Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., left the Democratic Party and is blasting its "toxic" politics as he leaves the Senate in a pair of exit interviews with CNN and The Washington Post.
"The D-brand has been so maligned from the standpoint of, it's just, it's toxic," Manchin told CNN in an interview airing Sunday, saying he was forced to leave the party "in the form of what Democratic Party has turned itself into" before leaving the Senate.
"They have basically expanded upon thinking, Well, we want to protect you there, but we're going to tell you how you should live your life from that far on.'"
Manchin added the most leftist factions of the Democratic Party are out of touch with the American majority.
"This country is not going left," he said.
Incoming House Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar, D-Texas, suggested Vice President Kamala Harris would have won the election if the Democratic Party was more like outgoing House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., than moderate independent Sen. Manchin.
"For someone to say that, they've got to be completely insane," Manchin told CNN. "The people in America voted.
"They had that opportunity, you know, to vote with Kamala Harris and with Donald Trump. Donald Trump, there's not much hasn't been said. You know exactly what you're getting. He hasn't made any bones about it."
"You might say, That's too far right. OK. If that's the case, then why did they go too far right when Kamala was trying to come back to the middle a little bit?"
Manchin declined to endorse Harris and did not say he had voted for Trump, but he said he gets "along fine" with Trump and told the president-elect at the Army-Navy football game earlier this month, "I want to help any way I can."
"I want you to succeed," Manchin said he told Trump. "Every red-blooded American should want your president to succeed, whether you vote for him or not, whether the same party or not, whether you like him or not."
Manchin declined to wage a third-party run for president against President Joe Biden and Trump, or Harris and Trump, because he did not want to merely play "spoiler," knowing the middle of American politics just is not big enough to win an election, even if they decide the battleground states.
"The centrist-moderate vote decides who's going to be the president of the United States," Manchin told CNN. "And when they get here, they don't govern that way. Neither side does. They go to their respective corners.
"So if the center had a voice and had a party that could make both of these — the Democrat, Republican Party — come back, OK, that would be something."
A truly middle "American Party" would not have a leader in Manchin, but would have a vocal supporter.
"I'll be out there rooting: I'll be the best cheerleader they've ever had," he said.
Being "trustworthy" is all Manchin told the Post he had as both the left and right ultimately despised his opposition to radical political agendas.
"They tried with all their might to convince me to do things that they knew I wasn't going to do," Manchin said, but being a moderate voice was something he refused to compromise at his own political peril.
"I didn't lobby for that position," he said to the Post. "I don't wish it on anybody. But I think both sides knew I was sincere, even when they were mad at me."