| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
It isn't just an idea. | |
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're now joined by former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, formerly a Democrat, now an Independent, and he is the author of the new book, Dead Center, in Defense of Common Sense. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington, John. | ||
| Thank you, Kimberly. | ||
| It's good to be with you. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Now, we have been talking all morning about political polarization and free speech in this country in the wake of the shooting of Charlie Kirk. | ||
| And I wonder what has been your reaction to this increased polarization. | ||
| You know, I heard the president first of the week say something about after he had been briefed that this young man came from, you know, the young man who's the accused assassin, came from a good family, background family, well-raised, very, very bright and intelligent, and he was radicalized on the internet. | ||
| Well, the internet, and so that the people back home watching, the social platforms where so many people get their news from has no restraints whatsoever. | ||
| They're totally immune from whatever they allow on their platform. | ||
| And you've been hearing now that people are trying to sue because you've been had a family or their son or their daughter was encouraged to commit suicide or do some bodily harm or do something crazy. | ||
| Well, if that's the case, why don't we take the same approach to all of our platforms where most people get their news, especially the young people, and put guardrails on it the same as we do on freedom of speech. | ||
| First Amendment, you can't go out and yell that it causes bodily harm. | ||
| You can't defame somebody and take away their ability to protect their good name. | ||
| You can't do those things, and you are held accountable. | ||
| On the platform, you can go onto one of the social platforms and say anything you want about me or you or anyone else. | ||
| And it's almost no one's held accountable. | ||
| You can try to go after the person, but you should hold the platform because once the platform lets it out and millions of people hear something or see something, that's tough to put that genie back in the bottle. | ||
| So I'm saying, Mr. President, you've identified the problem. | ||
| The problem is no one being held accountable and responsible for what they're allowing on their social platforms. | ||
| It's just for the purpose of having more viewers and saying outrageous things that creates more viewers and creates more revenue. | ||
| That has to stop. | ||
| And there's a thing called Section 230 that 1996, when the internet was in its infancy, they said, oh, you've got to give us protection, all these platforms starting up then, because if you don't, we won't be able to ever get this platform off the ground and what we call to mature it. | ||
| Well, they should have given two or three years. | ||
| It's indefinite. | ||
| This is time to stop it, Mr. President. | ||
| It's what I would say to our president, it's time to make sure that people are held accountable and responsible for their words, because words will lead to action, and it has. | ||
| You know, it's interesting because in our previous segment in Open Forum, as well as in earlier conversations today, we've had a lot of callers saying that they were banned from Twitter or Facebook for comments about the election being stolen after President Biden was elected or about their statements regarding COVID vaccines and that that was unfair, just like there are people on the left saying that they should be protected for their commentary about Charlie Kirk. | ||
| How do you mesh the idea of allowing people to have their freedom of speech with these guardrails that you're talking about for social media platforms? | ||
| I'm not going to try to write the rule books for them. | ||
| I'm saying that your platform is reaching millions and millions of people and influencing them, especially young people. | ||
| Young people aren't going to the mainstream media. | ||
| They're not going to the newspapers or any of that. | ||
| they're going right to the social platforms. | ||
| So they can, if they have podcaster they like and this and that, and there are podcasters on one of the platforms, and it's basically spewing incentive words that create a thought process that leads to action or leads to a violence or things of that sort, which is what the president has identified. | ||
| President Trump identified as this person that's been accused right now and arrested so someone would be held accountable. | ||
| Then they're going to figure out what they think they can or not. | ||
| Right now they have nobody. | ||
| They don't have to have anyone there for censoring. | ||
| They don't have to have a team saying uh, that could really incite people to do things that shouldn't be done. | ||
| Let me just tell you in my, my hometown of Farmington West Virginia, which the only thing I would say about the book is this, the book basic will tell you how I was able to make the decisions I made in a very tough environment. | ||
| But I didn't look at one side being right, one side being wrong. | ||
| It just didn't make sense. | ||
| I couldn't go home and explain it. | ||
| Where I come from, in Farmington West Virginia people, the way I was raised, people were making very, made very sure that my words meant something. | ||
| I would be held accountable and responsible for my words and my actions too, and usually they taught me. | ||
| Sometimes your words will lead to actions which you regret. | ||
| So be very careful, and i've always been that way. | ||
| I'm not going to accuse people of being right or wrong and I just can't, you know, don't agree with you. | ||
| I might have a different idea. | ||
| I want to work with you and in the political process, I love everybody on both sides. | ||
| You do ground your memoir in this idea of centrism as a way out of some of the political polarization in this country. | ||
| I want to read an excerpt from the book. | ||
| Dead center is where i've been my entire life. | ||
| It's where the real solutions lie. | ||
| If we are ever going to tame the anger bitterness, intolerance and tribalism that have come to define our broken political system, dead center is where we have to start. | ||
| It's the only place where people still talk to each other, where progress isn't a zero-sum game and where governing is still possible. | ||
| How can you find where the dead center is when people have such differing views of what exactly constitutes far right and far left? | ||
| Well, let's take the 117th congress, when we were split 50-50. | ||
| That hadn't happened for a whole congress, which is two-year session. | ||
| 117th was two years, which started in 2021 when Joe Biden, and it went through the beginning of 2023 when the new congress came in 118th, we did more things, got more things accomplished because it got to the point. | ||
| We said, you know my vote, every vote was so critical I. | ||
| I got caught right in the middle because they could not control me. | ||
| So if the Democrats were trying to push an agenda that I thought was too far out of the mainstream, and I couldn't take that and try to explain it back home why I voted for it other than I was pressured to vote for something, which I never have been and never would take that pressure. | ||
| That was the middle, and that's how we got dead center. | ||
| How did I get caught in the middle? | ||
| Why was I always the one being called over to the White House trying to convince me to vote for something that just didn't make sense? | ||
| I couldn't come to grips with it. | ||
| And I tried to explain in a very, very respectful, civil way. | ||
| And I think people have lost that. | ||
| People, I've heard talking about this is going to cause a war with all this turmoil going on now, and we need a crusade. | ||
| Kimberly, the only crusade this country needs right now is a crusade of civility. | ||
