I says, Max, let me make sure I understand.

You're saying that everyone has to buy insurance, okay?

And we have to buy the product you're offering.

You would have no choice.

It is either buy this or you got nothing or you'll be fine.

Well, Max, that might work in Montana, but I don't think that's going to work in West Virginia if you're forcing us to buy something without letting us shop it and telling us what we're going to have to buy.

And if we don't do what you tell us, you're going to fine us.

I don't think that would be the best way to approach this.

Well, they made some modification, but we know it came out.

So

I wasn't

against it or for it.

Right.

Once we had it, it helped a lot of West Virginians who had nothing.

It helped the rural hospitals because they were starting to get payment now they never got before they were giving free care.

And so I was hopeful that would be, and I wanted to make something better.

And I still think we can improve.

It's worked out in West Virginia.

It's helped a lot of people in West Virginia.

But those who are still working,

they didn't have the choices they had before.

And that was the problem, okay?

But we're better for it than we were without it.

And can we improve upon it?

Absolutely.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But during that time period, West Virginia did, as you noted, turned red.

What do you think is responsible, Obama?

What happened here?

I can tell you exactly.

Okay, go ahead.

Without even mincing working class.

For losing working-class voters.

How did you lose all the coal miners?

How did you lose all the factory workers?

And you know, our state of West Virginia, a lot of your

homegrown family members are from there and still have roots there.

They were hardworking people, never asked for a whole lot.

I said,

I'm a Democrat all my life.

Why was I a Democrat?

Probably because my grandfather was.

Then my parents were because they were very appreciative of what FDR did back and give them a chance when things were tough back in the Depression.

And then with that, we always thought the Democratic Party would always be there to help a working family, to help someone basically have safe working conditions, and have benefit packages, okay?

That was it.

They weren't getting involved in our life to tell us what we should think about, what we should do, and we are wrong if we don't.

So I was asked a question in 2014 by Elizabeth Warren, my friend.

We are friends, but we just differ a lot, okay?

And there's nothing wrong with that.

She said, Joe, what happened to the West Virginia Democrat?

That's when the state flipped totally Republican for the first time in 80 years.

I says,

really not a whole lot.

They want to know what happened to the Washington Democrats.

She says, what do you mean?

I says, well, the Democrats that I knew and grew up with really believe in their heart of hearts right now that the Washington Democrats treat them as if they were returning Vietnam veteran.

You're not good enough, not clean enough, not green enough, not smart enough.

You just don't need me anymore.

Leave me behind.

The war on coal, you heard about that when Obama got elected.

He wanted to switch everything to renewables.

There is nothing wrong with what he wanted to do because he was elected as the President of the United States.

But you just can't leave a whole generation society or

a state behind.

There was nothing to replace what he wanted to switch.

There was nothing left.

There was no jobs coming.

And towns were shuttered.

And I'm thinking, my God, this is.

You're putting unreasonable demands.

You're putting targets that the technology is not there for us to meet.

So it really is a war.

That started it, and it went down from there.

And I said, Why didn't you change your political affiliation at the time?

Well, probably if I should have, if I thought about it.

I'm thinking, well.

I mean, in your campaign ad, you did shoot a copy of Obama's cap-and-trade bill.

It was a horrible cap-and-trade.

Let me tell you, cap-and-trade over in Europe.

Cap-and-trade basically charges you for every amount of carbon content you have in products you buy.

Okay.

What do they do with the proceeds?

And I said, well, all you're doing is putting all your money in your social welfare reforms without fixing the problem, but you're penalizing the problem.

So I said, I'm not going to be for that.

I said, if you want to fix something, let's do it.

Why not change your party affiliation?

Why didn't you?

I just thought, for sure, the Democrats can't be that far off the Richter scale.

They've got to come back.

These are people I grew up with and knew.

And one by one, they were getting just annihilated.

And people started changing their registration.

