(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Senator Joe Manchin, D-WV, has earned some Republican admirers as he continues to stifle some key components of President Joe Biden’s agenda.
Some GOP donors have even mentioned they would like to see him run for President in 2024, Yahoo News reported.
At a fundraiser for Manchin, the senator told the group that he planned to run for reelection in West Virginia in 2024.
Despite that announcement, he told reporters that several executives at the fundraiser insisted that Manchin switch parties and challenge potential candidate and former president, Donald Trump.
A member of Manchin’s staff said he is focused on “representing West Virginians to the best of his ability.”
“Senator Manchin has made it clear he is singularly focused on doing what is best for West Virginia and the country regardless of any political affiliation,” Samantha Runyon, Manchin’s communications director, said. “In this hyper partisan world we live in, this may sound like news. But for his entire career he has always been focused on doing what is right, not pleasing party elites or winning elections.”
Manchin has rejected the idea of changing parties in the past, calling a report from Mother Jones making this claim “bulls**t.”
Manchin has also made comments which imply he feels he doesn’t have a place in the country’s two-party system:
“I don’t know where the hell I belong,” he said in an interview with billionaire Dave Rubenstein.
“I don’t know where in the hell I belong.”
— Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on people asking him “every day” to switch parties pic.twitter.com/L2CfhNVFHA
— The Recount (@therecount) October 26, 2021
Manchin took decisive action against Joe Biden’s mammoth Build Back Better plan last year due to its size and scope, but is a reliable backer of Biden’s judicial nominees, including Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson.
 Senator Joe Manchin, D-WV, has earned some Republican admirers as he continues to stifle some key components of President Joe Biden's agenda.){kind=link}