Joe Manchin Exposes The Chaos Inside Biden’s White House

Summary

Senator Joe Manchin joins Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya for an in-depth interview about his new book “Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense” and his experiences working with three presidents during his time in the Senate. Manchin reveals explosive details about the chaos inside Biden’s White House, describing how far-left staff pushed the president away from his centrist roots, and recounts tense confrontations over the American Rescue Plan and Build Back Better legislation where Biden allegedly used profanity and threatened to never speak to him again.

The interview covers Manchin’s blocking of the $6 trillion Build Back Better bill, the death threats and paid protestors he faced, and his frank assessments of Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden. Manchin characterizes Obama as “elusive” and disengaged from the legislature, praises Trump and Bill Clinton as the most engaged presidents he worked with, and expresses disappointment that Biden - whom he expected to be a deal-maker - was pushed far left by his staff. The senator shares candid stories about his upbringing in coal country West Virginia, his conversion to supporting term limits, and his vision for breaking the duopoly through open primaries.

Manchin also discusses his views on work requirements for entitlements, the failure to codify Roe v. Wade, the 2013 immigration reform that was blocked in the House, and his thoughts on the 2026 and 2028 elections. He reveals he would have participated in a mini-primary had the Democrats held one when Biden dropped out, and shares a humorous anecdote about discussing a “not stupid party” with Mitt Romney.

Highlights

”If you kill my effing bill, I’ll never talk to you again”

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“He got pretty vulgar and just told me, ‘If you kill my effing bill, I’ll never talk to you again.’ I said, ‘If I could kill this effing bill you shouldn’t talk to me again because if I could I would but I can’t.’” — Joe Manchin on Biden, 4:08

”We’re not talking about diversity, sir. We’re talking about bat crazy”

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“I said, ‘Mr. President, you have the most liberal staff that I’ve ever seen.’ 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 bat crazy.’” — Joe Manchin, 8:03

”Maybe we’d get one good term out of you”

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“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.” — Joe Manchin on a constituent, 33:28

”I told you we couldn’t beat him”

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“He ended up coming six times to 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.’ I walk in, he says, ‘I told you we couldn’t beat him.’” — Joe Manchin on Trump, 66:10

”Don’t ever send that damn Joe Biden back to make a deal”

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“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 a deal for Democrats.’ Now he’s the president. I think, boy, we got it now.” — Joe Manchin on Harry Reid, 68:43

”We’ll call it the not stupid party”

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“Mitt Romney and I were talking about running. He said, ‘Joe, we have to start a new party.’ I said, ‘What would it be, man?’ He said, ‘We’ll call it the not stupid party.’ I said, ‘Hell, my question is why we’re involved then.’” — Joe Manchin, 80:35

Key Points

• Blocking Build Back Better (17:41) - Manchin refused to vote for BBB, describing it as a $10 trillion bill disguised as $6 trillion through timing gimmicks. He endured 8 months of pressure and never promised to vote for it.

• Biden’s Vulgar Confrontation (17:15) - Biden allegedly told Manchin “if you kill my effing bill, I’ll never talk to you again” during debates over the American Rescue Plan. Manchin responded he would have killed it if he could.

• Death Threats and Paid Protestors (18:13) - Capitol Police called daily about serious death threats targeting Manchin’s family. Kayakers protesting outside his boat were being paid $15/hour to show up.

• Ron Klain Pushed Biden Left (19:51) - Manchin told Biden he had “the most liberal staff I’ve ever seen” and that Chief of Staff Ron Klain assembled a far-left team that pushed Biden away from his centrist instincts.

• Biden Lost the Will to Fight (20:39) - While never witnessing mental decline, Manchin believes Biden “lost the will to fight” against his staff, noting that agreements made with the president were never followed up on.

• Obama Was “Elusive” (27:23) - Manchin describes Obama as elusive compared to Clinton and Trump, who were highly engaged. He spoke with Trump more in two years than in eight years of Obama.

• Confronting Obama on Coal (26:05) - Manchin told Obama “You’ve done one hell of a good job at villainizing coal” at a White House meeting, causing Obama to react angrily.

• JFK Quote Changed His Vote (30:02) - Manchin told Biden he remembered JFK’s “ask not” inauguration speech and said BBB would change America’s psyche from service to entitlement.