And I told Elizabeth, I said, Elizabeth, I can tell it to you this way.

You don't want to hear what I'm going to tell you, but I'm going to tell you.

The Democrats that I know and grew up with in West Virginia truly believe that the Democratic National Party in Washington, D.C.

spends more resources, time and effort on able-bodied, capable people that don't or won't work than you do on those who do.

I can't tell it to you any straighter.

Sure, but you say coal miners never asked for much, but federal funds make up more than half of West Virginia's budget, for example.

They do get some amount of money.

Coal miners do?

The State itself in general.

Oh, yeah, the State.

My goodness, we are a tremendous recipient of Federal funds

because of the poverty that we have

and the hardships and all that.

So you can blame it on so many different things that you can.

We are a state that was basically discovered during the Civil War and taken advantage of every day after.

Absentee ownerships.

A lot of the gilded homes in Rhode Island were based off the backs of West Virginia land and coal and minerals, things of that sort.

So we didn't get the return that other states have gotten, whether it be Detroit with the automobiles and things of that sort.

Yeah, we got hit hard.

So what happened was you often then became the swing vote in the Senate.

And after Trump was elected in his first term, there was talk that you were under consideration to become Secretary of Energy.

So did you seriously think about joining the Trump cabinet?

He called me up when he first got elected in 2016 because he's looking to, everyone says you have to have a bipartisan administration.

So I went up to New York and visited with him, and we sat there and we talked.

And he has other people around.

He had Reince Priebus and different people.

And we were talking.

And I said, Mr.

President, if you and I are going to go down this and consider working together, I said,

what I would want to know is what you expected from that office.

So let's say it's energy.

What would you expect from energy?

Okay.

And then allow me to put a staff together that would produce.

If we didn't produce, throw us out.

Well, I could tell he hadn't been acclimated to how this works.

And about that time, Ryan Spriebus, who was the head of the RNC at one time, he said, oh, Joe, he says, no, no, we'd have to work that out.

And of course, I knew the answer, and I started laughing.

I said, Ryan's, I understand.

You have to have your people there to make sure that office runs the way you want it, not the way I would want to do it.

And I said, Mr.

President, listen, in all honesty, I says, whoever my president, and you're my president now, you just got elected.

I want you to succeed, and I'll do everything I can to help you, but I will speak truth to power.

And there will be times that I just cannot vote for things that you would like, but I'll always give you a reason why.

He seemed to accept that.

But then, you know, as you know, he's gotten more demanding a little bit than other people.

Yeah, you'd be in a different position right now.

It would have been very difficult.

So one of the things I noticed in the book is, you know, is that often you didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left you.

You heap a lot of praise on Republicans in your book, and mostly have disdain for Democrats.

For example, you...

Well, let me just tell you what you're saying.

I know where you're observing.

No, I'm just asking because it's in the book.

Well, it's in the book, basically.

I only knew one party.

I never caucused with the other party.

And if I was so enamored with them, I would have joined them.

Why didn't I join them?

Because I didn't think the party system, they've gotten so absolutely separated to the point where they're not representing the American people.

You've got to be selling your soul to one side or the other.

I don't agree.

And I told him that.

I said, you have to have a secured border.

You have to have, basically, laws.

And the rule of law means everything.

And when you do the crime, you pay the fine, you pay the price.

Democrats be getting lacks and lacks and lacks on this.

And I have told them you can't do that.

They have never talked about one time, Carrie, did I ever hear, 15 years I was there, from the Democrat side that ever talked about the debt of the nation.

When I got there, it was $13 trillion.

It is growing now to 37.

It is largely Donald Trump, but go ahead.

Go ahead.

Well, no, no, it was all sides.

It was George Bush.

George Bush.

Yes, it was.

But if you actually add it up, Trump is responsible for 25 percent of it.

But go ahead, compared to 47 other presidents.

But go ahead.

No, no, it all happened.

Hold on, hold on.

