Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., said Sunday he would not rule out a possible third-party presidential bid in 2024, touting the value of the “moderate middle” over the extreme left and right, after the debt ceiling package managed to clarify both houses of Congress and avoid a US default.
“Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream grilled Manchin in a recent report in The New York Times that claimed the bipartisan group “No Labels” is eyeing a third-party presidential bid in 2024, alarming Democrats, and that Manchin is “high on the list of potential candidates.”
The report said Manchin risks endorsing President Biden “crucial to his re-election.”
“Is a third-party execution still in the realm of possibility?” Bream asked Manchin “Fox News Sunday.”
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“No Labels has been moving and pushing the centrist center very hard. Make decisions with common sense,” Manchin said, dodging the question. “People who basically expect us to do our job. And not to put the political party ahead of the politics of our great country. This is what we have seen happen. And there’s more noise and more extremism coming from the far left and the far right.”
“It’s always what I’ve believed. I think it’s basically where the decisions are made,” he said of the political center. “You listen to the left and the right. You make sure you don’t leave anyone behind. And you listen to the different persuasions they may have, concerns. But when it comes you have to have common sense.”
He continued to argue for a risk management assessment of the US financial situation, noting the recent collapse of the Bank of Silicon Valley.
“But is there a risk management team evaluating a third-party run for Sen. Joe Manchin without tags or any other options?” Bream interjected.
“I think with a risk management team, you’d better have Plan B. Because if Plan A shows that we’re going to the extreme end of both sides, the extreme left and the extreme right, and people he doesn’t want to go there on the far left and on the far right, they want to be governed from the middle, I think there’s … you better have that Plan B available and ready to go,” Manchin said.
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“And you’re saying that could possibly include Joe Manchin?” Bream said.
“I’m not saying who’s going to include or exclude. I’m saying you better have Plan B ready,” Manchin responded. “Because that’s what it’s going to take for this country to remain the world’s superpower, to give confidence to people around the world that the reserve currency should be the US dollar, that support for freedom and democracy should of being the US government and the US Department of Defense. We can do it. You can’t do it from the extremes.”
“Okay, you rule it out? You don’t rule it out?” Bream pushed once more.
“Don’t rule anything out, don’t rule anything out,” Manchin concluded.
Earlier in his appearance, Manchin, who thanked Senate Republicans and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for making sure the Mountain Valley Pipeline it was funded by the debt ceiling package – the credited centrists of both the Republican and Democratic parties to prevent a US debt default.
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“Both the far left and the far right voted by default, they voted against,” Manchin said. “It was the Democrats and the Republicans in the middle. So this moderate middle, the centrists, well, we’re going to run this country. We can’t continue to let the extremes try to be the majority voice when it’s going to be the majority voting in the middle and the moderate centrists who they will make things happen”.