• Term Limits Conversion (37:06) - A constituent told Manchin “maybe we’d get one good term out of you” with term limits. He now supports two 6-year Senate terms, six 2-year House terms, 18-year Supreme Court terms, and one 6-year presidential term.

• Bernie Sanders’ Threat (22:17) - Bernie told Manchin he could kill the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the House using progressive votes if Manchin didn’t support BBB.

• Best Senators Named (39:01) - Manchin praises former governors in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Bill Cassidy, and Mark Warner as effective bipartisan deal-makers.

• Affordable Care Act and McCain’s Vote (42:54) - Manchin was in the back hallway when John McCain made his famous thumbs-down vote, having told McCain the Republicans had nothing to replace Obamacare with.

• Immigration Reform Blocked (46:27) - The 2013 bipartisan Gang of Eight bill passed Senate 68-69 votes but John Boehner refused to bring it to the House floor after Eric Cantor’s primary defeat.

• Roe v. Wade Codification Failed (49:10) - Manchin worked with Collins and Murkowski on a bill to simply codify Roe v. Wade, but Democrats wanted to expand abortion access and Republicans wanted to criminalize it.

• Breaking the Duopoly (53:26) - Manchin argues 45-50% of voters are independents who can’t participate in closed primaries. Only 24 million voted in primaries while 160 million voted in the general.

• Admitted Being Wrong (50:35) - Manchin admits he was wrong to oppose repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in 2011, saying he listened to the Marine commandant’s concerns but the policy change had no negative effects.

• Trump’s Charm Offensive (59:22) - Trump spent 6 visits and $25 million trying to defeat Manchin in 2018, then invited him to lunch a week later saying “I told you we couldn’t beat him.”

• Mini Primary Proposal (67:05) - Manchin begged Democrats to hold a 30-day mini primary when Biden dropped out and says he would have run in it.

• $37 Trillion Debt Warning (65:29) - Manchin recalls Admiral Mike Mullen saying in 2011 that the national debt is America’s greatest threat. Now 20% of revenue goes to debt interest alone.

• 2028 Candidates (62:45) - Manchin mentions Stephen A. Smith, Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Mark Warner, Jamie Dimon, and Bob Iger as potential future candidates who could bring normalcy.

Mentions

Companies

• No Labels (52:58) - Third party group that Manchin has been associated with
• JPMorgan Chase (65:34) - Jamie Dimon mentioned as potential Democratic candidate
• Disney (65:35) - Bob Iger mentioned as potential Democratic candidate

Products & Technologies

• Build Back Better (BBB) (17:41) - Biden’s $6 trillion spending bill that Manchin blocked
• American Rescue Plan (16:48) - COVID stimulus bill that Manchin warned would cause inflation
• Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (21:33) - The infrastructure bill Manchin championed as an alternative to BBB
• Affordable Care Act (42:54) - Healthcare law that McCain saved with his thumbs-down vote
• Stafford Loan Program (35:11) - Federal student loan program Manchin wanted to reform with financial literacy requirements

People

• Joe Biden (0:00) - President whose White House staff Manchin criticizes
• Ron Klain (19:51) - Biden’s Chief of Staff who Manchin says assembled a far-left team
• Donald Trump (24:22) - President Manchin describes as charming and engaged
• Barack Obama (24:06) - President Manchin describes as “elusive”
• Bill Clinton (24:22) - Most engaged president along with Trump according to Manchin
• Bernie Sanders (22:17) - Senator who threatened to kill infrastructure bill in the House
• Chuck Schumer (21:46) - Senate Majority Leader who negotiated with Manchin
• John McCain (42:57) - Senator who made famous thumbs-down vote on ACA repeal
• John Boehner (46:37) - House Speaker who refused to bring immigration reform to floor
• Eric Cantor (46:53) - House Majority Leader whose primary loss killed immigration reform
• Mitt Romney (40:09) - Senator Manchin worked closely with on bipartisan efforts
• Lisa Murkowski (39:44) - Republican senator Manchin praises for bipartisanship
• Susan Collins (39:45) - Republican senator Manchin praises for bipartisanship
• Bill Cassidy (40:21) - Senator described as “one of the best of the best”
• Elizabeth Warren (36:19) - Senator Manchin asked about financial literacy requirements
• Mark Warner (39:21) - Virginia Senator and former governor Manchin praises
• John Thune (41:17) - Senate Republican leader Manchin hopes will preserve filibuster
• Mike Mullen (64:51) - Admiral who warned Manchin that debt is America’s greatest threat
• Stephen A. Smith (63:29) - Sports commentator mentioned as potential political candidate
• Andy Beshear (64:10) - Kentucky Governor mentioned as potential 2028 candidate
• Josh Shapiro (64:32) - Pennsylvania Governor mentioned as potential candidate
• Kamala Harris (67:25) - Vice President who received Biden’s endorsement, which Manchin says ended primary hopes
• Harry Reid (60:41) - Former Senate Majority Leader who said “don’t ever send that damn Joe Biden back to make a deal”
• AOC (65:55) - Representative whose rallies with Bernie have driven 100,000+ people away from Democratic registration
• Heather Manchin (69:36) - Manchin’s daughter praised by the hosts