| We've got to get back to respect. | ||
| You and I might not agree. | ||
| You might not be all wrong, but you might not be all right. | ||
| And maybe I can help it be a little bit better so we both can accept it. | ||
| That's the way I've looked at things. | ||
| I didn't, I was born and raised in a household, and politically, the household was always Democrat. | ||
| My whole state was Democrat at that time. | ||
| Now my whole state is Republican. | ||
| What caused this major shift within one decade, a 10-year period? | ||
| Never happened before. | ||
| We went from 75% being Democrat to over 80% being Republican. | ||
| And I know the same people. | ||
| They're the same people I was born and raised with. | ||
| They're reasonable, responsible, but they thought that one party has pushed them to a position they didn't understand who they were. | ||
| Where would you describe or how would you describe what the political center is in the United States right now? | ||
| I think people still want accommodation. | ||
| They want to make sure that we have a secure and safe country, safe neighborhoods. | ||
| So crime and border security has given Donald Trump all the protection, all the backup he needs right now to do some incendiary things that doesn't make sense at all. | ||
| Like what? | ||
| The freedom of speech. | ||
| Basically, I'm going to make sure that Kimberly can't say certain things and maybe I can force C-SPAN to take her off the air. | ||
| That's not, we don't do that. | ||
| That's not America. | ||
| But again, you ought to be careful what you're saying and how you say it, too. | ||
| So take the Jimmy Kimmel thing on a network. | ||
| They were able to put that pressure and make their changes right, wrong, or indifferent, however people might think about that. | ||
| But they don't do it on social platform or on cable news. | ||
| Not the same restrictions. | ||
| Let's make sure we're all playing with the same rule book, how we receive it and receive our information. | ||
| The airways belong to all of us, and the government has a responsibility that there should be checks and balances before you incentivize somebody to do something because you make it look like that's right. | ||
| I know we're going to have a lot of callers with questions for you this segment, so we're going to get into that early. | ||
| But I want to remind folks that our phone line for Democrats is 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And for independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| I'm so glad you had an independent phone number. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We need that, especially for you today. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I do want to highlight one area where you start out your book, which is Negotiations with President Biden on the Build Back Better bill, which I'm guessing you start with because it's pretty emblematic of some of those struggles you faced when you were in the Senate. | ||
| Can you talk about that and what it meant for you and your family? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me know. | |
| Let me just say this, that Joe Biden has been a friend. | ||
| I've known him forever, okay, and a good man. | ||
| When he became president, they first of all wanted to come out with what they called American Rescue Plan, the ARP, which is $1.9 trillion. | ||
| We had just, because of COVID, we had just spent, bipartisan-wise, $3.2 trillion. | ||
| Now, when you think about our country running around about $5.5 trillion a year, we're close to almost doubling what we had done at the end of the year within almost nine months. | ||
| Through that much more money, that's a lot of money to digest. | ||
| And Joe Biden comes out. | ||
| He says he wants to do an American rescue plan and do it with reconciliation, which we call the nuclear option because you don't have to talk to the other side. | ||
| The Senate is designed that the minority has input. | ||
| You can't shut the minority out. | ||
| That was the whole purpose of our founding fathers wanting us to have something completely different. | ||
| And the Senate is the most iconic brand of bringing people together, giving stability to a political process. | ||
| That's what the Senate is. | ||
| They're taking that away when he used the option. | ||
| The only reconciliation option should be you shouldn't shut the government down or make it financially insolvent. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And with doing that, that's what they were doing. | ||
| So I said, Mr. President, don't do that. | ||
| Please don't. | ||
| Right now you've been told Republicans don't want to work with you. | ||
| Give them a chance. | ||
| Put it in the committees and say, hey, in 60 or 90 days, give it to me back. | ||
| If not, then do what you've got to do because you believe it's good for the American people. | ||
| Nope, had to do it, had to do it, had to do it. | ||
| I said, Mr. President, I won't do this again. | ||
| This is the wrong way to run this government. | ||
| Now, that was the first American Rescue Plan. | ||
| That's $1.9 trillion. | ||
| Put $1.9 on 3.2, and you're up to, what, 5.1? | ||
| You have, within one year, doubled the amount of money we've thrown into the system here in the United States of America. | ||
| And I said, this is bad. | ||
| It's going to create one heck of a recession. | ||
| We don't have people going back to work. | ||
| We have a vaccine that works. | ||
| Let's do something. | ||
| Then the BBB. | ||
| I said, Mr. President, this is not for me. | ||
| It's too much. | ||
| I can't do it. | ||
| Let it calm down. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| So we pulled out the bipartisan infrastructure bill. | ||
| We need an infrastructure. | ||
| We did some things in that, but I couldn't get there for eight months. | ||
| And I finally had to say, Mr. President, you and I have been friends and we've known each other for a long time. | ||
| We're about the same vintage. | ||
| You're a little older than me, but not that much. | ||
| You passed this piece of legislation, which you say is your marquee piece for the Democratic Party, and you're changing the psychic of the nation away from John Kennedy. | ||
| That's not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country. | ||
| You're changing it to how much can my country do for me? | ||
| And I said, sir, I'm so sorry. | ||
| Respectfully, I cannot, any way, shape, or form support this or vote for. | ||
| And then? | ||
| And then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, and then you can't do that. | |
| And the White House put out a statement on the status of the negotiations. | ||
| That caused all the problems. | ||
| It caused all the problems. | ||
| I'm looking at it in your book. | ||
| It was a statement from President Biden on the Build Back Better Act. | ||
| In it, he says, my team and I are having ongoing discussions with Senator Manchin. | ||
| That work will continue next week. | ||
| And let me just tell you that, okay? | ||
| So I've been getting death threats, been harassed, and everything. | ||
| I can take all that as a public figure, okay? | ||
| But my family and all the death threats, and they're putting and pinpointing me as one person out of 50 Democrats, only one, Joe Manchin, is not online, is not in line. | ||
| And we have some video of the protests that were actually outside of your house vote. | ||
| And I invited all of them to come up in my office. | ||
| A few of them came up the next day so we could talk about it. | ||
| This is how it happens. | ||
| And that is what it is. | ||
| I'm okay with all that. | ||
| It was peaceful. | ||
| It was civil. | ||
| These people, a lot of them were back in West Virginia, and they were all fired up in what they believed. | ||
| I wanted to hear more from them. | ||
| They came up. | ||
| They heard my point of view. | ||
| We probably walked away not agreeing on everything or maybe not agreeing at all, but we respected each other for at least having dialogue. | ||
| That's all I've asked for. | ||
