Joe Manchin on the Fight for America’s Future: Term Limits, Bipartisanship & the 2028 Election

Summary

All-In Podcast: Joe Manchin on the Fight for America’s Future — Term Limits, Bipartisanship & the 2028 Election

Episode Date: October 23, 2025
Guests: Senator Joe Manchin (with Chamath Palihapitiya & Jason Calacanis)

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Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Chamath and Jason interview Senator Joe Manchin about his political journey, his new book Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense, and his unfiltered views on the American political landscape. Manchin candidly shares behind-the-scenes stories about Senate negotiations, pivotal moments under multiple presidencies, the rise of political polarization, and why he now advocates for term limits and open primaries. Throughout, he discusses what “common sense centrism” really means, the difficulty of compromise in today’s climate, and muses on future leadership and America’s path forward.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Joe’s Background and “Dead Center” (00:00–05:04)

• The show opens with Manchin reflecting on his working-class upbringing in West Virginia, his early lessons on responsibility, and his time as a Boy Scout.
• Manchin’s loss of his Scout leader due to economic upheaval (coal mine automation) planted early lessons on community and adaptation.
• Notable Moment: Light banter about the difficulties of recording his own audiobook and the personal value in narrating his life story.

2. The Senate, The Filibuster, and the Role of Compromise (05:04–12:41)

• Manchin explains the Senate’s deliberate design and why maintaining the 60-vote filibuster is essential for democratic balance:
  • “That’s the holy grail to democracy as we know it. Because without it, we wouldn’t be the country we are now.” — Joe Manchin (05:19)
• He recounts pressure from party leadership, especially during shifts in the Senate majority (“you can probably have anything you want… I just want my country to do well.” — 08:06).

3. Build Back Better, American Rescue Plan & Standing Firm (12:41–17:58)

• Manchin describes tense, personal negotiations with President Biden and Chuck Schumer over the American Rescue Plan and Build Back Better (BBB) bills.
  • He objected to “reconciliation” being used as a shortcut for sweeping change: “Over my dead body. That’s not going to happen. That’s not what we’re here for.” (14:28)
  • Shares an intense Oval Office moment: “Mr. President, I grabbed his arm. Country needs you, too. Needs us all. And I said, sir, I’m begging you…” (13:40)
• Details physical threats and relentless pressure campaigns, including paid protestors and concerns for his family’s safety.
  • “Every day the Capitol police call you and say your death threats are serious enough right now… You know, things are pretty serious.” — Joe Manchin (18:11)

4. Pressure Campaigns, Staff Influence, and White House Leftward Drift (17:58–22:55)

• Manchin attributes much of Biden’s leftward movement to staff influence, especially Ron Klain: “We’re not talking about diversity, sir. We’re talking about batshit crazy. We’re talking about people… real far left. And Ron put that team together.” (19:44)
• On legislative horse-trading: Schumer leveraged the infrastructure bill for support on reconciling BBB, but Manchin held his ground.

5. Working With Presidents: Obama vs. Trump Contrast (23:46–28:12)

• Manchin offers a rare, candid comparison of Trump, Obama, and Clinton’s styles:
  • Describes Obama as “a lucid… very good man but his politics…[were] different,” but not engaging with Congress like Clinton or Trump.
  • On Trump: “You go meet him, he’s charming as can be… I said, just call me last. He said, why you say that? I said, I don’t know who in the hell you talk to last, but that seems to be what happens.” (27:23)
• Critiques Obama for “villainizing coal” without offering real alternatives or understanding the local economic impact. (25:00)

6. Entitlement Culture, Work Requirements & Personal Upbringing (28:12–34:01)

• Manchin reflects on the shift from "ask not what your country can do for you" to a culture of "what can my country do for me."
  • “I wasn’t born that way, I wasn’t raised that way, I don’t believe that way. And I can’t do it. You can put a gun to my head and say, I’m gonna pull the trigger, I can’t vote for it.” (29:24)
• Shares moving family anecdotes about his grandmother’s house rules (no drinking, no swearing, and you have to work) and the filtering mechanic for help: “I knew you had to do something for the five.” (32:42)
• Justifies his position: “I won the work requirement for anybody capable, able bodied to work.” (34:01)

7. Centrism, Earned Benefits — Not “Free” Everything (34:01–37:06)

• Pushes back on “free” tuition, advocating instead for earned educational benefits.
• Calls for required financial literacy in student loans: “They don’t know what accrued interest is. They don’t know about paying this back. It’s a death trap.” (36:00)

8. Term Limits: From Skeptic to Supporter (37:06–38:33)

• Reveals why he now favors strong term limits for Congress: “She said, Joe, think of it this way. If we had term limits, maybe we get one good term out of you. I had no comeback. She convinced me right there.” (37:21)
• Suggests: two six-year terms for senators; six two-year terms for House members; one six-year presidential term; an 18-year Supreme Court term.

9. Most Dynamic Senators: Bipartisan Respect (38:33–42:20)

• Praises governors-turned-senators and bipartisan problem-solvers, naming Angus King, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, Lisa Murkowski, and others as “people that I know have the ability to do it, to make it happen.” (39:00)
• Advocates presidential leadership to foster bipartisan compromise.

10. Healthcare, Immigration, and Missed Bipartisan Opportunities (42:20–49:58)

• Tells inside story of John McCain’s famous “thumbs-down” ACA vote (42:41).
• Argues that truly bipartisan solutions to immigration and abortion were available but crushed by internal party politics and strategic retreating:
  • “All they had to do was just codify Roe v. Wade. That’s all we had to do.” (48:30)
  • Expresses frustration that fleeting chances at pragmatic reform are lost to “extremes” and political calculation.

11. Admitting Political Mistakes & the Need for Fresh Leadership (49:58–52:25)

• Rarely seen candor on getting “don’t ask, don’t tell” wrong: “I was totally wrong on that… I made a mistake.” (51:00)
• Repeats support for term limits as a path to greater accountability.

12. The Case for a Third Party & Open Primaries (52:25–55:49)

• Decries the D/R “duopoly” and the 24-million-voter primary stranglehold on American choice:
  • “Our democracy is still experimental. We thought we could govern ourselves. … I can’t participate. 45 to 50% of us can’t participate in the primary process.” (54:56)
  • Advocates for legal challenges to closed primaries and more open, inclusive election processes.

13. The 2026 and 2028 Elections: Hopes, Warnings & Succession (56:14–68:59)

• Manchin predicts the best possible outcome is divided government to calm down polarization.
• Harshly critiques the four previous presidencies:
  • Obama: “He had a lot of compassion, but he just didn’t communicate well with the legislature. I thought he could have done a lot more…”
  • Trump: More in sync with energy policy, but prone to posturing.
  • Biden: “Went far to the left and … just for the sake of being president, I think he had to sign up… with the wrong side of that.”
  • Trump 2.0: “Chance to be monumental in what he can do… I want to see the compassion… He is the perfect president for the Middle East… That doesn’t work in the western part of the world.”
• On future Democratic leadership: holds hope for pragmatic centrists but argues the party “has been basically taken over by the extremes.”
• Entertains the idea of centrist business leaders or up-and-coming pragmatic governors as possible future saviors.

14. Would He Have Run? The 2028 “Not Stupid Party” (66:58–69:23)

• Admits he’d have loved to run in a real Democratic mini-primary; wanted to confront and reset party excesses but process was closed off.
• Shares self-deprecating banter with Mitt Romney about running as “the youngest old white guys.”
• On 2028: “If we have to say, I’ll do anything I can to help my country… but I guarantee I’ll be trying to find the right people that put country before party and all the bull behind him and let’s get this country back on track.” (69:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “That’s the holy grail to democracy as we know it. Because without it we wouldn’t be the country we are now.” — Joe Manchin on the filibuster (05:19)
• “You can put a gun to my head and say, I’m gonna pull the trigger, I can’t vote for it.” — Manchin on standing against excessive entitlements (29:24)
• “We’re not talking about diversity, sir. We’re talking about batshit crazy.” — Manchin describing Biden’s White House staff (19:44)
• “If we had term limits, maybe we get one good term out of you. I had no comeback. She convinced me right there.” — Manchin’s small-town term limits conversion (37:21)
• “Our democracy is still experimental. We thought we could govern ourselves. … I can’t participate. 45 to 50% of us can’t participate in the primary process.” (54:56)
• “Mitt [Romney] and I were talking about running. I said, Mitt, we have to start a new party... he said, we’ll call it a ‘not stupid party’.” (68:31)

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Timeline of Important Segments

• 00:00–05:04: Childhood, book background, early values
• 05:04–12:41: Senate process, filibuster, party mechanics
• 12:41–17:58: BB, ARP, negotiations with Biden/Schumer
• 17:58–22:55: Pressure campaigns, White House dynamics, Biden staff
• 23:46–28:12: Obama v. Trump as president, economics of coal
• 28:12–34:01: Debate on culture of entitlements, family upbringing
• 34:01–37:06: Benefits “earned” v. “given,” higher ed reform
• 37:06–38:33: Journey to supporting term limits
• 38:33–42:20: Most dynamic Senators, bipartisan governance
• 42:20–49:58: Healthcare, immigration, missed reform moments
• 49:58–52:25: Political mistakes, need for accountability
• 52:25–55:49: Third-party case, closed primaries
• 56:14–68:59: 2026/2028 speculation, reflections on presidencies, leadership futures
• 66:58–69:23: Presidential ambitions, “not stupid party,” closing thoughts

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Tone and Language

• The episode is informal, candid, and often self-deprecating.
• Manchin is frank and direct about political failures, intra-party squabbles, and the personal cost of dissent.
• Banter and humor (on recording audiobooks, “peg leg Peggy,” and not being “the stupid party”) keep the conversation lively and personable.
• The tone turns somber and impassioned when discussing threats, polarization, or the consequences of inaction.