Surprising Quotes

“If you kill my effing bill, I’ll never talk to you again.” — Biden to Manchin, 17:21

“Mr. President, we’ve sent everybody a check. And if we’ve missed anybody, it was by mistake because you intended to send everybody a damn check.” — Manchin warning Biden about inflation, 16:52

“We’re not talking about diversity, sir. We’re talking about bat crazy.” — Manchin to Biden about his staff, 20:25

“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 a deal for Democrats.” — Harry Reid after Biden negotiated with McConnell, 60:47

“I told you we couldn’t beat him.” — Trump to Manchin after spending $25 million trying to defeat him, 59:32

Transcript

0:00 Welcome back to the All-In podcast. We are super pleased to have with us today Senator Joe Manchin joining us here on the All-In Interview. 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.

0:24 Jason, thank you. And it’s great to be with you and Chamath. I’ve followed you all and you’ve been unbelievable what you’ve put out and some of the people you’ve had on. It’s been very entertaining, very interesting and very thoughtful. So anxious to be here.

0:42 Thanks. 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 1961 Oldsmobile. Oh, if you could find that thing for me, it was a bullet back with the white interior. Oh my god. Where can we buy it? We 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.

1:18 Let me tell you that. Oh, by my yacht. Yeah, I got a $200,000 trawler. It’s a fishing trawler. Joe, 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. No, I did the audio book. But Joe, you did the right thing. You read it yourself, which a lot of authors try to get talked out of doing, but it makes it so much more personal.

2:05 Hey, Jason, I didn’t want to have that read by somebody. My family said, listen, you know, write it the way you talk, and I did. Everything in there is what came out and what I remember and how I was raised and how I look at life, and I just want to share that with, you know, with people.

2:29 It’s an incredible book because there’s so many detailed stories. You remember specific conversations with Biden, with Obama. Let’s start with an explosive one, the ARP, the American Rescue Plan, you disagreed with Biden, and you detailed a very contentious conversation with him. Walk us through it.

3:02 And you know, and I know what a great man Joe Biden is, and I don’t want to take anything away from him. We worked so good and close together. But where we started going sideways is they came out with a $1.9 trillion package of the ARP. And I’m saying, guys, I’m going to be honest with you, we’re coming out of COVID. People have been cooped up. We’ve sent everybody a check.

3:32 And I told him this, he kind of giggled. I said, “Mr. President, we’ve sent everybody a 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 are shut down. There’s nothing. They’re going to pay exorbitant amounts to get what they want. You’re just fueling it, sir.”

4:08 Oh god. We went through all of that and that’s when he got pretty vulgar and just told me, you know, if you kill my effing bill, I’ll never talk to you again. I said 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 things are moving, but I can tell you we’re never going to go this route again.

4:35 So this is how we kind of work things out. Then sure enough one month they come back with BBB. Yeah, Build 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 on me. I mean, I had to have security.

5:08 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.

5:33 It’s pretty intense. 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, we’ll meet you down 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.

5:55 And then one time they said, “This is really getting serious now because now 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 got attacked by canoes.

6:20 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 got to 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.”

6:47 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. But 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?

7:12 I think it was organized. They were paid, Chamath, because a lot of my friends who live down at the river on the Potomac River with me on the boat, they played like, how can I get a job with you? How can I do this if I want to protest? They say, oh just sign up and get $15 an hour. I couldn’t believe it. They were telling me that.