| Some of the groups don't want any dialogue. | ||
| They just want to riot. | ||
| They want to come and just disrupt, and that's fine. | ||
| I said, then you don't want democracy to work. | ||
| And that led to your no vote on the legislation. | ||
| Well, the thing about it is, I was already there. | ||
| I told the president I couldn't get there. | ||
| But he wanted to wait. | ||
| And he said, yo, we're going to wait until after the Christmas vacation because Chuck Schumer was trying to get a vote before we left for Christmas that year. | ||
| And I said, fine. | ||
| I said, Mr. President, I don't, you know, I can't get there. | ||
| I don't know what you're going to do to change it. | ||
| But if you want to do that, are you going to put a statement out? | ||
| Yes, I am. | ||
| Fine, the statement came out. | ||
| They sent it to us. | ||
| And they let me go see it. | ||
| I said, oh, my goodness, that's putting a target on my back again. | ||
| I don't need any more targets. | ||
| For eight months, I've been attacked and threatened. | ||
| They're not going to change me. | ||
| That's not going to frighten me not to do the right thing, what I think is right. | ||
| So we sent back, just put his word, make it generic. | ||
| I have more negotiations to do with the entire group. | ||
| He came right back immediately. | ||
| Nope, Joe Manchin. | ||
| I said, oh, tells me everything. | ||
| Don't care about me. | ||
| Don't care about my family. | ||
| Don't care about the threats we're receiving. | ||
| It's all about you. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| And that's when we pulled a plug. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, I know we have a ton of questions from callers, as well as a text message we received from Jesse in Phoenix, Arizona, who says, does Senator Joe think that more people should become independents? | ||
| And if such a large group exists, does he think that a third party should be created? | ||
| Jesse, I thank you for the question. | ||
| I have always thought that we could work out our differences with the two-party system that we have, but it's failed because it's become a duopoly. | ||
| We have a major corporation called the Democratic Party and a major corporation called the Republican Party. | ||
| And both of their mode of operandum, their business plan, is fear and hatred. | ||
| That's all we're seeing. | ||
| You know, if you're not a Democrat, then we've got to fear you about the other side, the Republican, and then also hate them and join my corporation. | ||
| That's not the way. | ||
| And I don't know if we can change that or not because the money is so strong, billions of dollars. | ||
| So yes, I believe that it is time, because that is the only thing that will make them come to their senses, that they see the majority of Americans. | ||
| Let me give you the facts. | ||
| 23, 24% are registered Democrats in the United States of America. | ||
| 26, 27% Republicans. | ||
| Close to 50% are no party affiliation like me, or maybe Jackie that's independent. | ||
| But you have no voice. | ||
| When you elect somebody that you know is going to be very centrist and you really feel good because that person will represent my values, they come to Washington especially, and there is no middle. | ||
| You have to pick a side. | ||
| And what we're saying is we have got to create the middle in Washington, that people have a place when they come, not to get radicalized and say, well, I've got to join this tribe or this tribe. | ||
| No. | ||
| What do you think of Elon Musk's efforts to start a third party? | ||
| You know, I'm glad that Elon has seen that that might be a solution. | ||
| He's been pressed, been polarized to where they might think, well, maybe Elon just wants to own this party. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I think he really sees, I hope he does, that it's going to take that independence, what built this great country, for him to come here and have the success he's had and anybody else to realize, only in America. | ||
| But you can only do it as long as we have a free flow of ideas and thoughts, freedom of speech, but control to the state that we can't incite riots and defame people and be held accountable and responsible for what you say. | ||
| Miriam is in Farr, Texas on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Miriam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I used to like you as a Democrat, but I noticed that you just wanted attention after a while. | |
| And for that reason, I'm not going to, you know, I'll freedom of speech. | ||
| I'm not going to buy your books. | ||
| I think you've become a millionaire and your people in West Virginia are still really, really poor. | ||
| But I wanted to ask you a question on leadership, because that's the thing that bothers us people. | ||
| That right now, the leader is Trump. | ||
| And Trump is the one that is instigating a lot of violence out there. | ||
| And for some reason, Republicans will not stand up to him. | ||
| They're not straightforward. | ||
| They don't call it what it is. | ||
| And that's what aggravates us. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| So Miriam, what is that question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My question is, if he thinks that leadership is a vital role in our society. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Let's let him respond. | ||
| Miriam, let me just first of all tell you this. | ||
| I've never made $1 in 40 years I've been in public service off of a service of my office. | ||
| Never. | ||
| I had a little business, grew up in a little town, Farmington, West Virginia, three-room garage apartment, and my dad and my grandfather had a little grocery store and a furniture store. | ||
| So we all worked hard. | ||
| With all of that, what you're saying right now, what the president is doing, the president is the commander-in-chief. | ||
| He is the president of the United States. | ||
| I am begging our president to bring us together. | ||
| Stop this. | ||
| He can do it. | ||
| He can have the leadership where everyone will follow. | ||
| Democrats will say we want our president to be a leader. | ||
| We need to be comforted right now. | ||
| I had horrific mine accidents in my state when I was governor. | ||
| And the terrific mine accidents I had, I knew that we had to do better in the mining laws to make sure that people were safer when they went to work and could come home safe to the loved ones. | ||
| But I knew when we lost 29 husbands, fathers, sons in the upper big branch, and we lost Arikoma and we lost Sago. | ||
| These mine accidents, I knew I had to change the law. | ||
| But I knew first of all, I had to comfort the people, the people who had lost their breadwinner. | ||
| What were they going to do in their lives now? | ||
| I tried to do everything I could to make sure they had the ability to move on and to go on and to know that we would have their back. | ||
| That's what we call comforting. | ||
| You have a responsibility as an executive, as leader, whether it be a governor or a president, to bring your people back together, show them their true value as the humans, the humans that we deal with every day. | ||
| It's not the businesses and corporations. | ||
| And then I changed the laws in West Virginia. | ||
| You can check that too. | ||
| Everything was around safety. | ||
| We would not let people go into a workplace unless they had, if they saw something wrong, they should be able to speak out and stop it before someone got hurt. | ||
| I did all of those things. | ||
| And that's public service. | ||
| I've never had a calling of self-service. | ||
| Never. | ||
| And I think my record will show that. | ||
| Speaking of public service, Tom from Sarasota, Florida says, ask the senator if he would consider running for president from any party. | ||
| We could all get behind common sense in government. | ||
| I would do everything I can to support and help my country. | ||
| I would do that if the calling was there. | ||