You're wrong.

You're wrong from this standpoint.

After Bill Clinton

balanced the budget.

Bill Clinton, it was basically Erskine Bowles and John Kasich.

And then with Newton, you had Newt and you had the President.

They worked this thing out.

It started spinning off, basically, surpluses.

We were going down where we were at $6 trillion.

And after we had 9-11 and

we had two wars that we never paid for, declared war, first time under George W., and then we had two Bush cuts, tax cuts, she shot up like this.

Under Obama, it kept going.

Under Trump, it went quicker in a four-year period.

I agree.

And now with what you're talking about now, I was totally opposed to what they were doing.

And both both both parties, Joe Biden won the BBB bill and Donald Trump won the BBB bill.

Both of them are horrendous on the debt.

No one's talking about it.

But in this book, you said that Kamala Harris's position on eliminating the filibuster was the reason you didn't support her presidential campaign last year.

But you also, when you write about Republican under Mitch McConnell, extending the nuclear option to push through Supreme Court nominees, you also blame the Democrats for starting it.

I blame the Democrats because I begged Harry Reid not to do it.

Right, correct.

So we voted against Harry Reid when he tried to do it.

Aaron Powell, where is the responsibility for the loss of bipartisanship as someone who's dead center?

Oh, it's on both sides.

I don't see anyone reaching out.

The only thing I felt more comfortable that the Republicans would hold on to the filibuster.

But now I'm seeing, and I've talked to some of my Republican friends, they're like encroaching a little bit from here, nibbling away here, nibbling away here, trying to basically bundle people that have to be confirmed, confirmations, and all that.

And I told Harid back in 2013, I said, Harry, why don't you just go talk to Mitch?

And Mitch, and right now, you're all upset.

The Obama administration is upset because they can't get some of their people approved, which is what Trump's people are right now, to get their staff and cabinet.

And I said,

there's a thing called will and pleasure.

If I become governor, if I become president, I want to bring a team together.

They are going to come under me and they are going to leave when I leave.

Their term of office does not extend one minute longer than when I leave.

Why can't they just be, after you do a vetting of them, FBI background check, and if they are all

of good standing, you might not like them, you might not like their politics.

I got elected represented to represent the country or my state.

Let me put my team together.

If not, throw us all out.

That's will and pleasure.

That should be a 51-vote threshold.

You shouldn't have to go through all this ring-arow.

And it's almost basically prevent a president or any executive from putting their team together.

You want to cripple them, they can't run the government, so it'll look bad.

You don't play politics that way.

And I promise I asked him to do that.

Well, that's because they don't talk.

There's no relationships.

If they'd have done that,

you'd have never had all your judges.

You'd have never had the Supreme Court.

But when he did the circuit and district judges, you knew darn well as soon as Mitch McConnell got a hold of it, being the iron horse that he is, he was going to go for the Supreme.

And he did.

Aaron Powell, let's dig into the filibuster, which you called the holy grail and the soul of the Senate.

The Framers didn't want a supermajority requirement to pass bills.

They tried that with the Continental Congress, and it failed, which is why the Constitution calls for a simple majority to pass bills bills in the Senate.

In fact, Alexander Hamilton specifically warned against the supermajority requirement in Federalist 22.

So, as the filibuster was developed, it was mostly used by defenders of slavery and segregation.

Robert Byrd filibustered on the Civil Rights Act for 14 hours.

In the book, you repeatedly lament our political gridlock, but the filibuster is already the primary cause of that gridlock.

Talk to critics who point out this isn't the system the founding fathers intended.

Founding fathers, well, let's assess this.

There's 13 colonies, right, 1789.

Who came out of there and had to explain to the states what we have, what kind of government do we have?

We've always heard the famous asking Benjamin Franklin, you have a Republic, young man, if you can keep it.

But someone had to tell big old Massachusetts, which was a key factor in that period of time, economic force for our country.

