Joe Manchin on the Fight for America's Future: Term Limits, Bipartisanship & the 2028 Election

**Jason** (0:00)
All right, everybody. Welcome back to the All-In Podcast. We are super pleased to have with us today, Senator Joe Manchin is joining us today here on the All-In Interview, and Chamath and I will be interviewing him on his new book, Dead Center in Defense of Common Sense, a great book. Welcome to the program, Joe Manchin. I know you like to call Joe. So Joe, welcome to the program.

**Joe Manchin** (0:23)
Jason, thank you. It's great to be with you and Chamath, and I've followed you all, and you've been unbelievable what you've put out and some of the people you've had on have been very entertaining, very interesting and very thoughtful. So, nice just to be here.

**Jason** (0:34)
Thanks. And we have a tradition here, I don't know how often you watch the interview show, but we always try to get a personalized gift for each of our guests. And so in the book, you talked about your first car, your 1964

**Joe Manchin** (0:46)
If you could find that, if you could find that thing for me, it was a bullet back, I can't find the car.

**Jason** (0:52)
Well, there it is with the white interior.

**Joe Manchin** (0:53)
Oh, my God. Can we buy it?

**Jason** (0:55)
No, no, you got it. It's in your driveway right now. When you get out of your office there, it will be waiting for you by your yacht.

**Joe Manchin** (1:00)
Let me tell you that. Oh, by my yacht. Yeah, I got a big...

**Jason** (1:03)
It also has a $200,000 trawler. It's a fishing trawler, correct? It's a trawler.

**Chamath** (1:10)
Listen, Joe, what Jason has just proved is he has not read the book, but he looked at the pictures in the middle. That's all he's done.

**Jason** (1:17)
No, I did the...

**Chamath** (1:18)
He's riffing off the pictures.

**Jason** (1:20)
No, I don't have the physical book. I did the audio book.
But Joe, you did the right thing. You read it yourself, which a lot of authors, they try to get talk them out of doing it, but it makes it so much more personal.

**Joe Manchin** (1:31)
Hey, Jason, I didn't know I was supposed to do that. And all of a sudden my daughter, Heather says, dad, you got to show up at the studio and start reading your book. I said, how did... I said, why do I have to do that? She says, it's in the contract. I said, I didn't see that. She said, I didn't show it to you. It's part of the contract.

**Jason** (1:44)
It's like six or seven hours of reading.

**Joe Manchin** (1:47)
It took 20 hours, 20 hours.

**Jason** (1:49)
So three days, three, four days.

**Joe Manchin** (1:51)
Let me tell you what's the best thing I've ever done. It made me reminisce everything we put in the book.

**Jason** (1:56)
It's just, Chamath, you haven't done this yet because you haven't read the book.

**Chamath** (1:59)
I'm not really into audiobooks. I read the book. Look, I have it. I like to have the physical pages. I mark them. Okay. I'm old school.

**Jason** (2:07)
Yeah. Sometimes I do both, but when you're in the session, I'm sure you had this where the producers got the button and then you're like, and then I got my Maserati and I came out of the garage and they're like, a garage? Yeah, I came out of the garage. Because you have to do every word perfectly to sync it on Amazon, right? So they have to correct you over and over again if you just miss one word.

**Joe Manchin** (2:32)
Jason, the most unbelievable thing is the first day I start doing it and I'm sitting there, and all of a sudden, I'm just talking and reading the book and I crossed my legs. They said, stop, cross your legs. I said, what? They said, we heard you cross your legs. I said, my God, I'm in trouble.

**Jason** (2:48)
You're basically like a Faraday cage. Like if you literally hit anything.

**Joe Manchin** (2:52)
Yeah.

**Jason** (2:53)
But the book's fantastic. Everybody go pause the podcast here and I just absolutely go buy it because it's so important. And I mentioned when we were just on the pre-show, Irish Catholic Boy Scout and you start the book out with an Irish Catholic Boy Scout getting in a brouhaha at Donnybrook with an Italian Irish Boy Scout. You were an Eagle Scout.

**Joe Manchin** (3:21)
No, I wasn't.

**Jason** (3:21)
Former president. What? You were an Eagle Scout? That's what the internet said. What did you get to? First class? No, no.

**Joe Manchin** (3:27)