| I think there's an awful lot of good people out there that have the ability to lead. | ||
| We've got to find that person who really truly resonates with all of us. | ||
| And we can tell. | ||
| And I said in West Virginia, Kimberly, we can shake your hand, look in your eyes, and see your soul. | ||
| It's all we've got. | ||
| We didn't have a lot of material goods. | ||
| We just had good gut instincts and we took care of each other. | ||
| The other side was never our enemy. | ||
| And the other side didn't have all the answers, but they all weren't always wrong. | ||
| And we didn't have all the answers, and we all weren't always right. | ||
| Do you think that person that resonates is you? | ||
| Well, I know one thing. | ||
| I think there's people like me that believe that. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| And I thought this last election here, when you start polling, it was going to be Joe Biden and Donald Trump again. | ||
| They were looking for something different. | ||
| And they're going to be looking for something different, I think, in 2028. | ||
| And I thought, wouldn't it be great if you had people that might have been associated as a Democrat in the past or a Republican in the past, formed a bond to show how a joint leadership team could work to try to heal the country and have a homogeneous staff and a cabinet that represented American, not just one side of America or one side of the political spectrum. | ||
| I think all that is needed. | ||
| And we're going to see if we can rise up to that. | ||
| If we get to where we only have a decision that the two duopoly businesses give us to choose from, and there's 160 million, I'm using that round figures, 160 million that will vote in a general election, who the leader is going to be, but the two parties have already decided, maybe with only 10 million on each side deciding who's in the primary, because they control the primary, and said, okay, Kimberly, here's your choice. | ||
| I don't like either one of them. | ||
| That's what you're going to get. | ||
| Pick one or the other. | ||
| Well, I think we need to push that differently. | ||
| And you have a strong third party who says, you know, I don't think they're always wrong, but I don't think they're right. | ||
| I don't think they're always right, but I don't think they're always wrong. | ||
| And let me try. | ||
| Try going down this path. | ||
| And that path there would be more of a centrist, more of an independent. | ||
| So the grand old party wants to be grand again, and they don't feel like they have a home. | ||
| And the Democrat Party, like myself, wants to be responsible and compassionate and don't believe I have a home. | ||
| The majority of people in America in the political spectrum are homeless. | ||
| But they have to go somewhere to participate, and that's not right. | ||
| Tom is in Richmond Hill, Georgia, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm really happy to finally talk to you. | |
| I was a West Virginian. | ||
| Hey, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I was outside of Moorefield. | |
| You probably never heard of it. | ||
| Oh, I know Moorefield extremely well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| I do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's great. | |
| I was very proud as a Republican to be a constituent of yours. | ||
| There were some things that I disagreed with, but all in all, I was very proud of you. | ||
| My question is: where do you come down on lies in BS whose intent is clearly to promote murder and terrorism and insurrection? | ||
| It can't be done. | ||
| It really can't. | ||
| We cannot tolerate that in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| And, you know, when you look about how did this great country ever get enough courage to say, this British monarch is wrong. | ||
| King George is wrong. | ||
| I don't like this type of oppression. | ||
| We're going to change it. | ||
| And I'm willing to sacrifice. | ||
| I mean, really sacrifice to have the freedoms I believe most Americans at that time would like to have had to get out from under the thumb of the British Empire. | ||
| And it happened. | ||
| And we can't go back to that, Tom. | ||
| And that's exactly what we see is happening. | ||
| People are being pushed to make extreme ideas to extreme action, which is deadly. | ||
| We have a similar comment from Robert in Price, Utah, who says, First, Joe, you're right in saying the two parties must work together. | ||
| However, in order to do that, you're asking half the country to ignore an insurrection, the pardoning of traitors, and the people who would rather engage in performance politics than ever work with the other side for the good of the people. | ||
| And who was that, Robert? | ||
| Okay, Robert, let me say this. | ||
| I voted to impeach President Trump on the insurrection. | ||
| I don't think anything was more absolutely horrific and horrible than that. | ||
| I was there. | ||
| I was in the Senate chambers when the military came in and took us out, all 100 senators, down into a safe, secured area. | ||
| We didn't know how horrible this riot was until we went down and I turned the monitors on. | ||
| So, no, no, I was there and I felt very strongly about that was an insurrection. | ||
| That was not a visit to come talk to me about the differences we may have. | ||
| So, those type of things there cannot, just because I am more of a centrist, I'm not liberal. | ||
| The fundamentals of his question are how do you work with people who are supportive of this, the fact that President Trump pardoned all those folks and the fact that many of them. | ||
| The pardon should have never happened. | ||
| That was so wrong to pardon those folks that basically were part of this insurrection and they were found guilty. | ||
| If you wanted to know really the effects, talk to the Capitol Police that was there every day to protect us and to protect our capital, what they had gone and endured. | ||
| That's why the people were prosecuted. | ||
| So let's take a concrete example. | ||
| Let's say you go back to the Senate and you are working with some of your peers who were there just like you on January 6th, and you're asked to work with them across that difference. | ||
| And kind of the same thing. | ||
| That difference never came. | ||
| Let me just be honest. | ||
| That difference never came up, Kimberly, from this. | ||
| They knew better. | ||
| The ones who basically kept their mouth quiet, kept their mouths shut, didn't say anything, because they knew the political fallout. | ||
| You know, when a person becomes as popular as President Trump has become and solidified within his base, they knew that could be a force if they wanted to be in office. | ||
| And I kept saying, this job is not the best job I've ever had. | ||
| It's not worth it to sell your soul. | ||
| And I think there's enough good people. | ||
| I truly believe there's enough good people. | ||
| And the people I worked with on both sides, they both knew. | ||
| Merlene in Tacoma Park, Maryland, wanted to know if you support term limits and why. | ||
| Most certainly. | ||
| Let me give you my story on term limits. | ||
| I, for 15 years ago and before, I never was a supporter of term limits. | ||
| So I'm having a town hall meeting in southern West Virginia. | ||
| And a couple hundred people, and a lady came up, a beautiful lady. | ||
| She stood up and she says, Joe, I would sure hope you would support term limits. | ||
| And I think it's great to have term limits. | ||
| And so I started telling her all the things. | ||
| Well, you lose all the expertise, you lose seniority, you lose this, you lose that, and it might be more harmful than helpful. | ||
| She said, listen, Joe, if we had term limits, maybe we'd get one good term out of you. | ||
| Kimberly, I couldn't argue with her. | ||
| She convinced me. | ||
| She's right, because I've seen people that are scared to make the right decision when they know it's right for the consequences. | ||
| And I'm thinking, the worst consequence I've got, if I'm not in agreement and the people back home, I have a right to go back home and explain my position. | ||