7:39 But doesn’t the message have to go from the White House? Like doesn’t Biden’s team, somebody has to say… Oh no, I’m going to be honest with you. Ron Klain, okay? Smart guy, good guy and everything, but he had gone so far to the left and he pushed Joe left because I kept telling him…

8:03 When I first went over to the White House, I said, “Mr. President, 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 bat 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.”

8:38 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. And I’ve always liked Joe Biden. We always got along well. Good man. I just don’t think he lost the will to fight.

9:00 Do you think it’s that or can I ask you, all of these rumors, the comments about the autopen, the mental faculties? Never saw that. Never. And I’ve been with him a lot. 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.”

9:27 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 followup. 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.

9:54 They need my vote to even get on reconciliation. 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? 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.

10:20 So, Schumer being the person he is, he said, 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.”

10:55 So, the reason I’m leading up to this, that’s when people say, “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 the bipartisan infrastructure bill. We work it and we pass it.

11:21 And the night we’re 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 was 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 it until the cows come home? That’s fine. I can’t do this.”

11:52 And he says, “You know, I’ve cut it down 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 5 years or 3 years to make it look like you were cutting them out. You know, they’re never going to get rid of any of this once you start giving everything away, right?

12:19 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 Vermont doesn’t need any infrastructure, your bridges, roads, internet connections, water and sewer lines, everything’s great, then you should vote against it.”

12:47 He said, “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. They kept getting held up and they kept sending the president up there to talk to them and pass the bill, and they wouldn’t pass it.

13:18 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.”

13:45 Let me go a little bit back. I want to start with Obama. So you wrote in the book that Trump was the most engaged president you ever worked with. I said two of them. Two of them, okay. And then Bill Clinton. If you told me people that are engaging with you and talk, Bill Clinton and President Trump.

14:14 And then you said in the first two years you spoke with Trump more than you ever did under eight years of Obama. Correct. Contrast and compare Obama and Trump for us and just help us understand the positives and negatives of both as you saw it.

14:38 I think President Barack Obama is a very good man. And his politics, I knew him when he was a US senator representing Illinois and he knew about the coal industry. I come from the coal industry being governor of West Virginia and growing up in the coal fields. And we talked about fossil and why we needed this and everything.

15:06 He wanted me to help him and vote for something that would help his called FutureGen, which is the new coal fired plant that was going to be CO2 capture and all this. They called it back. That 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 and they got it. Never built the plant, but they got the award.

15:44 So, I knew he knew it. And then all of a sudden 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? 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 family oriented in the Appalachia.

16:25 And boy, I’ll tell you, we had a meeting about one year afterwards and I was in the National Governance Association leadership. We had Democrats and Republicans. I finally got a meeting with him in the Roosevelt room. 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 at villainizing coal.”

16:52 And he jumped up and went nuts on me. I’m thinking, “Woo 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.”

17:18 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. And they said, “What happened to the West Virginia Democrats?” I said, “I tell you exactly what happened. They ran them off.”

17:50 Now all of a sudden they’ve done everything like a returning Vietnam veteran. We’ve done everything our country’s asked. Now all of a sudden we’re not good enough, clean enough, green enough, or smart enough. To hell with them. Just cast by the wayside. So you remember the slogan, don’t leave anybody behind. At least Joe Biden picked up that slogan in 2020 and has done a lot of things there trying to have incentives to bring businesses into coal country.

18:23 So is it that Obama is just an incredibly strategic political calculator? He was elusive. What does that mean as a politician? I don’t know. I mean, when I talked to Bill Clinton, it was always what about this and he was always so inquisitive about this and that, what I was thinking. Then we always had a couple good jokes to tell each other and kind of broke ice.

18:51 And with President Donald Trump, you go meet him, he’s charming as can be. Sits down, talks with you. He says, “Hey, Joe, what about this? What about that?” And you know, we talked about a lot of things. And then one time I told him, “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 a movie.

19:21 And I had a lot of fun 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 what happens. I’d like to have one of those dates.”

19:51 So, a lot of your profile in courage around spending and entitlements in the book comes from this rugged individualism, personal responsibility. Accountability. Yeah. And this accountability that you grew up with. As a Catholic as well. A little bit of guilt if you don’t work hard sprinkled in there as a backstop.