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This episode offers a rare, inside look at the complexity, frustration, and small glimmers of hope at the heart of American politics. For listeners and non-listeners alike, it’s a crash course in the realpolitik of the Senate, why the center is embattled, and what it will take to save American “common sense.”

Transcript

[Jason]

All right, everybody, welcome back to the all in podcast. We are super pleased to have with us today Senator Joe Manchin is joining us today here on the All In Interview. And Chamath and I will be interviewing him on his new book, Dead Center In Defense of Common Sense, a great book. Welcome to the program. Joe Manchin. I know you like to be called Joe, so, Joe, welcome to the program.

[Joe Manchin]

Jason. Thank you. And it's great to be with you in Chamath. And I've followed you all, and you've been unbelievable what you put out and some of the people you've had on has been very entertaining, very interesting, and very thoughtful. So anxious to be here.

[Jason]

Thanks. And we have a tradition here. I don't know how often you watch the interview show, but we always try to get a personalized gift for each of our guests. And so in the book, you talked about your first car, your 1964.

[Joe Manchin]

If you could find that. If you could find that thing for me, it was a bullet back. I can't find the car.

[Jason]

Well, there it is with the white interior.

[Joe Manchin]

Oh, my God. Can we buy it?

[Jason]

No, no, you got it. It's in your driveway right now. When you get out of your office there, it'll be waiting for you by your yacht.

[Joe Manchin]

Let me tell you that. Oh, by my yacht. Yeah.

[Jason]

I got a big $200,000 trawler. It's a fishing trawler.

[Chamath]

Correct.

[Jason]

They call it off. And it's a trawler.

[Chamath]

Listen, Joe, what Jason has just proved is he has not read the book, but he looked at the pictures in the middle. That's all he's done.

[Jason]

No, I didn't.

[Chamath]

He's riffing off the pictures in the middle.

[Jason]

No, I don't have the physical book. I did the audiobook, but. But, Joe, you did the right thing. You read it yourself. Which a lot of authors, you know, they get. Try to get talk about it doing it, but it makes it so much more personal.

[Joe Manchin]

Hey, Jason, I didn't know I was supposed to do that. And all of a sudden, my daughter Heather says, dad, you got to show up at the studio and start reading your book. I said, how? How? I said, why do I have to do that? She says, it's in the contract. I said, I didn't see that. She said, I didn't show it to you. The contract.

[Jason]

It's like six or seven hours of.

[Joe Manchin]

Reading, took 20 hours. 20 hours.

[Jason]

So three days. Three, four days.

[Joe Manchin]

Four days. And let me tell you what's the best thing I've ever Done that made me reminisce. Everything we put in the book, it's just.

[Jason]

Chamathya. You haven't done this yet because you.

[Chamath]

Haven'T written your book. I'm not really into audiobooks. I read the book. Look, I have it. I like to have the physical pages. I mark them. I'm old school.

[Jason]

Yeah. I mean, sometimes I do both. But when you're in the session, I'm sure you had this where the producers got the button and then you're like. And then I got my Maserati and I came out of the garage and they're like, a garage. Yeah, I came out of the garage. Because you have to do every word perfectly to sync it on Amazon. Right. So they have to correct you over and over again if you just miss one word.

[Joe Manchin]

The most unbelievable thing is the first one I saw, the first day I started doing it, I'm sitting there, you know, and all of a sudden I'm just talking and reading the book and I cross my legs. They said, stop. Cross your legs. Didn't you? I said, what? They said, we heard you. Cross your legs. I said, my God, I'm in trouble.

[Jason]

You're basically in like a Faraday cage. Like if you literally hit anything. Yeah.

[Joe Manchin]

Oh, wow.

[Jason]

But the book's fantastic. Everybody go pause the podcast here and just absolutely go buy it because it's so important. And I mentioned when we were just on the pre show, Irish Catholic Boy Scout, and you start the book out with an Irish Catholic Boy Scout getting in a brouhaha donnybrook with an Italian Irish Boy Scout. You an Eagle Scout?

[Joe Manchin]

No, I wasn't.

[Jason]

Former president. Wait, you were an Eagle Scout? That's what the Internet said. What'd you get to first class?

[Joe Manchin]

No, no, I got up to life. Oh. And what happened? I was right next to it. Let me tell you what happened. 1959. Never forget it. The coal mines. The coal mines got automated in West Virginia. I lived within. I lived in a little coal mining community. 400 people. And there was three of the largest coal mines you've ever seen. And everybody worked in the coal mines, okay? And all of a sudden I come home one day and my dad had a little furniture store and my grandfather had a grocery store. And there was all these guys sitting on. On the curb. They got laid off because it got automated. They lost their job. Pat Keener was my scout leader. The best of the best of the best. If you have a good scout master, a scout leader, you're going to make it. If you don't you don't make it. And what happened? He had to go to Lordstown, Ohio to get a job in the auto factory and we lost it and I was done.

[Jason]

You lost your Sky Master?

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah, I lost my guy.

[Jason]

Well, this part of the, of your story, I think is the crucible moment for you because I've, I'm Catholic and Irish and I know the Italian Catholics. That's, that's quite a fight. An Italian Catholic and an Irish Catholic get in a fight.

[Joe Manchin]

Just step back is what I.

[Jason]

But you got in a heater with Joe Biden over the build back better bill. To the extent that I believe the Democrats or operatives were sending people to your trawler, your houseboat that you're living on, they're sending people a little bit out. Your family maybe.

[Joe Manchin]

Everywhere I had. The death threats were unreal, Jason. Crazy, unbelievable.

[Jason]

Your own party. So maybe you could take us to maybe tell that story because it feels to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that this is a seminal moment in your political career or perhaps the.

[Joe Manchin]

I don't recommend anybody getting caught in a 50, 50 Senate in the United States because United States Senate is supposed to be the most deliberate body in the world. And the reason it's deliberate because you have to have a 60 vote threshold for cloture to get on a bill. And with that that was intended from our founding fathers, is that the House is going to be simple majority, 218 out of 435. Don't even talk to the other side. You don't have to just shove it through. And George Washington said, you know, it's going to be like a hot cup of tea and it goes over to the Senate, should cool itself off so we can drink it. Well, that's the whole premise. And people keep saying get rid of the filibuster. That's the holy grail to democracy as we know it. Because without it we wouldn't be the country we are now. It forced us to sit down in one of the bodies to calm things down and talk to our friends over in the House and say, guys, this is how it's got to be. We've got to moderate this some. And that's what, that's what it was. That's what I'd always known from Bob Byrd, Senator Robert C. Byrd, our senator forever, 50 years plus in West Virginia. And when I became governor, he kept, I think he kind of knew in his mind that I would probably run for the Senate. And he was getting to the end of his career or, you know, his age was creeping up on him pretty hard. Anyway, he kept telling me all the different things of why he did certain things, why the rules were the way they were. So I had a real understanding of the purpose of the Senate and my responsibilities. So here we go. And then the whole thing on reconciliation, there's a reconciliation, it's a movement that we operate under and it's basically stopping. It stops anybody from preventing us to make sure we can take care of our financial responsibilities. And so reconciliation only takes a simple majority. Well, in the Senate, that's the only vehicle that you can have a 51 vote threshold without a cloture vote of 60 votes getting to the bill. So then Joe Biden gets elected. And I think the story in the book, it starts out, Schumer kept calling me then every hour, on the hour, the night of the election. And I'm thinking, why is he so worked up? Because in the Senate, in all honesty, whether you're in the, if you're one, if you're not the majority leader, but you're one of the senators in the caucus of the Democratic Republicans, you have the same power. You have the same, you know, you can participate. Every senator can participate. They're all important, 100 of them. So he keeps saying, Joe, he says, you don't understand. This Georgia thing could really, you know, it could happen. I'm thinking, well, I don't think we're going to win Georgia. We hadn't wasn't predicted, but Donald Trump put him in play, to be honest with you, him going down there and getting into a tiff with everybody. He did. And so all of a sudden, you know, we got two senators that are running from there and boom, the first one calls Raphael Warnock, he wins Ossoffs later on that night, boom, they call that. And Schumer says, you know what this means, don't you? And I said, well, Chuck, I think it means you're the majority leader. He says, no, it means that you can probably have anything you want. And I said, I just want my country to do well. If my country does well, my state will do well. That's all I care about.