| And if you're not willing to work for that, if you're not willing to go home and say, hey, this is why I believe this way. | ||
| This is why I voted that way. | ||
| They might not accept it, but at least you are able to give them an explanation. | ||
| They'll walk away. | ||
| Most of them say, well, I don't agree, but I think I understand how he made his decision. | ||
| So on that, that there, she said that, and I've said this. | ||
| You're absolutely correct. | ||
| I believe in term limits. | ||
| I believe that the Senate, the United States Senate, should have two six-year terms. | ||
| I believe the House should have six two-year terms. | ||
| That's 12 years. | ||
| I believe the president should be one six-year term. | ||
| The president should never run for re-election. | ||
| You're going to be commander-in-chief from the first day to the last day you're there. | ||
| You're doing what's best for the people, not what's best for you to get re-elected or your party to be in power. | ||
| Do your job. | ||
| And I believe the Supreme Court should be one 18-year term. | ||
| David is in Lynchburg, Virginia, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Joe. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Fellow West Virginia from Washington, West Virginia. | ||
| And a lot of good West Virginians. | ||
| I appreciate it, Dave, Tom, and you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a Vietnam veteran. | |
| God bless you. | ||
| One of 17 kids. | ||
| I was born and raised in Ohio. | ||
| I've watched my parents. | ||
| They grew $368 a month for Social Security and lived on it and lived on it. | ||
| And all these senators and stuff, I think they ought to take $100,000 away from you. | ||
| All this money that comes to putting people out of job, the Department of Education and all this stuff. | ||
| Where actually, where is all that money? | ||
| A question. | ||
| Where is all that money at? | ||
| It doesn't, and it blew the, uh. | ||
| David, I want to make sure we're understanding your question clearly. | ||
| Are you asking what happened to the money that was allocated for these departments that have been scaled back or shut down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, and the people that lost their jobs, they voted for Trump, but they still, 90% of them, are just how many, what percentage are the ones that voted for Trump that lost their jobs and lost their own. | |
| Well, let me just say this, David. | ||
| We have 36 going on, $37 trillion of debt. | ||
| When I went into the Senate November 15th of 2010, the debt was at $13 trillion. | ||
| How in the world are we so irresponsible to pile this much debt onto the public? | ||
| And it will have consequences. | ||
| Your children, your grandchildren, anybody and everybody will be affected. | ||
| And if we don't do something to get our finances in control, no different than your parents raising all of your children and having a budget they had to basically stick with 1,000%. | ||
| They could not veer from that. | ||
| They couldn't have made it. | ||
| But there's no checks and balances on the federal government. | ||
| We just keep printing more money and incurring more debt, and it will be the downfall of us. | ||
| So these agencies, you know, we don't run government like a business, but we should examine how we run our government like businesses do. | ||
| There should be stress testing. | ||
| There should be reviews. | ||
| A lot of these agencies have come into being because a president would run on a platform and they'd start something. | ||
| I'll give you a perfect one. | ||
| The Department of Education was started in 1979 with Jimmy Carter. | ||
| There was no Department of Education before that, a federal. | ||
| Every state's responsible for educating their children. | ||
| It's all local. | ||
| It's the 10th Amendment, states' rights. | ||
| But we did that. | ||
| We thought, well, we have an oversight. | ||
| Well, that stayed, you know, and now it's still into place, but they're changing it drastically, if you will. | ||
| Anyway, an awful lot of these things can be. | ||
| The country has to get into a position to where fiscal responsibility is its first and foremost thing that it does, because without that, you couldn't have lived your life. | ||
| Businesses can't succeed, and states can't survive. | ||
| And we're in a position now to where Mike Mullen, who was chief, he was the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head guy back in 2011, we asked him a question in the Armed Services Committee. | ||
| What's the greatest threat the United States faces? | ||
| And I thought, well, I'm going to hear it now. | ||
| China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, whatever it may be. | ||
| He said, didn't blink an eye. | ||
| The death of the nation will take us down before any foreign power will take us over. | ||
| What do you think of the way that President Trump has been using rescissions to claw back some funding appropriated by Congress? | ||
| That's a difficult situation. | ||
| He should never do that because it goes through a process. | ||
| When you have, we haven't even had a budget within 20 years. | ||
| They can't even do that because the powers don't want it to happen that way. | ||
| They get to control at the end of the fiscal year spending, how it goes. | ||
| They have the four corners. | ||
| You've heard of that. | ||
| They do it at the end of the year. | ||
| They all get together before Christmas. | ||
| Can you explain the four corners for folks? | ||
| The four corners are this. | ||
| The majority leader in the Senate, whoever's in power right now, would be John Thun. | ||
| And the minority in the Senate, or what they call the ranking member, that's going to be Chuck Schuman, the Democrats, because the Republicans have more members. | ||
| Anybody that has more members is the majority party. | ||
| And the House, the same way. | ||
| So you have the majority, and you have Mike Johnson, and then you have Keem Jeffers as the minority or the ranking member. | ||
| Those four offices pretty much control everything. | ||
| And it never had been that way. | ||
| Why senators and congresspeople have just basically allowed the four corners to have all this power? | ||
|
unidentified
|
As compared to the regular appropriations process where appropriation still works. | |
| I was on appropriations committee and we go through every 12, what we call 12 bills that we have because of the different agencies and how we're going to fund them. | ||
| The most important we do every time, and it gets done properly, is the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act. | ||
| We sit down, the committee, and we go into a closed area with no press, no nothing, and we sit there in basically any amendment you want to do. | ||
| You discuss everything. | ||
| It's a wonderful process. | ||
| It's the way I think all of Congress could work. | ||
| It's the only committee that works that way right now. | ||
| Everything else, back and forth. | ||
| And you can pass something. | ||
| I was chairman of natural resources and energy. | ||
| And I worked with John Barroso. | ||
| We passed the piece of bill. | ||
| We passed it out. | ||
| Never went anywhere. | ||
| But some of your former colleagues are potentially going to support the government shutting down in just a little while because one of the reasons they're citing is they're saying what's the point of going through an appropriations process if the president can then just go back and pull back. | ||
| I understand all of that. | ||
| They're also saying that they want different types of spending to be done. | ||
| That's all fine. | ||
| That's what they should do. | ||
| But not in shutting things down. | ||
| But what do you think of the president's policies in regards to the rescissions? | ||
| The rescissions should not be done. | ||
| He should not go back. | ||
| He should go through the process. | ||
| You want to go back and talk. | ||