And then you had, of course, you had Pennsylvania, you had a big four, you had New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Someone had to tell them that we're going to have a bicameral.

We'll have a house,

have

people's house, and represent them based on what the population is, and one person is all

have equal representation.

And then what about this other one called the Senate?

He said, well, the Senate's going to be a little differently.

He said, every state is going to have two representatives.

Two, you're telling me, and

I'm a senator from Massachusetts, that

basically Rhode Island and Delaware, those little teeny places that have no economy whatsoever to speak of or people, that they're going to have the same right that I have, can offset my vote?

Yeah, I don't want the big guys beating up on the little guys.

This is going to be the United States, not to divide it.

So a Senate had basically, a senator always had the ability to speak forever, take the time, and time is precious on the floor of the Senate.

So if you tie things up, that's a filibuster.

There was nothing written, but there was nothing to stop a senator from speaking until 1917.

That's when the closure votes came in, during World War I, when we had isolationists who didn't want to send any goods to our troops or to our allies and they had to get over that.

So I think it was a 67 vote threshold at that time.

Then it went down to, I think it then went to 60.

Anyway, it came down to try to get it more workable.

But basically we found out as we went through this that it kind of put us together.

It didn't let you just

retreat to your corner and just fight to your death.

The House already did that.

And I think it was George Washington that says, you know, the House is going to be like a hot cup of tea.

You've heard that many times, I'm sure.

And the Senate will be like a saucer that will cool the tea off so we can drink it.

And that was the whole purpose of it.

So it didn't have to have any written.

It was basically the decorum of the Senate, what we were supposed to and what was expected of us.

They've come to a conclusion, but now that's sort of shot.

Well, still, that's not shot.

Just think where we'd be right today.

Think where the Democrats would be if I would have voted to get rid of the filibuster, where they would be today with Donald Trump having the trifecta.

Even though he's doing a lot lot of things with the executive, he's not changing rules or putting rules and laws in place.

So the rules he's putting in can be undone as quickly as next.

You put a law, it takes a little bit longer.

That's kind of a good segue.

Every episode, we get a question from an outside expert.

Here's yours from Representative Greg Kassar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Let's listen.

Hi, Senator Manchin.

I'm Congressman Greg Kassar, and my big question is not about a progressive issue.

It's about an issue that should be bipartisan, and that is redistricting.

In my home state of Texas, Donald Trump just rammed through radical mid-decade redistricting.

We have a ballot measure now in California on redistricting.

It could spread to states like Florida, Indiana, Missouri.

And my question to you is after a ban on gerrymandering passed its way through the House of Representatives, it never could make its way through the Senate.

And so my question is, do you regret not carving out an exception in the filibuster or doing whatever you could to make sure that a ban on gerrymandering could make its way through the Senate and get signed into law?

Do you regret that decision?

Good question.

Do I regret not getting rid of the filibuster?

Absolutely not.

It's the holy grail.

Okay.

We have to work through it.

And the bottom line is these gerrymandering, what goes around comes around.

It's horrible what the president has asked Texas to do, now what California is in retaliation is doing, and all this.

I think there's some states that basically use nonpartisan commissions.

There are some states that even use computers.

There has to be a way forward on this thing here.

I mean, if you are asking about the biggest problems that we have right now, it is basically the amount of money in campaigning, the amount of money that people can put in.

Citizens United was horrible, horrible, horrible.

And also basically it is primaries.

You know, right now you have a strong president with you have a trifecta, if you will, the House, the Senate, and the executive branch, and you have all that going for you, and you have no checks and balances to where you can say, wait a minute, that's not what pushed this through.

I understand where he is coming from.

But if you had open primaries, you wouldn't be able, the President couldn't target, or the party couldn't target, someone who is not a good enough Republican or Democrat and primary him.

The open primary or ranked choice voting, which my dear friends Lisa Murkowski and

Susan Collins, would never get elected as Republicans if it wasn't for that.