[Chamath]

What do you think he meant when he said that?

[Joe Manchin]

I know exactly what he meant, Shamath. I know exactly. Chuck Schumer basically coming from where he comes from and just whatever you can take back home. And of course, Bob Bird was always criticized for taking so much what they called pork back home. And that was the situation. He thought, well, I'm in a catbird seat now. I could outdo Bob Byrd. I just never thought that. I just never thought of tipping the scale so unfavorably to where we all should be going. Well, if we can move our country forward. But that's what he thought. Okay, what do you want? I just want my country to do well.

[Chamath]

When that happened, there was a lot of thought that the filibuster and maybe just to take a step back for the audience, the whole point is that as you explained, basically, laws can get passed in one of two ways. The real way, which is that you have to find some sort of compromise with folks on the other side, get to 60 votes or the other way, which is more of a budgetary process called reconciliation, which is a simple majority. And there's been a lot of talk that one party at some point will try to eliminate the filibuster so that when they have a simple majority, they can pass any law they want. And there was a moment, I think, in that point where you came under a lot of pressure to get on board with trying to eliminate the filibuster. Can you just give us a window into that and what happened and how you made the decision and what the reaction was from party loyalists?

[Joe Manchin]

Well, let's go back to 2013, when Harry Reid, because of Barack Obama, couldn't get his appointments done for his cabinet and things of that sort and some judges. So the majority party can change the rules. If they want to blow it apart, they can blow it apart. Well, Harry Reid decided that he wanted to get rid of the filibuster. And I just said, harry, I'd never do that. I mean, my goodness, you can't. Just because you can't work with someone. I said, you and Mitch don't even sit down and talk. You don't have a cup of coffee, let alone discuss what should be important for both sides. And that time I even told Harry, I said, harry, the only thing that the president's wanting, he won reelection, 2012, gets reappointed, 2013 reinagurated, and here we go. He wants to put his team together. That's will and pleasure. And I always believe that will and pleasure, that will and pleasure means you get elected. You're the executive shamath. And you said, joe, I want you to be part of this. I'm going to come and go at your will and pleasure. I'm not staying over. Once you're gone, I'm gone. Why not let you have your team? Unless I. And they can do an FBI background check, find out if I'm a Sound character and moral values and no criminal records. And boom, let me go. So I begged Harry, just go over and cut a deal with Mitch and say, mitch, let's together do this unanimously. That 51 vote threshold for all of the President's appointment people, that'll be will and pleasure. No holdovers whatsoever. But you can't do it to judges to get lifetime appointments. You can't do it for other, other different agencies that have a six year or a nine year term. Just will and pleasure. And I thought that would be very simple. And he wouldn't do it. They said, oh, no, we got to get the judges. I says, you're going to basically change the confirmation process to 51 votes for a lifetime. Are you crazy? But they did it. And then guess what happened? They did it for, they did it for district and circuit judges. Okay. Didn't do it for Supreme Court. Guess what happened. As soon as Republicans took over, they were in control. Mitch McConnell says, Fine, we'll do it for Supreme Court. Now we have a 6, 3 court. Didn't work too well before he did it, whether it be Harry or that. And during this, Chuck Schumer just come out directly and said he wanted to get rid of the filibuster. That's how they were going to run it with Joe Biden. Well, Joe Biden had always been a defender of the filibuster. How can you flip on your values when all of a sudden now because you're in charge and you want to just shove things down people's throat. I said, I'm not going to do that. So myself and Kyrsten Sinema voted against the filibuster, which stopped all that. I was all for the voting. I mean, all the concern, the voting Act, Voting Rights act and all that. But I said, we have to find a pathway that we have some Republicans, 10 Republicans will work with us.

[Chamath]

I want to go and ask you a very specific question that's framed in the book about Obama. But before I do that, let's just stay on Biden for a second.

[Joe Manchin]

I'll get to where Jason asked me how we got to, because it really, how it led up to what happened is unbelievable. Yeah, yeah.

[Jason]

I think maybe finishing that big because it gets spicy.

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah, it gets spicy because what happened, Jason, the first thing they did was arp. The American Rescue plan was his first bill. As soon as Joe Biden gets elected, boom, he gets sworn in. And in February, he comes out with the ARP American Rescue plan, which is this big overhaul. Okay. We had just done you all know the finances better than probably anybody observing. We had put $3.2 trillion into the market as Covid in 20. In 2020. March of, from March 2020 up until the end of the year. And then Joe Biden takes over. So we already put 3.2 trillion. He comes out with the American rescue plan. They want to put another 1.9 minimum. 1.9. Now we're at 5.1. Well, our cash flow is about a little over $5 trillion a year that we run the country on. They're doubling the amount. You can't digest that. The market can't take it. But they were doing it. And I says, are you people crazy right now? We don't even know what, what the 3.2 is going to do, let alone. But they wanted. It was. They were chasing a social reform. And I told him, I said, Mr. President, they heard me grumbling in the hallway and one of the senators called the White House immediately and says, mansion making trouble already? Well, it was 50, 50. They had to have me. So he called me right over to the White House and I'm sitting There, I said, Mr. President, I'm begging you, please don't do them. Don't do reconciliation on this bill. If this is your bill, which I know it's not, this is a Bernie Sanders and this is Elizabeth Warren, because I'd heard them. Respectfully, I, you know, I can agree in some and I disagree, but it was just too big a bite coming right out of COVID and we had a vaccine that was working. So I said, please don't, sir. I said, you're the only one on the stage running for president with all that big lineup that says, you know how the place work, you can work on both sides, you can make a deal. And I always known you to be that person. And now all of a sudden you're throwing, you know, the nuclear bomb out. You're saying, we can't work with the Republicans, we got to do it. And I said, schumer's got you all fired up thinking that's how you're going to run it. And I knew in my mind they wanted to run what we call the 117th Congress. The Congress is a two year stint. Every two years you have an election. So Congress, we were in 1/17 just starting it. My, my thought process was, is that Schumer had convinced the President that we could run this Congress for two years with four reconciliation big bills, two and two in 2021 and two in 2022. And I says, over my dead body. That's not going to happen. That's not what we're here for. And that's not how this place is supposed to work. So they call me over in the White House and they grab you. Always Jason, when you're sitting there and you see it on television. He made everybody leave the room and we're sitting there and then President reaches over and grabs your arm and he says, joe, your country needs you. I'm thinking, what the hell do I say now? And I said, Mr. President, I grabbed his arm. Country needs you, too. Needs us all. And I said, sir, I'm begging you not to. Why don't you just put this bill that you call your American Rescue plan, put it in the jurisdictional committees and let us work it. Give us a shot clock. Say, guys, I'm going to give you 60 days to work these bills. Then if they don't, because they just don't want you to have any success at all, do what you got to do then. Oh, no, got to do it now, Joe. Got to go. Got to go. Okay, so we go and then we shut it down there for about 12 or 14 hours one day. Because I thought they lost their mind. They wanted to expand the unemployment benefits. I said, do you understand what you're dealing with now? You got inflation coming at you so hard because people have been cooped up. We've sent everybody a check. And I told him this. He kind of giggled. I said, Mr. President, we've sent everybody check. And if we've missed anybody, it was by mistake because you intended to send everybody a damn check. And I said, they want to go spend money and there's nobody working. The supply chains have shut down. There's nothing. They're going to pay exorbitant amounts to get what they want. You're just fueling it, sir. Oh, God. We went through all of that and he's. That's when he got pretty vulgar and just told me, I'm. You're going to. You know, if you. You kill my effing bill, I'll never talk to you again. I said, if I could catch this. If I could kill this effing bill, you shouldn't talk to me again. Because if I could, I would, but I can't. The way you think is moving. But I can tell you we're never going to go this way route again. So this is how we work, kind of work things out. Then sure enough, one month they come back with BBB built back better. Now they're talking $6 trillion. That bill was 10 trillion if it was a penny. With all the revamping, I couldn't get there, guys. And I told him, I said, Mr. President, I'm sorry, man, I can't get there. And they tried for eight months, beat up me. I mean, I had to have security.

[Chamath]

What is that like? What does the pressure campaign look like? Because it's not just the president, exactly as you write in the book. It's people showing up at the house. It's people with little kayaks, with protest signs around your boat. It's pretty intense.