| You already have control of the executive. | ||
| You have executive and you have control of the legislative branch. | ||
| The leadership of the House and the Senate is pretty much paying attention to what the president wants. | ||
| Tell them to go back and pull these back and go through a process and be on public record. | ||
| You rescission some of that spending, a trillion dollars, a billion, whatever it would be, and there's a reason, you give a purpose for it, fine. | ||
| To do it just by executive order and just cut back? | ||
| No. | ||
| That's not the job of the executive. | ||
| The power of the purse is with the Congress. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's hear from Marvin in Redford, Michigan on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Marvin. | ||
| Can you please turn down the volume on your TV then? | ||
| Ask your question. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Robert in Atlantic City, New Jersey on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I wanted to comment on the military failing eight consecutive audits and the lobby that essentially degrades our social services, health care, education, and the lobby that makes Congress beholden to them. | ||
| If it's Trump's military budget, AOC votes for it. | ||
| If it's Biden's military budget, Republicans vote for it. | ||
| The difference between Blinken and Secretary Rubio seems almost non-existent. | ||
| And how can we control that lobby? | ||
| We, the people, would rather have that money spent domestically on Social Security, which Elon Musk called a Ponzi scheme. | ||
| $15 trillion spent since 9-1-1 and the fake weapons of mass destruction narrative. | ||
| And it seems like it's one party when it comes to our foreign policy. | ||
| So this point that Robert raises is interesting given what you just said about the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, being one area where the actual appropriations process is working well, and yet when that money goes through, as Robert was pointing out, the Pentagon is still failing all of these audits. | ||
| The Pentagon is the only agency that doesn't even have an audit. | ||
| John McKay and I tried forever to get them to be audited. | ||
| Certain branches have stepped to the plate. | ||
| Navy, I think, is one. | ||
| But in general, the Department of Defense is not audited as an agency, such as Energy or IRS or things, you know, different places that audit it. | ||
| The thing that's happened is that no one's being held accountable. | ||
| We do NDAA and the military. | ||
| The budget keeps going up. | ||
| We're going to spend a trillion dollars or more in just the finances of the debt of our nation than we do to defend our country. | ||
| And we tell other agencies, other countries for NATO, that they should be spending, remember it was 2%, now it's 3.5% to 5%. | ||
| Well, when you took at the GDP of our nation and you take 5%, you know, that's a chunk. | ||
| And we're not doing that. | ||
| So with that being said, look at what we do for our military. | ||
| We take care of them for life. | ||
| We have that obligation. | ||
| A person puts a uniform on, willing to take a bullet for you and me for the safety of my family and me and this great country we have. | ||
| We're going to do everything we can to honor them. | ||
| And we give them retirements. | ||
| We give them health care. | ||
| We do all this. | ||
| And we should make sure we're doing it the right way and taking care of them. | ||
| Other countries don't. | ||
| So we incur a great amount of cost through after a person has served than when they're serving. | ||
| Sometimes we incur more costs on the back end. | ||
| That's our choice and responsibility, which I support. | ||
| But that comes at a cost and the high cost of that. | ||
| This other spending is just ridiculous, how we procure hammers and screwdrivers and everything. | ||
| It makes no sense whatsoever. | ||
| And that's where the audit needs to be. | ||
| And that's what Robert's talking about. | ||
| How can you throw so much money away and there's no one held accountable or responsible? | ||
| Overruns, the F-35. | ||
| They kept tacking on and kept getting higher and higher and higher. | ||
| And I remember John McKay and I were talking. | ||
| And I said, John, in business, you give me a price, you build it for it. | ||
| If it was an overrun and I didn't ask for any changes, I told you what I wanted on the front end and you didn't perform, that's you. | ||
| That's because you're a bad business person. | ||
| But in procurement for military, oh no. | ||
| If I made a miscalculation, I'm just going to charge you more at the end because you'll pay it. | ||
| We have a question from Elaine in Newport, Vermont, who says, Mr. Manchin, please square your relationship with the oil industry with the interests of your constituents, your former constituents at this point. | ||
| Seems like you don't support saving the environment or the planet. | ||
| Well, let me tell you that energy is a thing that I'm totally committed to. | ||
| And when I did, I wrote the IRA Inflation Reduction Act, which I've been criticized on both sides. | ||
| I knew we had to produce the energy this country. | ||
| And you wanted a different title for it, as I understand it. | ||
| It should have been. | ||
| That was my mistake. | ||
| It should have been the Energy Security Act is exactly what it is, because that's exactly what it did. | ||
| I want to do, I think we're all responsible for the environment, every one of us. | ||
| And I think all of us want to breathe clean air and drink clean water. | ||
| And we should have that right and be able to do it. | ||
| We have the technology. | ||
| My difference between, let's say, more of a hard environmentalist versus someone who doesn't really care about the environment, whoever that may be, and those in the middle. | ||
| The pragmatic approach to take is how can we get what we need and also have what we want. | ||
| And in writing that bill, I said, you cannot eliminate your way to a cleaner environment. | ||
| You just can't say quit using oil, quit using gas, quit using coal. | ||
| Those are all dispatchable. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| That's 24-7. | ||
| They can give you energy 24-7. | ||
| Rain or shine. | ||
| The renewables, we need a lot more work to be done to give us the battery storage we need. | ||
| We need to work on more nuclear. | ||
| They were trying to get rid of nuclear, too. | ||
| I brought that back. | ||
| We can do hydrogen, which we need. | ||
| It has the horsepower to run planes, trains, and everything in between. | ||
| All these different things will be carbon-less or carbon-free. | ||
| We have to get there. | ||
| We're not there. | ||
| So if you want the energy that we need, and the war over Ukraine started, and Putin weaponized energy, oil and gas. | ||
| We better produce what we need to take care of ourselves and help our allies, but do it with technology, innovation. | ||
| You can innovate your way to a cleaner environment. | ||
| You won't eliminate it. | ||
| That's what I try to do. | ||
| So we're producing the energy that we need, and I'm producing the gas, the oil, and we still have coal needed for still making things of that sort. | ||
| But I'm investing into the technology and energy I want for the future. | ||
| And we did more with the bill than any time has ever been done in the history of the United States of America. | ||
| So I got caught in the middle, which is not a pleasant place to be. | ||
| Much of that has been rolled back, though, by the Trump administration. | ||
| A lot of it has been rolled back because I'll tell you why. | ||
| The Biden administration wanted to go when we passed the bill. | ||
| They could not pass the bill they wanted. | ||
| It was too far. | ||
| I wouldn't want to vote for it. | ||
| But we passed a bill that was balanced. | ||
| But the staff, and I told President Biden, your staff is moving this clear to the left. | ||
| You're trying to implement a bill you never passed. | ||
