Sen. Joe Manchin hasn’t quite figured out what he’ll do next once he leaves the Senate next month.
But whatever his future holds, he plans to keep hosting his former colleagues Congress on his popular houseboat in West Virginia. Manchin has for years hosted politicians of both parties aboard the “Almost Heaven,” which has been docked in Washington, his way of bringing his colleagues on both sides of the aisle together.
“I’m going to be involved,” Manchin told CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “The boat’s staying here.”
Manchin, who mulled an independent presidential bid this year, said he would have “loved to have had a platform” to speak centrist common sense, as he put it.
He expressed hope for President-elect Donald Trump’s success — despite previously saying that electing Trump would be “very detrimental” to the country. Manchin has said the rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was a “bridge too far” for him.
“When the people speak and they make their choice and the election’s over, you better pray with everything you have the president will be successful,” Manchin told Brennan. “And if you’re in a position to help, you have knowledge of how the system works and can make it work, do it. … This is about our country, and I want him to succeed, and I have said this to him, I’ll do whatever I can to help in any way humanly possible.”
Manchin was West Virginia’s governor before he won his U.S. Senate seat in 2010. Since then, he’s tried to work with both parties. He formally left the Democratic Party in May, registering as an independent.
Manchin is still hoping to push a bill to ease the permitting process for the energy industry through Congress. He said he encouraged Trump to make it happen during a conversation at the Army-Navy game in Maryland last weekend.
His Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 would facilitate a faster permitting process for oil and natural gas, renewable energy, mineral mining and transmission lines. It hasn’t progressed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Manchin said he’s hoping Trump will watch his interview with “Face the Nation” and take a serious look at his bill.
“So now with this interview, I’m hoping, I’m asking President Trump to truly look at this permitting bill, because it is basically a good piece of legislation that we’ve never moved this far in a bipartisan way, with John Barrasso, going to be the No. 2 man in the Republican Senate, a good person, a good friend of mine,” Manchin told Brennan. “We worked hard and negotiated hard, and have a good bill. It’s ready to go. We have the bill ready. He could just drop it in.”
Manchin said he thinks Trump understands the political realities at play in Washington better than he did when he won in 2016. And the reality is that the Senate remains more independent than the House, he said.
“I think he understands it an awful lot better now than he did in 2016 when he won the first time,” Manchin said. “So now he’s got some experience under him. He understands the process, but he understands, also, the power that he’s wielding right now, the influence he has” with the House and Senate, which will be in Republican hands in January. Manchin wants to keep the filibuster in place; it requires most bills to reach a 60-vote threshold for consideration.
“I think there’s enough Republican senators and Democrat senators too, but Republicans have control because they’re the majority, that are not going to let the filibuster blow apart,” Manchin said. “… I don’t think they will do that. And it only takes five, or it takes four, I’m sorry, it takes four Republican senators, just four, and I guarantee you, I think there’s a lot more than four.”
Those Republicans, he said, will “protect the institution.”
“They’ve been here long enough,” Manchin said. “What goes around comes around, and in two years, this thing could flip — 2026, you never know. It’s the power of the people.”
contributed to this report.