[Joe Manchin]

It's pretty intense, shamat. But I can tell you one thing. When every day the Capitol police call you and say your death threats are serious enough right now. So we have to have. We'll meet you down at where you live and we'll bring you to work and we'll take you back home. You know, things are pretty serious. I never wanted to know the extent, but I knew they were serious. And then one time they said, this is really getting serious now because now we got things. They know where your children go to school. They know where your grandchildren are, where your kids live. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, this is crazy. And then I had a bunch of boaters come down, canoers. I had. I got attacked by canoes. And I just said, guys, listen, we just disagree. It was all climate people. And I said, listen, I want a clean climate. I just know we need energy to run our country, and there's gotta be a balance. And so I said, come up to my office. They said, what? I said, come to my office tomorrow. We can sit and talk. You don't have to be out here in the water. But they thought that was the show they put on. But they came the next day. We talked. We agreed to disagree on some things, and we agreed on some things.

[Chamath]

But Joe, Joe, I just want to understand, though, like, do you think that these are just random acts or do you think that it's an organized pressure campaign?

[Joe Manchin]

I think it was organized. They were paid shamath because a lot of my friends who live on the. Down at the river, on the Potomac river with me on the boat, they play like, how can I get a job with you? How can I do this if I want to protest? They said, oh, just sign up. You get $15 an hour. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. They're telling me that.

[Chamath]

But doesn't the message have to go from the White House? Like, doesn't Biden's team somebody has to.

[Joe Manchin]

Say like, oh, no, Ron, I'm going to be honest with you, Ron Klain, okay? Smart guy, good guy and everything. But he'd gone so far to the left and he pushed Joe left. Because I kept telling, when I first went over to the White house, I said, Mr. President, I says, you have the most liberal staff that I've ever seen. First time I went over and he said, well, Joe, they tell me I have the most diversified staff. I said, we're not talking about diversity, sir. We're talking about batshit crazy. We're talking about people I've known, I've worked with in the hallway forever, and I know where they came and where they worked before. These are people real far left. And Ron put that team together. And I know that because I kept saying that your staff is pushing you too far left, Mr. President. You've never been that far left. Right. And I just, someone says about, you know, I've always liked Joe Biden. We always got along well. Good man. I just don't think he lost the will to fight.

[Chamath]

Okay. Do you think it's that or can I, can I just ask you all of these rumors, the comments about the auto pen, the mental faculties, never saw that.

[Joe Manchin]

Never. And I've been with him a lot. Okay. We always had good conversations. Now, with that said, I just said, I know how much energy it takes if you've got to fight with your staff every day to do the things you want, rather than the staff saying, we'll take care of that, Mr. President. Because I would ask him, we agree on something, and I'd ask him a week or two later and nothing had happened. So I know there was no follow up. You follow? So I knew Ron was kind of driving the train. And with that, I'll tell you how this thing came to a head. They didn't. I said, I'm not voting to get on the bbb. And this goes on for a while. There's just pressure and pressure me. And they need my vote to even get on reconciliation. Right, right. So it finally came down to I said, you know, you've got some good things in that BBB bill. The one thing you really need is infrastructure. Remember the bipartisan infrastructure bill?

[Chamath]

Yeah.

[Joe Manchin]

I said, this country, we haven't done anything for 30 years. I said, why don't you just, let's pull that bill out. So Schumer, being the person he is, he says, I'll tell you what I'll do, Joe. I'll pull that bill out. And I said, let me Work that bill. Chuck and I said, we'll get you a good bill and it'll be bipartisan. I'll show you can be done bipartisan. He says, I'll tell you what, I'll do that and pull that out if you'll vote to get on bbb. So the reason I'm leading up to this, that's when people says, well, Joe promised to vote for it. I never promised to vote for bbb. I says, I'll get on and let you work the bill. I'm never going to be for this bill. So anyway, we get. We get to be. We get the bipartisan infrastructure bill. We work it and we pass it. And the night we were passing the bill, sitting on the Senate floor, Bernie Sanders says, come over and talk to me, Joe. And I sit down. He said, joe, are you going to vote for this BBB bill? And I said, hell no, Bernie. You know, I've never been for that bill. And he says, well, at least you're being honest with me. I said, I've been honest with everybody. I said, you guys want to work until the cows come home, that's fine. I can't do this. And he says, you know, I've cut it down from 6. From 6 trillion to 3 trillion. I says, bernie, you and I know the game that's played here. You didn't cut it down. All you did was cut the timing down from 10 years to five years or three years to make it look like you were cutting them out. You know, they're never going to get rid of any of this.

[Jason]

We.

[Joe Manchin]

Once you start giving everything away, right? Went through all of that. So he says, you know, I can kill this bill. And I'm thinking at first when he said that, I says, well, Bernie, if you're saying you can kill the bill here in the Senate and, and you're. And Vermont doesn't need any infrastructure. Your bridge, roads and bridges, Internet connections, your. Your water and sewer. Everything's great. Then you should vote against it. He says, no, I'm not talking about here, Joe. I'm talking about on the other side in the House with all the liberals or the progressives over there. So I didn't think of anything. We passed it that night, and boom, the bill gets held up. You remember that? It kept getting held up, and they kept sending the President up here to talk to him and pass the bill, and they wouldn't pass. And they kept saying, manchin lied to us. And I said, schumer, you better tell them the truth. You know exactly how you got on this bill. And you know I never ever said I would ever vote for this bill.

[Chamath]

Let me. Joe, if it's possible. I want to just, just go a little bit back and I want to start with Obama. So you wrote in the book that Trump was the most engaged president you ever worked with and that in the first.

[Joe Manchin]

No, I said two of them. Two, two of them.

[Chamath]

Okay.

[Joe Manchin]

And then Clinton, Bill Clinton. If you told me people that are engaging with you and talk Bill and.

[Chamath]

President Trump and then you said in the first two years you spoke with Trump more than you ever did under eight years of Obama.

[Joe Manchin]

Correct, correct.

[Chamath]

Contrast and compare Obama and Trump for us and just help us understand the positives and negatives of both as you saw it.

[Joe Manchin]

I think President Barack Obama is a very good man but his politics. I knew him when he was a U.S. senator representing Illinois and he knew about the coal industry and of course I come from the coal industry being governor of West Virginia and growing up in, in the coal fields and we talked about fossil and why we needed this, that and everything. He wanted me to help him and vote for something that would help his called future Gen, which is the new coal fired plant that was going to be CO2 capture and all this and that they called it back. There was a billion, it was a billion dollar project the government was sponsoring and I told him I couldn't participate. I was one of the four states. I pulled out and put my support behind Illinois and they got it. Never built a plant but they got the award. So I knew he knew it. And then all of a sudden he becomes a number. He becomes the nominee from the Democratic Party and switched everything to renewables. And I'm thinking, well what are we going to do with all the things that the coal miners have done and all we've done for our country? Does that mean you're going to bring new jobs or this or that? There was no plan to replace any opportunities to live the quality of life and to live where they wanted to live with their culture and who we are and family oriented in Appalachia. And boy, I'll tell you, we had a meeting about one year afterwards and I was in National Governors association leadership and we had Democrats and Republicans. I finally got a meeting with him in the Roosevelt Room and I'll never forget that. And we were going around the table and different governors were speaking. He came to me And I says Mr. President, you've done one hell of a good job of villainizing coal. And he jumped up and I went nuts. On me. I'm thinking, oh boy, here we go. And he said, why would you say something like that? And I said, because it's true. I says, you have basically put benchmarks that we can't make because there's no technology that we can get our industry to meet those that gives you the right to shut it down. And he made a statement, if you recall, go ahead and build a coal fired plant and we'll break you. He knew that technology wasn't there. So I'm thinking, christ, what happened? You're leaving us behind. These people have nothing. They, and they, they said, what happened to the West Virginia Democrats? I said, I'd tell you exactly what happened. They ran them off. Now all of a sudden they've done everything like a returning Vietnam veteran. We've done everything our countries ask. Now all of a sudden we're not good enough, clean enough, green enough, or smart enough. They hell with them just by the way side. So you remember the slogan, don't leave anybody behind. At least Joe Biden picked up that slogan in 2020 and he has done a lot of things there, trying to have incentives to bring businesses into coal country, if you will.

[Chamath]

So is it that Obama is just an incredibly strategic calculator?

[Joe Manchin]

He was a lucid.

[Chamath]

He was a lucid. What does that mean as a politician?

[Joe Manchin]

I don't know. I mean, I just, you know, when I talked to Bill Clinton, you know, it's always, it was always, what about this? And he was always so inquisitive about this and that. What am I thinking about this and that. Then we always had a couple good jokes to tell each other and kind of broke out. You know, we had a lot of fun and with, with, and with President Donald Trump, you know, you go meet him, he's charming as can be, sits down, talks with you. He said, hey Joe, what about this, what about that? No, you know, we talk about a lot of things. And then one time I told him, that's Mr. President, just call me last. I was the only Democrat he was talking to come over, have breakfast, come over lunch or do whatever, come to movie, and had a lot of fun. And, and I said, just call me last. He said, why you say that? I said, I don't know who in the hell you talk to last, but that seems to be what happens. I like to have one of those dates last time.