| So they were trying to do more with EVs and all this other stuff before we were able to have a reliable supply chain. | ||
| We're still really, we allowed in the last two decades for China to dominate the markets that produces the raw rare earth minerals that we need, processing of them, manufacturing of the anodes and cathodes and everything else for all this new battery revolution. | ||
| We never got into that. | ||
| We didn't want to. | ||
| It was too dirty for us. | ||
| Let someone else do it. | ||
| We'd like to be clean and green, but we want someone else to pay the price for it, whether it be the people in the Congo living in horrible conditions, digging these rare earth minerals and then processing them in China because they're too detrimental to the environment. | ||
| Well, this is called global climate. | ||
| It's not called West Virginia or United States climate. | ||
| So you have to get real. | ||
| And if you want to do it, innovate through technology and incentivize other countries to use the technology. | ||
| As they're going to use fossil, use it cleaner than ever. | ||
| As you're going to transition, show them how to do it. | ||
| Michael is in Denver, Colorado, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yes, we can. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| And yeah, Mr. Manchin, thank you, first of all, so much for sharing your creative insights and congratulations on the new book. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I am actually, absolutely, and I am actually one of those young people. | |
| I'm 29 years old and I really appreciate what you do, first of all. | ||
| So what I was going to ask you about, following up what you were talking about earlier with the Build Back Better plan, you know, I found it interesting in the book when you were talking about that, when you were on your boat and you had all those protesters that paddled out to your boat and they were trying to have a conversation with you about the bill. | ||
| And, you know, you actually took the time to have that conversation saying that, you know, the bill had some good components to it, such as money for health care, infrastructure, and energy security, which are very important, but that it would supercharge inflation. | ||
| And then one of the protesters brought up that there should be higher taxes on billionaires. | ||
| And you agreed that we should be fixing the tax code so that everyone pays their fair share. | ||
| And to that, Mr. Manchin, there's this added dimension. | ||
| When you talk about polarization, I think one of the kind of root causes of that is inequity. | ||
| With or that be in this case, fiscal inequity or just feeling like people cannot get ahead no matter how hard they try. | ||
| And I think especially for younger people, that's the case. | ||
| And I think, you know, for an example of that, the cuts to Medicaid, you know, in Trump's big beautiful bill, well, the top 20% of earners get these huge tax cuts while Medicaid is cut. | ||
| And people just feel like it's unfair in a way. | ||
| And I think, you know, we need to bridge that divide also. | ||
| And so my question is: kind of, how do you think we can assure that people don't feel as much of that inequity, which, you know, in essence leads to that polarization in the future? | ||
| Michael, thanks for the question. | ||
| There's a lot there, and I appreciate it. | ||
| Everyone should be incentivized in this great country to get ahead. | ||
| And that American dream should be achievable for all of us. | ||
| Let me give you the welfare system. | ||
| In my state, you know, an awful lot of people are dependent on assistance from the federal government. | ||
| We probably have one of the most dependent states that helps people, but I have my geographics as far as in my state and also my demographics, older population. | ||
| And these have all been hard workers. | ||
| They worked all their life and they haven't accumulated an awful lot of wealth and they depend on Medicare and Social Security. | ||
| A lot of them are on welfare and Medicaid. | ||
| And I said, you need to change the welfare system. | ||
| The welfare system right now is a cliff. | ||
| You get to a certain amount. | ||
| I'm going to use hypothetically, I'll just use $25,000. | ||
| If you have a family and you all have earnings up to $25,000 or less, you're going to be on Medicaid or welfare. | ||
| If you try to go above that, you start losing all your assistance that was given you under welfare. | ||
| And I've said this: why don't you create that cliff and change it to a slope? | ||
| Let a person who is working and wants to provide, but the system penalizes them if they get over a certain income or they have certain assets. | ||
| That should be encouraged to accumulate assets, have a home, have a car, be able to take care of yourself, and give them some assistance as they work to a medium wage of the state you live in. | ||
| That would be the best investment we can make. | ||
| And the other thing is, I, as a governor, had welfare, and I asked for a waiver. | ||
| I told Mike Levitt at that time, who's DHA's chairman, he was the secretary. | ||
| I says, Mike, I can't take care. | ||
| I don't have the money to take care of a healthy person who needs financial help, as I have a moral obligation to take care of someone who can't take care of themselves. | ||
| And you've got to give me a chance to encourage and educate and help people work themselves back into the work area. | ||
| So I got that, and they took it away from me when the Obama administration came in the first day. | ||
| They took my waiver away. | ||
| And I thought, you know, I'm just trying to incentivize and help people that can help themselves because I need to take care of those who couldn't. | ||
| All this is in a situation to where we have got to change our way of thinking. | ||
| And I'll tell you this. | ||
| When we did the Inflation Reduction Act, I felt that every corporation in America, especially the large corporation, should pay at least 15% taxes. | ||
| I felt that was fair. | ||
| The corporate tax rate was 21%. | ||
| You would think, well, Joe, why are you lowing it to 15? | ||
| Well, I saw all the kind of things that could be done. | ||
| They're reduced way down into the single digits. | ||
| So we did that, and I caught crap from every side. | ||
| But the bottom line, everybody should pay their fair share. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| I'm almost to the point where I agree with a flat rate, whether it be 15 or 20%, whatever. | ||
| We all pay something to live in this great country, and we all have a vested interest. | ||
| When you buy something, now you have a vested interest. | ||
| You have to take care of that product you bought, whatever it is for you, your family, or whatever. | ||
| Well, when you're buying into this country, you maybe take care of it and get more involved. | ||
| We just have a few minutes left. | ||
| Let's get to a few more folks. | ||
| Susan is in Compton, California on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello, everyone. | ||
| Good morning, Mrs. Kimberly and Mr. Joe Manchin. | ||
| I'm Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh? | |
| I'm just Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's up? | |
| Anyway, let me just say this. | ||
| Now, I know you're familiar with our wonderful, I mean, he was the bomb, Mr. President Barack Obama. | ||
| He is nothing like Donald John Trump. | ||
| Why is Donald Don Trump starting mess? | ||
| Why does he stop all the hate? | ||
| Start loving each other. | ||
| Let's start hugging each other, embracing one another. | ||
| I'm begging him. | ||
| I'm begging him to be the comforter in chief. | ||
| I have said it publicly everywhere I have been. | ||
| Mr. President, we need a leader that has the empathy and sympathy for all of us in difficult times. | ||
| This is a time for you to bring our country together. | ||
| He can do it. | ||
| One person can lead that. | ||
| And I think many will follow and they'll calm down the rhetoric. | ||