Aaron Powell, so do you regret not figuring a way, though, to ban gerrymandering by making an exemption to the filibuster or not?

Aaron Powell, you can't make exemptions, like a little bit of pregnancy.

We tried.

We looked at everything we could.

What I like to see, the filibuster, is you have to have talking filibuster.

You have to go down the floor and explain.

You have to have maybe 10 other senators that will agree with you that they think this is a serious problem.

That would make it more concrete.

It would give more credence to it and credibility.

And just you can do reform like that.

But you say, well, I can't carve this out.

That's like, okay, Harry Reed tried to carve it out.

He carved out the U.S.

the Supreme Court, right?

How long would that work?

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So how would you deal with banning gerrymandering at this point?

Like everybody has a nuclear weapon, essentially, depending on the state.

Well, the states, you know, there are still states' rights.

The 10th Amendment gives states the rights.

They're not going to be basically forced to run their government like the Federal does.

I think that's the whole purpose of it, you know, keeping a government to where the states do have some right.

As a former governor, I was very, very concerned about how we ran our elections.

I had to answer to the people.

So the people of Texas, the people of California, all of them should be speaking out.

This is wrong, because what happens today will be worse tomorrow.

It's not going to be better.

But saying that we are going to outlaw it and ban it,

you know,

I wish you could.

I think it's wrong.

I think you have to have the independent commissions.

But that is for the States to decide.

The states are responsible for their elections, not the Federal Government.

So in an interview with the New York Times opinion writer Michelle Kyle before Trump took office, you sounded optimistic that Senate Republicans wouldn't just fall in line with the president, but they've greenlit almost every nominee, no matter how underqualified.

Based on these first eight months or so, Republicans in Congress weren't acting like they represent an independent branch of government, which they are.

Do you think you got it wrong?

And if they aren't willing to

the idea that they would be a counter, they wouldn't just fall in line, that they would make the right decisions.

Do you think Congress remains an independent body?

I worry about the independency of the three branches, judicial, executive, and legislative.

I thought there was an awful lot of people that I know are very strong-willed and very smart in the Republican side that I was hoping for would have been able to speak respectfully truth to power.

And that's why I've come to the conclusion, you almost need term limits anymore.

Yes, I would agree.

Term limits, I had a lady one time care that told me in southern West Virginia, there had to be 200 people at a town hall.

And I was speaking, and she asked me a question, Joe, I wish you were for term limits.

So I tried to explain to her.

It had to be 10 or more years, 15 years ago when I was governor.

And I told her why I was not for term limits at that time, thinking, what I had kind of always thought and heard, you have people with expertise.

Now, here I was as a governor.

I'm term limit out in two terms, eight years, two fours.

But I thought, well, you know, you lose expertise in the legislative process and all the knowledge and everything.

And she looked at me and she said, just think, Joe, if there were term limits, maybe we'd get one good term out of you.

Carrie doesn't get any better than that.

You know what?

I says,

I'm sorry.

I agree with you.

And I've been for term limits ever since because it would give that legislature the courage to be independent for that last two-year term or the last six-year term if you're a senator.

And Tom, Tillis, right now.

Yeah, okay?

You'd have that.

You get that courage a little bit earlier, knowing this is your last.

I really truly believe it's needed probably as much as anything, and it might cure some of the problems of gerrymandering and all these other things.

Aaron Powell, so another thing is the unitary executive theory.

The idea that the president has the sole power over the executive branch has become a huge talking point.

President Trump has an expansive interpretation of presidential power.

Has that surprised you based on your previous experience with him?

It concerns me from the standpoint thinking that one person is above the law.

Yeah.

And I think if you go back to our founding fathers or the Federalist Papers and this and that, they looked at everything they hated about King George.

They looked at everything they hated about a monarch.

We want to make sure we didn't do anything that will lead us down that path.

They were pretty good for about 200 years.

