When Manchin said he wouldn't run for reelection, a group campaigning for him to join Mitt Romney in a third-party presidential effort filed documents with the Federal Election Commission to form a draft committee.Manchin vowed to tour the country to analyze centrist political interest but hasn't determined what to do.
“I've done everything I can to try to change the political dysfunction and political divisions in Washington, and I've come to the conclusion, it can't be done here,” he said. A day earlier, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin challenged International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Sean O'Brien to a fight at a Senate hearing.
Manchin said he was “ashamed” of the heated argument as a Congressman and called it the latest manifestation of political extremism. Trump stated he profited by contributing.
“From Donald Trump's perspective, the normal procedures in politics today are attack, attack, attack, insinuate, and then basically invigorate hatred, spew, call you names, wants responses, wants fights,” he said. “Not ourselves. We didn't become this nation that way."
After Trump's 2016 election, Manchin tried to work with him, but his views go against “every grain I understood of what we’re supposed to do in public service.”“You can’t say, ‘I’m going to take the most powerful office in the world and use it for vengeful purposes,’” he said.
Manchin helped pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill and inflation reduction act, which slashed prescription medication prices, gave health care subsidies, and invested extensively in clean energy projects in a split Senate. He favored fossil fuel infrastructure and carbon sequestration.
He said Democrats and Republicans had to cooperate, making it one of the most productive sessions.Unhappy people believed I was in charge. He said, ‘I don’t have any more influence than any of the other senators. “Why won’t you use it to help our country and states?”
Manchin is the only prominent West Virginia Democrat to defend coal interests in Washington while the progressive party embraces sustainable energy and fossil fuels withdrawal.“What happened to the West Virginia Democrat?” he was asked upon entering the Senate.
I said, ‘They want to know what happened to the Washington Democrat,’' Manchin continued. West Virginia Democrats dug coal, created steel, constructed weapons and ships, shed more blood, and lost more lives for freedom than other states, but now we're not good enough, green enough, clean enough, or clever enough. Boredom set in.