MORGANTOWN, West Virginia — Joe Manchin said what happened to George Floyd shocked the whole world, and change after his death in police custody was inevitable. “A lot of our friends from the black communities have been very quiet about it over the years because it’s just a matter of fact. It’s what happens,” he said. “This is how they’re treated. Now, knowing that our friends and our colleagues could be stopped just because of the color of their skin, and we’re not because of our color is wrong.”
Manchin said there is no way this treatment can be accepted anywhere in America. “So, we’ve got to change. How do you change? Someone says, well, they’re going to get rid of policing or defund. I said that is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You can’t defund the police and have militia or anarchy going on. That would be horrible.”
For the last several weeks, “defund the police” has spread nationwide as activists participating in both protests and riots carry signs and chant the slogan, all part of a demand for elected officials to defund local police forces.
A recent Morning Consult/Politico poll showed that 58% of voters oppose the “defund the police” movement, but they are split 43% to 42% on whether they support or oppose redirecting funds for local police departments to bolster community development programs.
Manchin sat for an interview with the Washington Examiner ahead of a roundtable he organized with Jovita Carranza (the administrator of the Small Business Administration), small business owners, and bankers on Monday morning. Manchin arrived driving his own car from his family fishing camp in Canaan, which sits along the headwaters of the Blackwater River in Tucker County.
He drove himself to Washington after the roundtable for a Monday evening vote. “The No. 1 agenda item for Mitch McConnell, since he has been the leader, is to make sure we vote on judges,” Manchin said. “That’s all. Every week is based around judges.” The Senate majority leader from Kentucky has made confirming judges his major goal since President Trump was inaugurated, and he has vowed to “leave no vacancy behind.”
This all comes ahead of the Senate possibly taking up the Justice Act, a bill sponsored by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott that is aimed at reforming policing. McConnell said last week that he would use a procedural motion to try to start a debate on the bill this week to fast-track the legislation.
“We’ve been dissecting both Tim Scott’s bill and the president’s executive order,” Manchin said. “Some of the things that just make common sense that all of us can agree on is, first of all, is a chokehold necessary? I’ve talked to military people. And they said there’s two ways I can use a chokehold: to put you to sleep or I can use a chokehold to kill you. If you don’t know how to administer, you can use it thinking you know what you are doing, and you don’t.”
“So, there’s no need for that,” he said. “Chokeholds should be banned, period, so I think that’s something we can agree on. The other thing we can agree on is a national registry that every policeman puts on the uniform or badge and takes an oath of office anywhere in the country should go into a national registry, and his record follows him or her.”
But the big difference looming over negotiations is on qualified immunity, said Manchin. Both Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California have come out in support of ending the 50-year-old doctrine shielding law enforcement officers from civil lawsuits.
“Policemen have basically told me, they said, ‘Joe, we have a hard time. If the police were exposed to that lawsuit, we have a hard time keeping what we have, let alone attracting new officers,’” he explained. “On the other hand, Tim Scott says he is willing to sit down, and he wants to negotiate, and maybe we can find a pathway forward. That’s all good. What we don’t know is if Mitch McConnell wants to put this bill up and fast-track it. You can’t fast-track a bill if you really want good input.”
Manchin says that on all policy issues, people should debate and go through the process of compromise to get something good. “If you really want to negotiate, both sides get together, Mitch and Schumer, and they said no poison pills whatsoever, everything concerned around policing, but in a forthright way of making something better.”
On the toppling of statues, Manchin said that while the Civil War should never be memorialized or idolized, what is going on in Seattle and other places isn’t the solution. “If they truly believe in the teachings and the movement of Martin Luther King Jr., then perhaps they should read what he says about violence and upheaval. There is no way to justify that. I think it just takes the cause backwards, and it divides people up who might’ve been sympathetic. Enough is enough. They aren’t wanting change for the change. They want, basically, the ability for disruption and violence.”
Elected to the Senate three times, the Farmington native and former West Virginia secretary of state said the atmosphere in Washington is toxic, “mostly now because everything’s so competitive, and it’s a possibility that the Senate could change and be [under] Democratic control. That makes everybody that much more competitive.”
To date, Democrats have targeted five Republican Senate seats to flip in November in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, and Maine. Republicans see Doug Jones’s Senate seat in Alabama as a potential flip in their direction.
On net, Democrats need to get three seats to flip to get to a 50-50 tie in the Senate, with ties broken by whoever the vice president is after the presidential election.
“Everyone gets paranoid,” Manchin says, “especially if someone sees me talking to someone on the other side of the aisle. I say, whoa, wait a minute. I talk to everybody. I talk to everybody, and I work with everybody, and I don’t go out and try to campaign against anybody.”