The last 40 have been pretty rough.

We are testing it.

You asked about something a little bit earlier about the Republican Party.

If you recall,

you remember how soured the relationship between Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump was the first?

It's because they had, I think it was 54 or 53 Republicans, I'm not sure,

during that term.

And Donald Trump kept saying, hey, listen, we've got a majority of Republicans.

Just pass what I want.

And Mr.

McConnell says, no, it doesn't work that way.

And Republican senators almost to a T said, absolutely no, we're not getting men in the filibuster for that.

No, we're not going to.

And it just basically made just open warfare.

I was up there, and the berating that they received from the White House at that time was unbelievable.

But after the second term,

I was hoping for the the first pushback.

Let's put it that way.

And hopefully, well, they haven't gotten rid of the filibuster, but they're allowing some of these things.

Do you think Trump is acting like a king?

You mentioned King George with all these executive orders.

I think he knows there are still guardrails.

He can't.

He can't.

There are certain things.

The checks and balances are still there.

The judicial branch, basically,

is still there.

I still think there are some people that you are going to see that could be surprising.

And the midterm election could change everything in a demeanor of what we are doing and

how much get up and go they got.

So, West Virginians seem to be all in on Trump still.

In a recent poll, a third of them said President Trump had done the best job as president in their lifetimes.

It's clear he's been a big supporter of revitalizing the coal industry.

In April, he passed four executive orders that basically gave the industry what it asked for.

But West Virginia has more issues than coal.

Infrastructure in the state is crumbling.

Your state is ranked as third most dependent on federal dollars in the nation, as we talked about.

Earlier this year, Doge cuts halted millions of dollars in deliveries to food banks and Trump's tax tax and spending bill, including big cuts to education and Medicare and Medicaid.

All this could really hurt the state.

Is there going to be a shift in West Virginia?

Do you see that happening?

You just talked about the midterms.

Well, we'll see.

You would like to think that the people usually vote their pocketbooks or vote to services, one of the two.

And with that being said, these changes, it amazed me that if you're going to do a piece of legislation when President Biden wanted to do BBB and I thought it was an overreach and expansion that we could never, ever afford.

He and I spoke one time, and I told Mr.

President, I says, you know, you and I are about the same vintage.

You're a little bit older, but we're not that far apart.

And I'm from the school, John Kennedy asked not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country.

To me, that's what's calling me to public service.

I think I can do something, and I wanted to.

You passed this piece of legislation, Mr.

President.

You're going to change the psychic of the nation.

How much more can my country do for me?

I couldn't buy into that, okay?

Then you come along and they want to do the BBB, the other big, big, beautiful bill,

and not looking at basically what it's going to affect and how.

But also,

it doesn't take effect until after 2026 election, until 2027.

Well, wait a minute.

If you're passing a piece of legislation that's so needed, don't you want it to take effect immediately to help all the people?

They were afraid of the pushback, so I don't know if that's going to resonate with people that what's going to hit you in 2027 happened because it was voted on in 2025.

I've never seen anything like it, but people haven't comprehended that yet, I don't believe.

We'll be back in a minute.

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There is a lot to talk about when we talk about Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel.

One big question I've got is why in 2025 are late night TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel's show still on TV?

Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks.

If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes.

But what are you even anymore?

What even is your brand anymore?

I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, and that was James Ponowosek.

the TV critic for the New York Times.

And this week we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now.

That's this week on channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

I want to finish up talking about third parties because that's really where you're going because the centrism hasn't really worked.

Everyone's gotten even more partisan, I would say.

So in 2024, you'd already announced you were running for a third term.

You decided to drop the D and register as an independent.

You joined Kirsten Sinema, Angus King, and of course Bernie Sanders.

All of you are very different politically, right?

You and Bernie Sanders seem to agree on one thing, that more people should run as independents.

Now, third-party runs for presidents have never been easy or successful for that matter, but the hurdles have only gotten bigger.