[Jason]

So a lot of your, this profiling courage around spending and entitlements in the book you talk about comes from this rugged individualism, personal responsibility, accountability. Yeah. And this accountability that you grew up with as a Catholic as well. I had that as well. A little bit of guilt if you don't work hard as well sprinkled in there as a backstop. We're looking at a country now where it seems the operating principle is how do I get mine? You got something, I need to get something. And now you've got Mondami in New York. He's going to give free pizza and bagels and bus trips and whatever it is, whatever people want, he's going to give it to him for free. You have not been able to, you failed in some ways to turn this around in the country, this entitlement, as many, many of us have, who have been screaming from the rooftops like, ask not, and you talk about this in the book Ask not, what your country can do for you. What can you do for your country? You bring it over and over again.

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah.

[Jason]

So I think we failed in the last two decades and socialism's on the rise. Why is that? How do we turn it around?

[Joe Manchin]

Let me just say at the bbb, the last time President Trump, President Biden and I had met, where he calls me up into the White House and he takes me up in stairs to living quarters in Boston. Well, when you go up there, that's really going to the woodshed, if you will. And we were talking and everything And I said, Mr. President, I can't get there. I really can't get there, sir. And I said, you know, you and I are both at the same vintage. You're a little bit older, but not that much. I said, we're, we're in the same vintage. And I said, I remember very vividly as a 13 year old kid watching television, inauguration 1906 of John Kennedy asked not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country if we pass this piece of legislation. You're asking me to vote for the bbb, you're changing the psychic to the nation of how much more can my country do for me? I wasn't born that way, I wasn't raised that way, I don't believe that way. And I can't do it. You can put a gun to my head and say, I'm gonna pull the trigger, I can't vote for it. And then all hell broke loose after that. So how it happened is this. My grandmother took everybody in. Okay. We live by the railroad tracks between the crick and the railroad tracks in a little three room garage apartment. And my grandparents had a little home right beside us. She Took everybody in. I never knew. I just watched. And I was eldest of the boys of about 20 of U.S. grandkids. We had to whitewash her basement, keep it clean and a nice place for people to stay. There was no social network back in the 50s. We had people that would ride the train. You can call what you want to. These were people that fallen out of society. They were all intelligent, smart, craftsman's this and that, and they. They and alcoholics, probably most of them. And they'd come down. They knew I could get off and go to a Mama K and she'd take care of him. She said, I got three rules. Can't, you can't, you can't drink, you can't swear, and you've got to work. So my first introduction was there was rules. And they were all good rules.

[Jason]

Pretty basic operating system.

[Joe Manchin]

Okay, so you know what, after about a while, they'd be. We had some of the best painters and carpenters you ever seen, but we'd lose them every now and then. I said, mom, okay, we had names for everybody. Schmoth. We had Wilbur, Willie, Peg Leg Peggy. You name it, we had them. They're all characters.

[Jason]

Oh, Peg Leg Peggy especially. He had a peg cracker.

[Joe Manchin]

He had a peg leg. Wooden peg leg. And he got caught. That was in my building. Got caught in the tracks one time. We had to pull him out, right? Anyway, so I said, mom, okay, what happened to D. Lloyd? Where'd D. Lloyd go? Oh, honey, he's on a toot again. And you know, the toot was always the bottle. And when you see the old timers on the toot, they go like this. And I says. She said, don't worry, honey. He'll be back in six weeks. And just the cycle, that was it. So I learned that my grandfather. People come in, Papa. My grandfather never kept books. He just kept all his money in his pocket. And he worked. That's how he worked. Immigrant from Italy. And Papa say, naacum. And say, pop, no matter who they were, hey, Papa, can I borrow five? Can I have five? He said, sure, honey. He called everybody honey. He said, here's a broom and shovel. Go up and clean up the parking lot and I'll give you the five. I understood you had to do something for the five. Okay, Right. He says. They say, papa, I'll be right back. He looked at me and he smiled. He said, don't worry, Joe. He said, only about half of them take me up on it. So I knew. I knew you had to do something.

[Jason]

Now, that's a filtering mechanism.

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah.

[Jason]

And it relates directly to your belief, though, in having a work requirement.

[Joe Manchin]

I won the work requirement for anybody capable, able bodied to work. And here's the thing they got on me, said, mansions killing child tax credits. I says, I'm killing child tax credits. Right. First of all, you have child tax credits up to $400,000 of income. You really want to know who needs a child tax credits? People right above the poverty guideline. Mostly single females. Above 25,000 a year, up to about 75, they need it. Okay. And they're working. Please help them. Okay? And I'd go into all of this, Jason and Chamo. And then, and then they. And they said, oh, no, we got to do this, that across the board. I said, don't you think that rather than just sending checks to people that have children that don't work and won't work and sitting at home, why would they need childcare money when they're sitting home with their children? I said, it makes no sense to me at all. I can't go home and explain it. And my North Star has been this as long as I've been in political life. If I can't go back to my little hometown of Farmington or the people I grew up with and explain it because I knew they wouldn't let me get by with anything, they'd hold your feet to the fire. And that's how it is and never changed.

[Chamath]

Do you think that we are now in sort of this intractable period where there can't be any centrism? There can't be this idea that you work and then you earn something, that there is that dignity of work. Instead, it's these extremes that are constantly about what giveaway can I give to people to get them on my side. Is that where we are?

[Joe Manchin]

Let me give you the other thing about me and Bernie one time talking, and Bernie wanted free tuition, right? Always wanted free tuition. And then they finally, they thought, well, we got. We'll get it free if we go junior colleges. I says, I'm not for anything free, I'm for earning it. Here's what I'm going to tell you. If for they talked about free college, I says, bernie, my son's at that time 47 years old. I said, my son's 40 years old. If you had free education, free tuition, he'd still be in school. He liked it so much. I said, he liked it so much, he'd still be there three PhDs later. So anyway, I said, no, I'm not for that. And so I said, let me tell you about free. If we identified skill sets that were needed and we can teach them in junior colleges, have them sign up, get a Stafford loan, guaranteed federal loan, they don't pay it back until basically, you know, until they finish their education. So if they finish in two years, they took a Stafford loan, they took what they needed to get educated on. They took a staffer loan in a two year community college, they get a degree in a skill set, we forgive it, they've earned it. You didn't give it on the front end because let me tell you what happens on the front end. Only half of them ever get through. Maybe at 25%, you know, they go for four years, you know, and you, I don't know if you know how they give money. There's no financial literacy required at all. Not. You all have to do is show the income of your family and you're. They have a scale they go by. Or you can get 12,000 a year. You might only need four. I'll guarantee you. You tell a kid that comes from poverty and you tell them they can get 12,000, they'll take it all.

[Chamath]

They're going to take it all.

[Joe Manchin]

They don't know what, they don't know what accrued interest is. They don't know about paying this back. It's a death trap. They don't know any of that. They drop out in two years for one reason or another. Then it all comes due. They hadn't had a payment up until then. No one's explaining anything. And I told Elizabeth Warren, I said, elizabeth, can't we just change the Stafford program to where you have to have financial literacy? You cannot get a loan without financial literacy.

[Jason]

What was her answer?

[Joe Manchin]

Well, it didn't happen. Let's just put it that way.

[Jason]

Yeah, put it that way. Well, what's driving? I mean, I understand populism, I understand trying to buy votes, but what at the core, in your opinion, drives these individuals who think that not learning to sustain yourself in society and to get all of these freebies, what's in their mind, what are they missing about just the basic human condition that we have to work for? Stuff the human operating system is, we need challenges. And when you don't have purpose in life, it's a road. That's the primrose path. It's not a good place to go. Idle mind is the devil's playground. As my grandmother would say, rest in peace.

[Joe Manchin]

Let me say to both of you all about what has happened in this political process. And I've come to the conclusion we need to have term limits. And I'm going to tell you how I came to that conclusion. When I was a governor, I was doing a town hall meeting in southern West Virginia, A little lady got stood up in the back and she said, joe, I wish you were for term limits. And I said, well, tell me why. Suze, I knew her and Susie, I said, tell me why. She said, well, I just think this would be, it'd be better for us to have turnover. And I said, and I wasn't for it. And I, I gave her all the reasons. I said, you're going to lose your most experienced people with a talent and know how, boom, boom, boom, I went through everything. She said, joe, think of it this way. If we had term limits, maybe we get one good term out of you. I had no comeback. She convinced me right there. And from that point on, I've been for term limits and I've more for it today than I've ever been for it. And the reason I'm telling you, yeah, maybe we'd get one good term where you'd have the courage to do the conviction with the oath you took to defend and protect the Constitution, do the job, put country before party, quit playing this game, quit worrying about getting reelected. And it's gotten to the point now, public service, truly. When he said, John Kennedy says most noblest of all profession, public service, that's gone. It's fame and fortune now. I get in there, I can keep churning it and churning it and churning it. And I've just said that Basically the Senate, two six year terms is enough, 12 years is enough.

