Sen. Joe Manchin, a longtime Democrat senator, Sunday said he's "not ruling anything in, not ruling anything out" when it comes to the possibility that he will mount a third-party race for the president in the upcoming election.
"You better have Plan B, because if Plan A shows that we're going to the far reaches of both sides — the far left and the far right — and that people don't want to go to the far left and the far right, they want to be governed from the middle, I think ... that you better have that Plan B available and ready to go," the West Virginia politician told "Fox News Sunday" host Shannon Bream when she pressed him on a potential campaign.
Reports are indicating that the West Virginia senator, who has made news in recent years for his independent streak when it comes to whether he'll vote along the party line on Democrat-backed bills, is said by sources to be at the top of the list for the bipartisan political group "No Labels," which is pushing for a "unity ticket" as another choice in the race that's expected to be a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Manchin has not said if he'll seek reelection to the Senate in 2024. He faces a potentially uphill battle in West Virginia, a red state, against popular GOP Gov. Jim Justice, who had announced that he intends to challenge Manchin for the Senate seat.
"I’m saying you better have Plan B ready, Shannon, because that's what it's going to take for this country to remain the superpower of the world and to give confidence to people around the world that the reserve currency should be the U.S. dollar," he added. "That support for freedom and democracy should be the U.S. government and the U.S. Defense Department. We can do that. You can't do it from the extremes."
Manchin, also a former governor from West Virginia, also has not said if he'll try to return to his old seat there, with Justice running for the Senate.
Also on Sunday, the senator appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," where he discussed his support for the debt ceiling bill passed this past week. He called it a good use of bipartisanship and said he's proud of both House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden.
He told show host Chuck Todd that he questions why there is so much "brinkmanship" with the nation's bills.
And with the presidential election looming, Manchin said he hopes that doesn't mean lawmakers will start picking sides on all legislation.
"We've been able to show that we can do something when we have to," he said. "We have to have a permitting process now that encumbers everything. We've touched on that in this bill. We have some permitting reforms that were done, but we need an awful lot more."
The bill also included Manchin's call for funding for the Mountain Valley Pipeline project. Manchin recently told Politico in an interview that his being undecided about running for reelection made the provision possible.
"This system is so toxic anymore that whenever you are an announced candidate for anything, you're cannon fodder for the other side," said Manchin. "Politics are taking over the control versus the policies and, basically, the responsiveness that we should have ... I'm not going to be worried about polls and all this other stuff when I have a purpose to perform."
The pipeline, he added, gives his state a "tremendous opportunity to provide the energy security" the country needs.
"This has been a tremendous win for West Virginia," Manchin said. "I've been spearheading this thing from Day 1."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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