20:25 We’re looking at a country now where it seems the operating principle is how do I get mine? Hey, you got something. I need to get something. And now you’ve got Mandami 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 them for free.

20:55 You have failed in some ways to turn this around in the country, this entitlement, as many of us have who have been screaming from the rooftops, like “ask not” - 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 up over and over again.

21:20 So I think we’ve failed in the last two decades and socialism’s on the rise. Why is that? How do we turn it around? Let me just say, the last time President Biden and I met, he calls me up into the White House and he takes me upstairs to the living quarters. And boy, when you go up there, that’s really going to the woodshed.

21:50 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. And I said, I remember very vividly as a 13-year-old kid watching television, inauguration 1961 of John Kennedy. Ask not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country.

22:23 If we pass this piece of legislation, you’re asking me to vote for the BBB, you’re changing the psyche of the nation to 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 could put a gun to my head and say you’re going to pull the trigger. I can’t vote for it.

22:52 And then all hell broke loose after that. So how it happened is this. My grandmother took everybody in. We lived by the railroad tracks between the creek 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.

23:24 I was eldest of the boys of about 20 of us 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 had fallen out of society. They were all intelligent, smart craftsmen, and alcoholics probably most of them.

23:57 And they’d come down. They knew they could go to mama and she’d take care of them. She said, “I got three rules. You can’t drink. You can’t swear. And you’ve got to work.” So my first introduction was there were rules and they were all good rules. Pretty basic operating system.

24:28 So you know what, after about a while, we had some of the best painters and carpenters you ever seen, but we’d lose them every now and then. We had names for everybody. We had Wilbur, Willie, Pegleg Peggy. He had a peg leg, a wooden peg leg, and he got caught in the tracks one time. We had to pull him out.

24:58 So I said, “Mom, okay, what happened to Lloyd? Where’d Lloyd go?” “Oh, honey, he’s on a toot again.” And you know the toot was always the bottle. And she said, “Don’t worry, honey. He’ll be back in six weeks.” And that was just the cycle. That was it.

25:28 So I learned that my grandfather, people would come in and papa, my grandfather, never kept books. He just kept all his money in his pocket. He worked. That’s how he worked. Immigrant from Italy. And papa would say, people would come and say, “Hey papa, can I borrow five? Can I have five?” He said, “Sure, honey.” Called everybody honey. He said, “Here’s a broom and shovel. Go up and clean the parking lot and I’ll give you the five.”

25:58 I understood you had to do something for the five. 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 you had to do something. That’s a filtering mechanism.

26:25 And it relates directly to your belief in having a work requirement. I wanted a work requirement for anybody capable, able-bodied to work. And here’s the thing. They got on me and said Manchin’s killing child tax credits. I’m killing child tax credits.

26:52 First of all, you have child tax credits up to $400,000 of income. You really want to know who needs the 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.

27:22 And I’d go into all of this, and they said, “Oh, no. We got to do this 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 child care money when they’re sitting home with their children?” I said, that makes no sense to me at all. I can’t go home and explain it.

27:55 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.

28:23 Do you think that we’re now in 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’s 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?

28:55 Let me give you the other thing about me and Bernie one time talking. Bernie wanted free tuition, right? Always wanted free tuition. And then they thought, well, 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.

29:22 First they talked about free college. I says, Bernie, 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.

29:47 So anyway, I said no, I’m not for that. And I said, let me tell you about free. If we identified skill sets that we need 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 until they finish their education.

30:18 So, if they finish in two years, they took a Stafford 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 25%. You know, they go for four years.

30:50 And I don’t know if you know how they give money. There’s no financial literacy required at all. All you have to do is show the income of your family and they have a scale they go by. 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.

31:23 They’re going to take it all. 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.

31:51 No one’s explaining anything. And I told Elizabeth Warren, I says, “Liz, can’t we just change the Stafford program to where you have to have financial literacy? You cannot get a loan without financial literacy.” What was her answer? It didn’t happen. Let’s just put it that way.

32:27 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?

32:57 The human operating system is we need challenges and when you don’t have purpose in life, it’s the primrose path. It’s not a good place to go. You know, I don’t mind. It’s devil’s playground as my grandmother would say, rest in peace.