[Chamath]

Let's actually look inside the political parties for one second.

[Joe Manchin]

Oh, boy.

[Chamath]

Let's start with maybe an easy one, but it's actually quite, maybe a nuanced answer. Tell us who you think are the two most dynamic senators, one Democrat, one Republican.

[Joe Manchin]

I was thinking about that because if I was you, I would have been asking the same question. I can name six or seven on both sides.

[Chamath]

Oh, please. Yeah, let's take it.

[Jason]

Yeah, let's go.

[Joe Manchin]

And when I'm saying that people that I've worked with, I know, I know their DNA. Okay, yeah. First of all, I'm going to always be, always be deferential to former governors. A governor can't afford to be a governor of one side, and I'll give you the most perfect, simplest answer to that, is that pothole that busted my tire and basically bent my rim and messed my car up did not have a Democrat or Republican name on it. But I was responsible for making sure the repairs on the roads didn't do that. Okay, so you're like Senator King, Angus King from Maine, former governor. You have Mark Warner, Virginia former governor Tim Kaine, former governor. You have Gene Shaheen, former governor, Maggie Hassan, former governor. You have Mike Rounds, former governor John Hovind, former governor Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins were always my go to people on the Republican side and Mitt Romney, two, three of the best of the best. You could always work with him because they were always looking to do the right thing. They didn't care about politics. And then I always had, you got Senator Cortez Masto, you have, you know, there's so many Jackie Rosen on the Thom Tillis on the, on the Senate side. On the Republican side, Bill Cassidy is one of the best of the best. Bill Cassidy's bright, sharp, always wanting to do the right thing, always very, very articulate. And he will get down to the nitty gritty and go into the depths of it to find out an answer. And you got Mike Rounds, former governor, great guy, South Dakota. These are people that I know have the ability to do it, to make it happen. You just had to push, push, push. I was asked a question the other day, Shamath, about what would you do, Joe, if you were still there? If I was king for a day and I had the ability to use the Roosevelt Room in the White House, I'd bring him over, I put him in the room. I'd put Schumer and put John Thune and put their teams together and say, guys, you're not getting out until you come to deal. This is not that hard. Here's what we're not everybody's wanting to blame whose fault is it? Let's look at whose responsibility it is. Not fault. Whose responsibility? My friends in the Republican Party have the trifecta. President's Republican House is Republican, Senate's Republican. You have the mantle, you have the gavel. You've got to keep the train running. You got to keep this place open. And I've said this, I know that the president has the ability to do that. But you can't always have politics driving the end result to do your job, and that's to keep it open. I've never voted for a shutdown. I've gotten caught in a couple shutdowns, but I never voted for them. And they're tough to get out of because people get ingrained and they get in like there's feeder and cement. Can't get out. So I think the President has to move this and I've said this, our great country and the President with his leadership over in the Middle east is able to get Hamas and Israelis to sit down and make a deal shorter to God. I know the President can get a Democrat and Republicans to make a deal. I know that. But everybody's got to quit playing the politics because of what the outcome of the 26 election. It'll take care of itself.

[Jason]

Let's criticize each other more.

[Joe Manchin]

Democrats, Republicans or.

[Chamath]

Oh, that's a good question.

[Jason]

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, which one hates each other more, in your opinion?

[Joe Manchin]

It's a shame. Let me tell you, this is such an easy lift. You know what happened with this healthcare thing. I was right in the middle of this whole thing. I know exactly when they did the Affordable Care act. And remember in 2017 that John McCain made the famous vote voted down. Okay.

[Jason]

Yep, yep.

[Joe Manchin]

I was in the back hallway when all that unfolded back at the Senate before John came out and made his vote. And John been getting pressured heavily by the White House, President Trump and his staff at that time. John finally walked out and getting ready to walk out. And he was sitting there and I came through the hallway and I said, john, listen, I'm not crazy about this Affordable Care act. The way you have to be forced to buy a product whether you like it or not. You can't shop it and you're fined if you don't, the penalties makes no sense. I said, but John, if the Republicans have anything they can give us, I probably support it and vote for it, but they don't have anything to replace it with. And what it did do, it helped poor working people that were using the emergency room and were using workers compensation for the only deliveries that they had for their health care. And then pre existing condition, we stopped that from being eliminated from the process. So people could get for the first time any type of care. So that was good. But somebody had to pay for it. So they switched it. Once you got above the 150 percentile of poverty, then you were hit pretty hard to pay for what we're giving away on this end. That means you have a broken system. Sooner or later you got to fix the system. And no one was willing to fix it. They're just moving it around. So the Democrats, when Covid hit hot dog, that's our time to shine. Now let's go ahead and man, they went to 400%. And even greater Republicans are saying, can't we just get back which is a normal thing. Can you get back to pre Covid? Well, it's hard to take something back, Jason and Chamath, once you. You got up there, because now what you can do is say, okay, for one year, we're going to extend this for one year. We're going to come from 400 to 200. We're going to gradually get back and we're going to try to fix our delivery system of health care. The insurance companies. Insurance companies are running health care. It's not the professional doctors, the professional healthcare. It's insurance telling you what you can, what you can't, what you're paying for, chasing the dollars. That has to change, but someone has to be willing to do it. So that's where we are.

[Chamath]

There's an issue, Joe, which is that they're also talking about the unintended consequences of the costs we have to bear for folks that don't have a legal immigration status.

[Jason]

Right.

[Chamath]

That there's a burden that that includes. Can you give us your opinion on and you can expand this immigration, whatever, immigration. And. But maybe you can start with the healthcare because I think that's the wedge issue that seems to be slowing everybody down and maybe give us a.

[Joe Manchin]

Well, the Democrats are telling you that it's not in there, that illegal immigrants who've come to this country are not getting the benefits of the citizens of our country when they hit hard times. And people will say, well, why did you write this, this, this in your declaration of what you want done as far as to bring the, you know, to bring it back and let's get going again, you put that in one of your demands. There's some reference to that in the demand. So it kind of show what their intentions were. The bottom line is, is that no, there's no way immigrants that come here illegally and don't have a pathway for it or we've been, you know, into a working pathway forward that should ever happen. You should never be able to have benefits coming here. There should not be attraction for that. And that's what they're saying had happened. I beg the Democrats, are you crazy about doing asylum at the border? We've never done that. We had a 2013 piece of legislation by bipartisanship at that time. It was a bipartisan gang of eight that put it together and we passed it with 68 or 69 votes in the Senate, Senate to the House. John Boehner. I begged John Boehner to put it on the floor. I like John Boehner. He's a friend of mine, John says, joe, I can't put it on. Eric Cantor just got defeated in Richmond because a person from the far right accused Eric Cantor for supporting this immigration reform. And they said, that's amnesty. And by God, anybody that came here the wrong way has got to get out of here. We got to send them back. That bill that we put together in a bipartisan way that basically gave you so many days, let's say 60, 90 days or more, I forget the term, the amount right now to go to the courthouse and turn yourself in, pay a fine for misdemeanor. Let's say it was $750. And then you would get in the back of the queue. Well, once you turned yourself in, we would know if you had any criminal record or not. Then we knew who to go after, because there's people been here for 10, 20, 30 years. They brought little children here now who are adults serving in the military and basically professing teaching in our schools. These are productive, supportive. They love the country as much, if not more than Americans that were born here. So this is what gets me. We had that bill and couldn't get it because they were afraid that he would lose the right. He lost them anyway. The far right wasn't going. Tea Party at that time wasn't going to go, but John could have put it on the floor and it would have passed. And I think if you talk to.

[Chamath]

John, do you think Americans would be shocked if we really knew the inner workings to understand that at the end of the day, bipartisan coalitions and reforms led literally stop on a dime on all number of issues because a person one day interprets and reads the tea leaves and says, yes, no, yes, no. Is that. Is that really basically what happens?

[Joe Manchin]

Well, let's look at here. Let me give you the most. The easiest thing we could have done with. There's two things. Don't ask, don't tell. And then you have the Dobbs act as far as on the abortion. Okay. With the Supreme Court.

[Chamath]

Sure.

