NYT: Joe Manchin Would Like a Word. (OK, Maybe Several Words.) [View all]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/us/politics/joe-manchin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mU8.1Jf6.9005efkUSuED&smid=url-share

Hard to pick what to snip. Of course, he has a book.

Seeming to fulfill the adage that familiarity breeds contempt, Joe Manchin III, the former senator from West Virginia, has a lot of not-so-fond things to say about the Democratic Party in which he served as a stubborn centrist for more than four decades and then re-registered as an independent in May 2024.

In a lengthy interview last week aboard his boat, Almost Heaven, docked on Washington’s Wharf, Mr. Manchin, 78, said of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., “I just think he lost the will to fight” the progressives in his party.

He criticized Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, as a partisan warrior bent on “retaliation against Republicans.”

He said that after Mr. Biden dropped out of the 2024 race following his disastrous debate performance against Donald J. Trump, he briefly considered running against Vice President Kamala Harris “as an independent Democrat” until it was evident the party was coalescing around her.

Trump is "the most engaging president [he'd] ever worked with," but he also doesn't like the way the family is "using the power of the office to enrich themselves.."

Is irony dead? And won't someone please make him feel important again?