33:28 Let me say to both of you 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 stood up in the back and she said, “Joe, I wish you were for term limits.”

33:58 And I said, “Well, tell me why, Susie.” I said, “Tell me why.” She says, “Well, I just think it would be better for us to have turnover.” And I wasn’t for it. And I gave her all the reasons. I said, “You’re going to lose your most experienced people with the talent and know-how.” Boom, boom, boom. I went through everything.

34:28 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’m more for it today than I’ve ever been for it.

34:55 And the reason I’m telling you, 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.

35:20 And it’s gotten to the point now, public service, truly when John Kennedy said the 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 I’ve just said that basically the Senate, two six-year terms is enough. 12 years is enough.

35:52 Let’s actually look inside the political parties for one second. Let’s start with maybe an easy one, but it’s actually quite nuanced. Tell us who you think are the two most dynamic senators, one Democrat, one Republican.

36:20 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. And when I’m saying that, people that I’ve worked with, I know their DNA.

36:48 First of all, I’m going to 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. 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.

37:22 Okay. So you like Senator King, Angus King from Maine, former governor. You have Mark Warner, Virginia, former governor. Tim Kaine, former governor. You have Jean Shaheen, former governor. Maggie Hassan, former governor. You have Mike Rounds, former governor. John Hoeven, former governor.

37:48 Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins were always my go-to people on the Republican side. And Mitt Romney, two or three of the best of the best. You could always work with them because they were always looking to do the right thing. They didn’t care about politics.

38:17 And then you got Senator Cortez Masto, Jackie Rosen. On the Republican side, Tom Tillis. Bill Cassidy is one of the best of the best. Bill Cassidy is bright, sharp, always wanting to do the right thing, always very articulate and he will get down to the nitty-gritty and go into the depths of it to find out an answer.

38:48 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 got to push, push, push.

39:12 I was asked a question the other day 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 them over. I’d put them in the room. I’d put Schumer and put John Thune and his teams together and say, “Guys, you’re not getting out till you come to a deal. This is not that hard.”

39:45 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’ve got the gavel. You’ve got to keep the train running. You got to keep this place open.

40:22 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. But I’ve never voted for a shutdown. I’ve gotten caught in a couple shutdowns, but I never voted for them.

40:52 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 the Israelis to sit down and make a deal. Surely to God I know the president can get Democrats and Republicans to make a deal. I know that.

41:23 But everybody’s got to quit playing the politics because of what the outcome of the 26 election. It’ll take care of itself. Which group hates each other more, Democrats or Republicans? Oh, that’s a good question. Which one hates each other more in your opinion?

41:50 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 you remember in 2017 that John McCain made the famous vote, voted down.

42:20 I was in the back hallway when all that unfolded, back of the Senate before John came out and made his vote. And John had been getting pressured heavily by the White House, President Trump and his staff at that time. John finally walked out, getting ready to walk out, and he was sitting there.

42:48 And I came through the hallway and I said, “John, listen. I’m not crazy about this Affordable Care Act the way it is. 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 make no sense.”

43:14 I said, “But John, if the Republicans have anything they can give us, I’d probably support it and vote for it. 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 workers compensation for the only health care they had.

43:45 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.

44:18 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. And man, they went to 400% and even greater.

44:48 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 once 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.”

45:22 The 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.

45:52 There’s an issue, Joe, which is that they’re also talking about the unintended consequences of the cost we have to bear for folks that don’t have a legal immigration status, right? Can you give us your opinion on immigration?

46:20 Well, the Democrats are telling you 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. No, there’s no way immigrants that come here illegally should ever be able to have benefits coming here. That should not be an attraction for that.

46:52 And that’s what they’re saying had happened. I begged 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 to put it together and we passed it with 68 or 69 votes in the Senate.

47:25 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.”

47:55 And they said it’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 basically gave you so many days to go to the courthouse and turn yourself in, pay a fine for misdemeanor, and then you would get in the back of the queue.

48:28 Once you turned yourself in, we would know if you had any criminal record or not. Then we knew who to go after because those 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.

49:02 So, this is what gets me. We had that bill and couldn’t get it because they were afraid they would lose the right. He lost them anyway. The far right, 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 John…

49:30 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 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? Is that really basically what happens?