[Joe Manchin]

Well, the Supreme Court, you know, on that. We've lived with Roe v. Wade For 50 years of unprecedented law. It was unprecedented law. I mean, 50. We never codified it through the legislature, but the courts, it was precedented. Now all of a sudden, that blows apart and everybody gets torn apart. All they had to do was just codify Roe v. Wade. That's all we had to do. And I teamed up with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and we had a bill that all we did simply codify. It wasn't pro life enough and it wasn't pro choice enough, but it's something we learned to navigate for 50 years. Well, guess what? Our Democrat friends wanted to open up wide open abortions up. Okay, they can tell you what they wanted, what they intended, but that's exactly what they were trying to do. And I told him, I says, I called him out, I says, are you going to try to explain to people to make them believe what you. This piece of legislation you're trying to put through on the freedom of choice is going to be just codifying Roe v. Wade. That is so insincere and I will not have any part of it. And then the Republicans wanted to just double down, I mean, make it criminal, criminalizing abortions. We couldn't because of politics. And I've seen things like that, that we had it right in the palm of our hand and let it slip through. And we could have done that. We could have done the immigration and right now you'd never be in this immigration.

[Chamath]

Fact, a lot of this history gets swept under the rug because nobody really knows what was possible because people like you typically don't leave and then write a book like this to kind of just share all of it. And then part of it is then when you do share, unless people like us help amplify these stories, it's never said and it's never really well understood.

[Joe Manchin]

The biggest problem, Shamath, is this. Very few people who have been in political life and had any notoriety at all, they have almost an impossible time of saying I got it wrong, I made a mistake, I tried. I thought I had the answers, but I didn't. I misread that one. How many times have you heard anybody in politics today or have been in politics can still say that I screwed up royally on don't ask, don't tell and I'll tell you why. I was there my first 2011, all the joint Chiefs of staff were there and explaining and Obama wanted to get rid of it, okay? Because before everybody kind of kept it. Don't ask, don't tell. That was a Bill Clinton thing. Let's, let's, let's let bygones be bygones. Let, let the sleeping dog lie. Well, it came out now Obama wanted to get rid of it, okay? And then I'm listening to everybody talk. It got down to the commandant of the Marines and the Marine Commandant said, Listen, General, he says, I've got 50% of my troops on the battle line right now. This is a heck of a policy change, could jeopardize the welfare and well being of my troops. So I was against it. I said, don't get rid of it. No, no. That means if you were, you know, if you were known to be gay, then you could not serve. I was totally wrong on that because it, they went ahead and passed it, thank goodness. And then I found out that it didn't change anything. Everybody already knew. Everybody knew who was who and what their sexual preferences were. It didn't affect their, their ability to fight or defend our country. So I made a mistake. I got that wrong and I lived up to it and I said I made a mistake, I'm sorry. But I thought I was doing the right thing listening to a professional. So those things happen. But I don't know how we get to that. And that's why I kept saying if we had two six year terms for a senator, six two year terms from a House member, one 18 year term for the United States Supreme Court and one six year term for the President, maybe we could all do a better job by not worrying about the next election.

[Jason]

You know, as we get towards the end of our time, I want to talk to you a little bit about how dysfunctional and unpopular the Democrats and the Republicans have been the last couple of years since Nixon. I think Trump's first and second term both, you know, 30, I think he's at about 37% approval rating right now. Biden ended with like 34%. He was averaging about 40%. People really are not happy with their choices. And there's a no labels group. I've been kind of mocked and dismissed here on this very podcast. Talking about, I think there's a perfect time for a third party. And we had Ross Perot. People Forget he got 19%, I believe, of the popular vote. You are in my camp. You believe there's a possibility and that we're primed for it. Give your best explanation of why you think now is the time for a third party to challenge these two extremely unpopular parties.

[Joe Manchin]

Jason, we've got to change the process of how you have a duopoly right now. A duopoly is a business monopoly almost, but it's a duopoly. You have the corporation of the Republican and the corporation of the Democrat. And that's a business mode. And if they can control the flow. So how do you control the flow? By the primaries you, you can say, well, it's by redistricting and all this. It's really the primary process. The primary process is this. I cannot being a no party affiliate right now, an Independent. That's my registration if I want to vote for a friend of mine who's a Republican in West Virginia. The Republican Party in West Virginia will not let me vote in their primary unless I register Republican. The Democrats do the same all over the country. They do that. They close them down. Because if they can control the flow. And you have maybe during, let's say, the 2024 election, let's say 24 million people, maybe 11 or 12 on each side, DNR, participate in the national primary. But 160 million of us voted in the general election. But 24 million people made a decision on our choices. That's it. And so what I've said, our democracy is still experimental. We thought we could govern ourselves. And by governing yourself, that means we can pick representatives that represent us. I can't even vote. So how am I? I can't participate. 45 to 50% of us can't participate in the primary process. We're the largest denomination of registered voters who can't participate.

[Jason]

You're referring, of course, to Independence.

[Joe Manchin]

Independence. No party affiliation. Independence. There's only about 23, 24% that are registered Democrats. About 27, 28, I think, registered Republicans. The rest are like myself. And I said, wait a minute, the Voting Rights act, they took that, you know, to the court about the African Americans not having the right to participate and vote, and they won that one. Why don't we take this to court? Why don't we do this on this podcast? You all take off with it and run with it. It should be, we're not. I am not able to be represented, and I can't pick a representative because I can't participate.

[Chamath]

Let me just summarize what you're saying. You think there's a legal avenue under the Voting Rights act that says what we really need is first past the post or some form of electoral form. Otherwise, if we just do it via these primaries, we're getting disenfranchised.

[Joe Manchin]

My position is this, that the majority of people who are registered to participate in a general election in the United States of America are basically prevented from participating in the primary process of electing who you're going to vote for in the general. I think there definitely is a court procedure that could remedy this and basically stop these closed primaries.

[Chamath]

Let's talk about 26. Just specifically, what do you think happens in the Senate and the House? What is the balance of power in your mind coming out of the 26 elections?

[Joe Manchin]

The only thing I have, I have said, and I will continue to say, this because my Republican friends are the only ones that are saying we will not get rid of the filibuster in the United States Senate. And I hold that, I hold them to their word. These are my friends John, John Thune and his and his staff and all of his people on his leadership team. And I hope the Republicans keep the Senate now for that. If you want a little bit of balance of power to change, challenge a little bit, calm it down a little bit, then you'd want the Democrats to win the House, the Congress, and if that could happen, then it might calm it down. We've got to calm it down. We've got to turn down the temperature. And if that would turn it down, maybe fine. Because when you have the trifecta, you can keep throwing stuff up there and pushing things pretty darn hard.

[Chamath]

Joe, I know that Jason has a final question, which I'll let him do, but I want to give you my question. Okay, let's start with from when you went into the Senate to now when you're leaving President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, and now President Trump. Give us the expectation versus the outcome on what you've seen from these four presidential terms, if you will, expectation versus outcome for these four periods.

[Joe Manchin]

Expectation on Obama was that he was bringing a complete different scenario to it, an all inclusive scenario, as you will now. It was possibility for all of us to participate, no matter what your gender, what your race. Boom, boom, boom. So with that, we were expecting an awful lot and I think he had a lot of compassion, but he just didn't communicate well with the legislature. I didn't know that because I didn't serve with him until I got there at the end of 2010, 2011. And I could see you've got to participate, you've got to get involved, you got to call them over to the White House and work him. I thought he could have done a lot more with that to get better participation. And basically we got rid under him, they got rid of the filibuster, we lost the filibuster for the judges judicial system. And I wasn't upset by losing him for basically appointments that were will and pleasure. But it went further than that. So I think that helped erode a lot of the checks and balances we had. Then it went further after that too. So with that being said, then you would go right in from there and then we have Trump. We didn't know what to expect, but we were thinking, here's a businessman always told us how successful and things of this, we were expecting some things. And I met with him from day one in 2016 and talked to him. And then I met with him, 2017, 2018. And there's a cute thing in the book there, when you go through my book about. He said he wasn't going to campaign against me in 2018. He liked me. I'm his friend. Well, he ended up coming six times in my state and they spent an extra 25 million trying to beat me. And then afterwards, he calls me one week later, come have lunch with me, and I walk in, he said, I told you we couldn't beat him. I'm thinking, well, Jesus, what the hell am I going to say? Well, when for lack of trying, he says, oh, Joe, you know, I didn't want to beat you. I says, I knew you weren't serious, Mr. President. If you were serious, you'd have spent 50 million and came 12 times. So. So that's what I'm dealing with. But a lot of the things he did, I was more in sync with what he was doing because he understood we had to have an all in energy policy. Yeah, well, and I still would tell him, I said, Mr. President, we need everything. We need oil, we need gas, we need coal, we need to use the technology. I said, you cannot eliminate your way to a clean environment. You can innovate it, but you can't eliminate it. You've got to use technology. Boom. So he was more in tune with what I was trying to push through than my Democrat base was and the people I was working with. And then we have Joe Biden, who I had an awful lot of, oh, man, here's a guy I've worked with for a long time. And in Joe Biden, when there was a shutdown with ted Cruz in 2013, I'll never forget this Biden. Obama sends Joe Biden to make a deal. Open this government up, get a deal done. Joe Biden goes directly to Mitch McConnell, sits down Old buddies and old friends. They cut a deal. We opened the con, we opened government back up. And I went into caucus the next, the next week, we own the caucus with the Democrats. And Harry Reid says, I told President Obama, don't ever send that damn Joe Biden back to make a deal. We don't want him here at all making deal for Democrats now he's the president. Okay, going to be the president. I think, boy, we got it now. And, boy, was that a letdown. Went far to the left and I don't think that was in his heart, but he came out of Iowa bad, came out of New Hampshire even worse, went to South Carolina, got resurrected and within three weeks everybody drops out. Had to make a deal, I think, with the wrong side of that and try to calm it down. And just for the sake of being president, I think he had to sign up and his people took him to the promised land of the far left, which has no return now with, with I think President Trump has a chance to be monumental in what he can do because he has that support from a real strong base. I want to see the compassion. I want to see the band that could just charm you when you walk in and talk to him. I want to see that being shown now. He is the perfect president for the Middle East. Strong man, strong arm. I say what I mean, I mean what I say and boom, boom, boom, using my military might. That doesn't work in the western part of the world where we have diplomacy, we work, we give and take a little bit. He's a good enough of a negotiator to understand that, but they're still playing. His people are pushing him to stay hard, hard, hard. And it's just not, it's not what we need right now in America. We need a leader with that compassion, but the ability to bring us together and make us work together in the United States.

