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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