| I agree with you 1,000%. | ||
| And I'm trying to do everything I can to make sure. | ||
| I said, right now we need someone who can understand the heartaches and the misery that people are going through and how we can help them have a little bit of tranquility in their life, if you will, or not this anxiety having them right now, thinking that either you're on my side or you're totally against me. | ||
| We've all got to be together. | ||
| In my little state of West Virginia, in my little town of Farmington, West Virginia, which is a little coal mining, we had to work together. | ||
| There were no social nets. | ||
| We held each other together because we loved each other. | ||
| We didn't agree with each other. | ||
| Families don't agree with each other. | ||
| But the love we have for this great country and each other should be absolutely something that is crossed the board, and no one should deny that. | ||
| Brenda is in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Brenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I wanted to let him know, Mr. Manchin, that I have followed you through the years. | ||
| I'm a Republican, but I've admired you and the way that you have governed through the years. | ||
| And I also love watching C-SPAN. | ||
| But it hurts my heart when I see how the people have been reacting and our representatives and how they speak to each other. | ||
| Is there a way that we can recover the respect that you guys used to show each other? | ||
| Is there any way we can do that? | ||
| Yes, you can do it just by what you're saying right now. | ||
| Get involved. | ||
| Start talking. | ||
| My daughter and I, Heather Manchin, my daughter, started what we call AmericansTogether.org. | ||
| It's a 501c4. | ||
| At AmericansTogether.org, it'll tell you exactly what type of government you have, how you're able to be able to be what you want to be, and make sure the representatives you elect represent you and not themselves. | ||
| Hold people accountable. | ||
| They go there now and they can do and say anything they want to and come home and tell you how great things are. | ||
| They have a primary process that doesn't give you much of a choice. | ||
| It's not open. | ||
| It's controlled. | ||
| If you're an independent like me, I can't even vote in my state. | ||
| If I wanted to vote for a Republican in the primary in West Virginia, they've closed the primary down. | ||
| You have to be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary. | ||
| Well, wait a minute, that's not right. | ||
| And very quickly, what do you think of this mid-cycle redistricting effort that's going on across the country? | ||
| Absolutely horrible. | ||
| What goes around comes around. | ||
| You have independent election commissions, okay, in redistricting. | ||
| And they're supposed to be independent. | ||
| They have Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| You should be drawing the lines. | ||
| Computers can do this better than anything else. | ||
| Computers can tell you, okay, we have economically, we have an economically balanced, we have geographically balanced, and we have people that are going to be represented by someone who is balanced. | ||
| But not when you can draw a line and just say, we just want Republicans, or we just want Democrats. | ||
| That's going to push us further apart. | ||
| I hope that California rejects Proposition, I think they call Proposition 50, something like that. | ||
| Anyway, they're trying to see if the people want to redistrict to retaliate against Texas. | ||
| And Missouri. | ||
| Missouri is also. | ||
| Missouri, too. | ||
| I think they'll all pay a price for that. | ||
| I think the people that are Democrats and Republicans maybe today, that's not right, could push back because they want to say, no, we're not going to let you take over that. | ||
| Carol is in West Virginia on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Carol. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Joe. | |
| Hi, Carol. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've supported you throughout the years. | |
| I've voted for you. | ||
| I've been a registered Republican. | ||
| I've been a registered Democrat. | ||
| Now I went independent. | ||
| Me, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because I just got tired of both parties. | |
| But what I have noticed about it is most of the time you stay in the middle. | ||
| But over the years I've watched you in the Senate. | ||
| And it's like the Republicans seem to vote more with the Democrats on bills than what any Democrat wanted to stand up and vote with any of the Republican bills. | ||
| I understand there's a difference in the policies and stuff, but I'm just wondering why is it you can criticize President Trump, but you never said nothing against President Biden is not in the book about that. | ||
| Carol, my whole book is criticizing. | ||
| I'm getting chastised because I didn't criticize Republicans in the book as much as I did Democrats. | ||
| But the bottom line, as I'm telling you, is I've been a Democrat all my life. | ||
| And you know in West Virginia, Carol, most people were registered Democrats way back when we were all growing up. | ||
| And then they changed since 2010 till present, they changed to be all Republicans. | ||
| They're criticizing, it's a constructive criticism. | ||
| I do it respectfully. | ||
| I said that President Obama, when he declared war on coal, it changed the whole dynamics of our state. | ||
| It's one thing to say, I want to go a different directions. | ||
| I want more environmental conscious types of energy. | ||
| You have a right to do that, Mr. President. | ||
| But don't leave us high and dry. | ||
| There's no jobs to replace it, and it destroyed most of the neighborhoods and places where we all come from. | ||
| They just have gone by the wayside. | ||
| So I've been all over that, and you can't leave anybody behind. | ||
| On the other hand, fiscal responsibility, I've been in Washington for almost 15 years when I was in the United States Senate. | ||
| Not one meeting did I ever have with any leadership from the president on down about financial responsibility, fiscal responsibility. | ||
| And I said, that's as much to me as anything that we do. | ||
| And you can't take care of your financial house. | ||
| You can't take care of anything. | ||
| So I have been, I said, Democrats, I want the Democratic Party to be responsible and stay compassionate. | ||
| I want the Republican Party to be fiscally responsible as they had always been in the past and with limited amount of government getting in your face, telling you how to run your life. | ||
| Where they've gone right now, they've both gone their respective sides, which is more extreme. | ||
| And that's why I think where you are today, no party affiliation, being an independent me, is where most of the country. | ||
| Think about one other thing. | ||
| In the last election, almost $11 billion was spent between Democrats and Republicans in the national election in 2024. | ||
| All you heard about was seven states, seven battleground states. | ||
| 43 states have already predetermined. | ||
| West Virginia was one of them. | ||
| Predetermined. | ||
| It was going to vote no matter what for a Republican. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Something's wrong. | ||
| And then the seven states that make the decision on who's going to be the president has no ability to do anything when they get to Washington because there's no place for the middle. | ||
| Thank you so much, former U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, an independent from West Virginia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very much independent. | |
| And the author of the new book, Dead Center in Defense of Common Sense, which is available. | ||
| We'll tell you everything. | ||
| Thank you so much, Senator. | ||
| Appreciate your time. | ||
| Nice to see you. | ||
| Nice to see you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country. | |
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