[Chamath]

Okay, sorry, last question before I give it to Jason for the last question then. If you had to think about 20, 28 people that are on both sides, I think the Republicans mostly the die is cast, but let's not front run that. But on the Democratic side, maybe, if you will, who are some people that you think could bring some normalcy, try to veer that party back to more of the center? Are there younger emerging people that you see in the Democratic caucus and in the Democratic Party that you think has this potential?

[Joe Manchin]

I'm not sure it's going to come out. If we have anybody in the United States Senate on the Democrat side, people that are capable. Mark Warner, my dear friend, I know he's capable as a all the get out, but I'm just not sure you're going to break loose because you get identified, you get labeled. You're in that Democrat Party that was just so far to the left and this and that. It's going to be somebody coming, whether it's going to be a governor or an up and coming statesman within the party or it could be someone's talked about Stephen A. Smith. Stephen, you were on a show.

[Chamath]

I'm going to tell you one thing, incredibly dynamic.

[Joe Manchin]

He's as center left, center right, as you want. He can go both. He's not going to go extreme. As good as it gets. There's a lot of good people I think could rise up now with the Democratic Party, accept him. The Democrat Party has been. Has been basically taken over by the extremes. Okay? And they say, well, the MAGA Party's taken over. The Republican Party, Grand Old Party wants to be grand again. Democrats want to be responsible and compassionate again. I tell people I'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate, which I think most Americans are, but. And then you have. I know Stephen Bashir. I mean, I know Andy Bashir. I served with his dad. We were governors together. I know. Good family. I know those people. So there's going to be some people rise up. That might be surprising.

[Chamath]

Shapiro, do you think that there are entrepreneurs like Donald Trump, but on the left, or do you think that that avenue is closed for business people on the Democratic side?

[Joe Manchin]

I wouldn't think so, because a business person on the Democratic side could come across with a heart and a soul and be a little bit more. A little bit more softer in their approach, you know, and I think be able to hit a nerve there. We have someone with the smarts to do it, and we have someone with the compassion, but also the strength to make sure that we remain. I'm concerned. My biggest concern I have is what Mike Mullen told me in 2011, my first armed Services meeting. Shamat and Jason, I sat there, they asked the question, what's the greatest fear the United States of America has right today? And that's 2011. I thought he was going to talk about China, about North Korea, about Iran, on and on and on. He never missed a beat. Within one second. He says, the debt of the nation will take us down. We will fold. Because the debt we have and it's going to be unmanaged debt, which will make us, lead us to make cowardly decisions. And we're at 37 trillion. $1. Every $5 that we receive for revenue to run our country takes $1 of that 20% just to pay the debt on our interest, Our interest on our debt. It's horrible.

[Jason]

Jamie Dimon, Bob Iger come to mind?

[Joe Manchin]

Absolutely. That big. I mean, I would be receptive to all. There's a lot of good people. I think it's going to be very interesting. The Democratic Party will have to get out of its own way and its ideology left. People aren't going that direction. Let me give you one other thing, Jason. Think about Bernie and AOC is going around the country with these rallies and. Rallies. Yeah. If that was effective and that's where the country's going, why has the Democrats lost? Lost? Basically people who were registered. They lost registration of over 100,000 people who've left the Democratic Party since they've started that cruise.

[Jason]

Nobody wants it. It's a road to nowhere.

[Joe Manchin]

No, that's exactly right.

[Jason]

Wow, Big Joe, you've been so honest and candid here. It's okay if I call you Big Joe.

[Joe Manchin]

I just, I don't know, I've been called Big Joe. You know what Joe Biden called me? He says, jojo, I could always tell if he was in a good mood with me. He said, hey, Joe, Joe, what's going on? And if he was pissed, hey, Joe, what's wrong?

[Jason]

Oh, yeah, I just call you Big Joe because I got a lot of respect for you.

[Joe Manchin]

Okay?

[Jason]

You've been so honest today. And so you can be permissioned to be totally candid here. How close did you come to running as an independent for president? And you could be especially candid about this. How would you, now that you got this great book and a great track record, obviously a profile encouraged, how would you make the decision to run yourself in 2020? Walk us through both.

[Joe Manchin]

I think about, first of all, I would have loved to have been and I begged the Democratic Party to have a mini primary, 30 day primary. When Joe Biden love it, I begged him. I said, you had to, you had to dispel some of the things that they were labeled with. And not every Democrat believed in that. That would have been a time to dispel a lot of that stuff. But boy, when he come doubled down and came right back within what, an hour or two and threw everything behind Kamala Harris, it was over. And you know her, I knew we were in trouble then. Uh, I would have loved to have been on that dia.

[Chamath]

Would you have run in a speedrun? Would you have put yourself out there in a speedrun?

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah, I'd have been right in there. I'd have, I'd done everything I could to be talking about things that we're talking about now. Do we need energy? Absolutely. Don't turn your back on energy. This is. Make sure we do it better than anybody in the world. Do you need, do you need a strong border? Well, let me ask you something. You all have property lines. When you buy a piece of property and a house, you either build a fence or you lived in a gated area. You, you want to protect your property. Why can't we protect our borders, but also have a legal immigration policy that works. I could have brought all of that stuff out. And I think a lot of Democrats believe like I do, but they've gone so far to the left they can't retreat. And if they don't get out of their way, they're going to go down in defeat.

[Chamath]

And so 2028, to Jason's question.

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah, well, 2028, guys. I mean, if we have to say, I'll do anything I can to help my country, but, you know, I want to make sure 2028, I will be what? I'm 78 years old right now.

[Jason]

I'm going to be 81, same as Biden. Close to Trump.

[Chamath]

Yeah.

[Jason]

And you're sharp as attack.

[Joe Manchin]

And I'm a year younger. I'll be the. I'll give you something. Mitt Romney and I were talking about running. I said, mitt. He said, joe, we have to start a new party. I said, what would it be, Mitt? And he said, we'll call it a not stupid party. I said, hell, my question is why we're involved in.

[Jason]

And then what are we doing here?

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah. And then I said, well, man, what do you think? He said, joe, listen. He said, they don't want two old white guys running. And I said, we're the youngest ones out there right now.

[Jason]

Yeah, you're whippersnappers.

[Joe Manchin]

We were both a year younger. We have a lot of fun with that. We talk a lot. Anyway, we'll just see what happens. I'm gonna. I'm gonna be involved every way I can. And the good Lord gives me the health and strength to participate any way I possibly can. I will. But I guarantee I'll be trying to find the right people that put country before party and all the bull behind him and let's get this country back on track.

[Jason]

Heck yes, Joe, on By the Book.

[Chamath]

On behalf of the all in community, I just want to say thank you for your years of service. Buy the book.

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah.

[Jason]

Dead center. In defense of common sense. Don't be stupid.

[Chamath]

Your daughter is incredible. Heather is the best.

[Joe Manchin]

Heather is at force and, you know, she's the best. She thinks the world of you and your wife.

[Chamath]

She's.

[Joe Manchin]

I'm just so happy that we got to spend a little time together and I look forward to coming out with you all and Jason.

[Chamath]

Yes.

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah.

[Jason]

Come do a live one.

[Joe Manchin]

Yeah, we'll do a live one. Oh, we'll have one hell of a poker party. That'll be.

[Jason]

Oh, yes, that'll be a bar burner. Ladies and gentlemen, there's your hour with Joe Manchin.

[Joe Manchin]

Thank you.