We spoke earlier about the increasing number of closed primaries and gerrymandering.

You had been toying with the idea of running for president as independent in 2024 with a no-labels movement.

Is there any way you could see an independent party rise?

New parties have formed during partisan times, that's for sure.

But could you see yourself doing that?

Well, let's look right now at what's happening.

Okay.

What's the largest

denomination of people that are participating in voting?

What do they belong to?

The Democrat Party, Republican Party?

Right now, it's about 23%, 24 percent registered Democrats, maybe 26 percent, 27 Republican.

The largest is no party affiliation, which is what I belong to.

So you have people that want to belong to the grand old party that's not so grand anymore.

You'd like people like to be with the Democrat Party used to be responsible and compassionate.

They don't seem to be as responsible as they were before.

So you have that mixture in the middle.

Is it ripe?

Yeah, I think it's right.

I'd like to see the American Independent Party scare the bejesus out of the two for they've gone so far.

We never went to the extremes.

We've always kind of

governed between the 40-yard line, 40 and 40.

Now we're clear down to the 10-yard, and basically it's just way out.

I mean, it's gotten to the point where the yin and the yang are

driving it.

But that said, Dead Center seems dead at this point.

Dead Center from the standpoint, I'll tell you one thing, there's more people that believe like I think, like I do, more of a centrist looking at what is the best idea.

I want people that will put their country before the party.

If you're going into the political official being a fame and fortune, then you're chasing for your own personal goal.

You're not chasing it for helping basically the country.

And so term limits maybe give us more of a clarity to that.

Maybe we can fix some of the other problems.

But you throw away all the guardrails, and I know they keep going back to the filibuster.

You start throwing away what few guardrails we have.

You have got nothing.

You have got nothing that will be flip-flopping back and forth, no different than countries around the world who have no standing.

We don't care about the finances of our country anymore.

If we lose the reserve currency of the world being the U.S.

dollar, we have got serious problems, serious, serious financial problems.

Playing with crypto, the way they're playing with,

it's wrong, I think dead wrong for our country and for the world.

So how do you solve that?

I mean, I could quote Yeats to you.

I mean, things fall apart.

The center cannot hold.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

The blood dim tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

How do you get to the center then, if you're in the dead center and it feels dead?

Aaron Powell, let me ask this.

Do you think that

what I was looking at and what I saw a couple, two, three years ago, and we kept seeing all the way up until

we really got hot and heavy into this past 2024 election year, that every poll showed that people were ripe for a central.

They were ripe for that.

They were ripe for, let's say, a person who had been associated as a Democrat, one who had been associated as a Republican to put a team together.

and basically commit to one four-year term.

We're going to bring our country back together and look at both sides, the best of both sides, trying to bring that back to the middle.

Okay?

Would that have worked?

It looked like it could in theory.

It looked like it could when polling was done.

But when you start trying to get on the ballot, the way the system has been weaponized, the duopoly that we have right now, the Democrat model and the Republican model, is based on fear and hatred.

So trying to get in on the ballots was something that was almost impossible when it came down to it, closer and closer to making the decision to run or not.

Could we put a team together?

Who would that team be?

We were looking at different people that have interest and had the ability to do it.

But then saying, wait a minute, I don't want to be a part of a team that's going to be looked at as basically a spoiler.

I don't want to be going down in history that because of you being involved or me being involved or anyone else, that this party basically

threw the election one way or the other, you get blamed for it.

I mean, if there could have been a way to have truly a legitimate way to get on this platform and debate and say, does this make sense to you, what we're doing?

You You know,

so what for 2028?

Now it seems like don't worry about spoilers, right?

Don't, it's, it's spoiled.

Oh, yeah, I think from that standpoint, now 2028 will be a whole different so yeah.

It seems to me most people in the center are just giving up.

That's the problem.

I haven't.

Okay.

That's all I can tell you.

No.

