Manchin says he wanted GOP to win Senate to stop Democrats' quest for 'raw political power'
Former Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., wanted Republicans to win the Senate last year in order to prevent Democrats’ pursuit of "raw political power."
In his new book, "Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense," set to be released on Tuesday and obtained by Fox News Digital, the former West Virginia Democrat-turned-Independent ripped into his ex-political party, tore into former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and blasted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., while lauding the relationship that he had with President Donald Trump.
Manchin made waves when he and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who also left the Democratic Party to become an Independent, bucked Schumer and voted against the move to nuke the Senate filibuster in 2022.
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He recalled that vote in his book and the pressure he felt from Schumer and Senate Democrats to fall in line on that and other key votes during Biden’s presidency.
Manchin accused Schumer of wanting a vote he "could broadcast to the radical left to prove his loyalty" and said the then-Senate majority leader didn’t actually believe that getting rid of the filibuster was the right thing to do, but rather to fulfill his "only priority" of maintaining control of the Senate.
"Because of what I knew — and what I had seen firsthand — I wanted Republicans to win the Senate majority in 2024," Manchin wrote. "I believed it was the only hope for preserving the Senate as an institution. I truly believed that, if in power, Republicans would uphold the filibuster, the last guardrail preventing total partisan rule."
"Schumer and the Democrats had already shown their hand — eliminating the filibuster would have been their first order of business," he continued. "They had no interest in protecting the Senate’s role as the deliberative body. They only cared about raw political power."
The quest to end the filibuster is also why Manchin wouldn’t endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris in her run against Trump.
"She knew this was the Holy Grail and the only hope we have to preserve any bipartisanship and maintain our democracy," Manchin said.
He also outlined an early fight he had with Biden where, when Democrats were trying to ram through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in the early months of his presidency in an evenly-divided Senate, Manchin rejected it.
Biden ripped into Manchin for standing in the way of an early victory.
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"As the drama began, I got a call from the president, and was he hot," Manchin wrote. "'If you kill this f— bill, I will never speak to you again,’ he promised. Anyone who knows Joe Biden — and I have known him for a very long time —knows he’s got a very bad temper. He calls it his ‘Irish.’ I call it unfortunate. But if he was going there, so was I."
"'Your actions are reckless,' I spat back. ‘You’re sending a f— check to everyone. And if you missed anyone, it was only by mistake.’"
The legislation ultimately passed after a compromise was reached, but Manchin noted that he later regretted "capitulating on the American Rescue Plan."
He also described having a far better relationship with Trump, who he considered a fellow "outsider," than Obama, and noted that Obama reached out to him twice during his entire presidency: once after he won re-election to the Senate in 2012 and again in 2015 to persuade him from voting against his nuclear deal with Iran.
"From the start, President Trump had an open line of communication with me. I spoke to him more in the first two years of his presidency than I did to President Obama during all eight years of his time in office," Manchin said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Schumer, Obama and Biden for comment but did not immediately hear back.