50:02 Well, let’s look at here. Let me give you the easiest thing we could have done. There’s two things. Don’t ask, don’t tell. And then you have the Dobbs act on abortion with the Supreme Court. Well, the Supreme Court, on that we’ve lived with Roe v. Wade for 50 years of unprecedented law. We never codified it through the legislature, but the courts, it was precedented.

50:36 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 was 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.

51:08 Well, guess what? Our Democrat friends wanted to open up wide open abortions. And I told them, I called them out. I says, “Are you going to try to explain to people to make them believe that 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.”

51:42 And then the Republicans want to just double down. I mean, make it 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.

52:07 We could have done that and we could have done the immigration. And right now you’d never be in this immigration mess. 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.

52:38 The biggest problem is this. Very few people who have been in political life and had any notoriety at all have an almost 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.”

53:08 How many times have you heard anybody in politics today say that? I screwed up royally on don’t ask don’t tell. And I’ll tell you why. I was there my first year in 2011. All the joint chiefs of staff were there and explaining, and Obama wanted to get rid of it. Before, everybody kind of kept a don’t ask don’t tell. That was a Bill Clinton thing.

53:40 It came out now. Obama wanted to get rid of it. And then I’m listening to everybody talk. It got down to the commandant of the Marines and the Marine commandant said, “Listen, General. 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.”

54:10 So, I was against it. I said, “Don’t get rid of it.” That means if you were known to be gay, then you could not serve. I was totally wrong on that because they went ahead and passed it. Thank goodness. And then I found out that it didn’t change anything. Everybody already knew who was who and what their sexual preferences were. It didn’t affect their ability to fight or defend our country.

54:48 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.

55:15 And that’s why I kept saying if we had two six-year terms for a senator, six two-year terms for 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.

55:47 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, he’s about 37% approval rating right now. Biden ended with like 34%. He was averaging about 40%.

56:20 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% of the popular vote. You are in my camp.

56:52 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.

57:18 Jason, we’ve got to change the process of how we know. You have a duopoly right now. The 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 model and they can control the flow. So how do you control the flow? By the primaries.

57:50 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.

58:24 The Democrats do the same all over the country. They close them down because if they can control the flow and you have maybe during a let’s say the 2024 election, let’s say 24 million people, maybe 11 or 12 on each side D and R participated 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.

59:00 And what I’ve said, this is our democracy is still an experiment. 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.

59:35 You’re referring, of course, to independents. Independents. No party affiliation. There’s only about 23, 24% that are registered Democrats. About 27, 28 I think registered Republicans. The rest are like myself.

60:00 And I said, “Wait a minute. The Voting Rights Act, they took that 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.”

60:30 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. 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 reform. Otherwise, if you just do it via these primaries, we’re getting disenfranchised.

61:03 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.

61:38 Let’s talk about 2026 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 2026 election?

62:05 The only thing I have said and I will continue to say, 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 them to their word. These are my friends, John Thune and his staff and all of his people on his leadership team.

62:37 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 got to turn down the temperature.

63:12 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.

63:30 Joe, I want to give you my question. 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.

64:05 Expectation on Obama was that he was bringing a complete different scenario to it, an all-inclusive scenario. It was possibility for all of us to participate no matter what your gender, what your race were. 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.

64:37 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 them. I thought he could have done a lot more with that to get better participation.

65:07 And basically, they got rid of the filibuster. We lost the filibuster for the judicial system and I wasn’t upset by losing it 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.

65:38 Then from there, 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. 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.

66:10 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 to 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 says, “I told you we couldn’t beat him.”

66:40 And I’m thinking, “Well, Jesus, what the hell am I going to say?” It wasn’t 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.”

67:07 So, 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. And I still would tell him, “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 clean environment. You can innovate it, but you can’t eliminate it. You’ve got to use technology.”

67:45 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.

68:12 And in Joe Biden, when there was a shutdown with Ted Cruz in 2013, I’ll never forget this. 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 open the government back up.

68:43 And I went into caucus the next week 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 a deal for Democrats.” Now he’s the president, going to be the president. I think, boy, we got it now.

69:14 And boy, was that a let down. 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 dropped out. Had to make a deal, I think, with the wrong side of that.

69:45 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 President Trump, I think he has a chance to be monumental in what he can do because he has that support from a real strong base.