I'm not going to change.

I know you were asking, Kara, why did I leave the Democratic Party or why I thought it left me.

I just couldn't go home to the people I represented and having a D, a Washington D, on my name and saying I'm representing you when they don't believe that the National Democratic Party is representing a rural, poor state.

I just got to be honest with you.

It's kind of hard to have that conversation.

You also didn't put an R on there.

No, I couldn't do that because you know what?

I didn't like what you are seeing now.

I didn't like a lot of that.

I think I can work better from the center than I could having a D or an R because I think there's some things that both sides do.

I want the Democrats to be that compassion they've always been, but responsible.

You can't put roadblocks in front of me, put so many restrictions on me, I can't even breathe.

The Constitution says you have the right to the pursuit of happiness.

Me taking the oath to the Constitution is going to protect you have that right for your pursuit of happiness.

You find your happiness anyway, and I'll do it.

Even if it's something I don't believe in, just don't make me believe I'm wrong if I don't believe in what you want.

So is there anyone you see out there?

Oh, I see a lot of good people.

I think

name one from every party.

What do you mean from every party?

From two parties, right?

I wish we had more parties.

I know you're a secret Mamdani fan, but go ahead.

You're talking to people about affordability.

You talk about affordability.

That's an interesting one there, but we'll see what happens.

The thing of it is that you have good people.

You have a Josh Shapiro who has been able to govern

in a kind of a split state.

You got Andy Bashir in a state that really leans more Republican.

I've got a little bit of preference towards governors, whether they be Republican or Democrat, because they've been able to function.

Gretchen Woodmar seems to be like a very rational person.

I don't know Gretchen that well.

I know Josh and I know Andy better than Richard.

And a Republican, you would pick?

The Republican,

there's some really interesting people out there in the Republican.

I'm not in that circle as much as I was in the Democrats before, But some of the governors they have out there have been very rational and reasonable.

Mitt Romney was always a person I could work with very closely.

Lisa Murkowski, some of these people here are unbelievable to work with.

And Susan Collins, who's up right now, I pray for the sake of the Senate, Susan Collins wins again.

I don't think anyone's going to be able to replace Susan Collins the way she approaches the problems and will only look at the facts.

And that's why she's so good.

So, final question.

Would you say you're optimistic in the middle or pessimistic right now?

Well, I'm always I've been an optimistic person.

I'm a realist also, and I understand how difficult it is.

But I'm optimistic that basically we've been able to reach and pull ourselves out every time we've had challenges.

And again, we'll go back to how we started about the angels, you know, the special angels that we all have in us.

I think everyone has good in them.

I don't think you go through the process of getting elected in the public eye today and not have the desire to serve.

In West Virginia, I've always said a person can shake your hand, look in your eye, and see your soul.

See, it's hard to BS them.

And I'm hoping they still have that gut instinct now.

We've got to be people with character, good people that really want to be there for the right reason.

And if they won't self-govern themselves, then put the term limits on them.

That would be the best way.

All right.

I really appreciate it, Senator Manchin.

Do you call yourself Senator Manchin?

I'm Joe.

Joe.

Let me give you - I'll give you one little

tip it to everybody.

When When you meet a person who's had a title or still has a title because of their position in being elected, appointed, whatever they may be, if they introduce themselves by their title, but for the name, 99% of the time you're going to have a problem.

They think more about the power of the job than the person they become or the person they were.

Yeah, that's a very good tip.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone.

Just a reminder: from now on, our full full shows will also be available on YouTube.

So check out our channel On with Kara Swisher.

Sorry if I'm wearing t-shirts, but that's what you're going to get.

Today's show was produced by Christian Castro-Bissel, Kateri Yoakum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch.

Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Special thanks to Katherine Barner.

Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following the show, you know all the words to to take me home, country roads.

If not, the beast is slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born.

So get out of the way.

Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow.

Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

We'll be back on Monday with more.