Joe Manchin on, Trump, Immigration, and the Future of American Politics

At the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Terry Moran sits down with former Senator Joe Manchin for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about the shutdown, Donald Trump’s governing style, the decline of Congress, immigration, political extremism, and what Manchin sees as a dangerous moment for American democracy.

Speaking with the bluntness he’s known for, Manchin argues that the 43-day shutdown should never have happened, that both parties have abandoned the center, and that Congress has surrendered too much power to the presidency. He also discusses immigration reform, the border crisis, Trump’s use of federal troops in American cities, and the rise of political violence.

Manchin reflects on his decades in public life, why moderation is disappearing, how Congress lost its constitutional backbone, and why Americans still want a government that works.

One of the most substantive and revealing episodes yet.

⏱ Chapters

00:00 – Live from Austin: Terry Moran introduces Joe Manchin

00:35 – Manchin on the 43-day shutdown: never should have happened

01:15 – Why shutdown politics make no sense to him

02:00 – Democrats, elections, and governing from the minority

03:00 – Schumer, McConnell, and how Manchin voted his own way

04:40 – The 51-vote Senate math and why the filibuster matters

06:05 – Why polarization and media ecosystems are killing common sense

08:00 – Manchin on redistricting, primaries, and extremism

09:30 – Why independents are now the largest group of voters

11:00 – Why moderates vanish when they arrive in Washington

12:15 – Is the politics of the center dead in the age of Trump?

13:40 – Trump’s toughness, extremism, and why voters respond to it

14:40 – Congress collapsing as an institution

15:30 – How Trump is exploiting Congress’s failures

17:00 – Schumer, Reid, party-line votes, and Manchin’s independence

19:20 – What Trump is getting right on immigration

21:40 – The 2013 immigration bill and the Tea Party rejection

23:00 – Border failures and the politics of crime

25:00 – Trump’s National Guard deployments to cities

26:40 – Are these moves authoritarian?

28:10 – Biden, Democrats, and border failures

29:30 – Freedom, public service, and Manchin’s political roots

31:10 – Violence, threats, and the human cost of political extremism

32:40 – How both parties lost their way

34:10 – Venezuela, foreign policy, and the risk of war

36:20 – Nick Saban stories and growing up in West Virginia

38:30 – Final reflections

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