70:12 I want to see the compassion. I want to see the man 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. Using military might works in the western part of the world where we have diplomacy. We give and take a little bit.

70:48 He’s a good enough negotiator to understand that, but they’re still playing, his people are pushing him to stay hard, hard. And it’s just 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.

71:15 Let’s talk about 2028. On the Democratic side, 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 that you think has this potential?

71:45 I’m not sure it’s going to come out of the United States Senate on the Democrat side. People that are capable, Mark Warner, my dear friend, I know he’s capable as all get out, but I’m just not sure you’re going to break loose because you get identified. You get labeled. You know, you’re in that Democrat party that was just so far to the left.

72:15 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, you know, someone’s talked about Stephen A. Smith. He is incredible. 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.

72:48 There’s a lot of good people, I think, could rise up. Now, will the Democratic party accept him? The Democrat party has been basically taken over by the extremes. And they say, “Well, the MAGA party’s taken over the Republican party.” The Grand Old Party wants to be grand again. Democrats want to be responsible and compassionate.

73:18 Again, I tell people I’m fiscally responsible and socially compassionate, which I think most Americans are. But, and then you have, I know Andy Beshear. 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. Shapiro.

73:50 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? 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 softer in their approach.

74:20 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.

74:50 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’s 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.

75:18 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. One every $5 that we receive for revenue to run our country takes $1 of that, 20%, just to pay the interest on our debt. That’s horrible.

75:52 Jamie Dimon, Bob Iger come to mind. Absolutely. 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.

76:20 Let me give you one other thing to think about. Bernie and AOC are going around the country with these rallies. If that was effective and that’s where the country’s going, why have the Democrats lost, basically, people who were registered? They’ve lost registration of over 100,000 people who’ve left the Democratic party since they’ve started that crusade. Nobody wants it. It’s a road to nowhere. That’s exactly right.

76:55 Wow. Big Joe, you’ve been so honest and candid here. Is it okay if I call you Big Joe? 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, Jojo, what’s going on?” And if he was pissed, “Hey, Joe, what’s wrong?”

77:25 Oh. Yeah. I’ll just call you Big Joe because I got a lot of respect for you. You’ve been so honest today and so candid. Permission to be totally candid here. How close did you come to running as an independent for president? And how would you, now that you got this great book and a great track record, obviously a profile in courage, how would you make the decision to run yourself in 2028? Walk us through both.

78:02 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 dropped out. I begged them. I said, “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.

78:32 But boy, when he doubled down and came right back within what, an hour or two and threw everything behind Kamala Harris, it was over. And I knew we were in trouble then. I would have loved to have been on that dais. Would you have run in a speed run? Would you have put yourself out there in a speed run? I’d have been right in there.

79:02 I’d have 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. Make sure we do it better than anybody in the world. 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 want to protect your property.

79:35 Why can’t we protect our borders, but also have a legal immigration policy that works? I 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.

80:05 And so 2028, to Jason’s question? Yeah. Well, 2028, guys. I mean, we’ll have to see. 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. I’m going to be 81. Same as Biden, close to Trump. And you’re sharp as a tack.

80:35 And I’m a year younger. I’ll give you something. Mitt Romney and I were talking about running. He said, “Joe, we have to start a new party.” I said, “What would it be, man?” He said, “We’ll call it the not stupid party.” I said, “Hell, my question is why we’re involved then.”

81:00 What are we doing here? And then I said, “Well, man, what do you think?” He said, “Joe, listen. They don’t want two old white guys running.” And I said, “We’re the youngest ones out there right now.” Yeah, you’re whippersnappers.

81:28 We had a lot of fun with that. We talked a lot. Anyway, look, we’ll just see what happens. I’m going to 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 get behind them and let’s get this country back on track.

82:00 Heck yes. Well, Joe, buy the book. On behalf of the All-In community, I just want to say thank you for your years of service. Buy the book. Dead Center in Defense of Common Sense. Don’t be stupid. Your daughter is incredible. Heather is the best.

82:25 Heather is a force and you know that she thinks the world of you and your wife, your family. So, 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 to meet with you. Come do a live one. Let’s do a live one. Oh, we’ll have one hell of a poker party.

82:55 That’ll be a barn burner. Ladies and gentlemen, there’s your hour with Joe Manchin.

83:24 I’m going all in.