Joe Manchin says he’s ‘absolutely’ mulling presidential run

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said Wednesday he “absolutely’” could consider a run for the White House after announcing he would not be seeking reelection in the Senate in 2024 last week.

“I will do anything I can to help my country, and you’re saying, ‘Does that mean you would consider it?’ Absolutely,” Manchin said in an interview with NBC News.

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Manchin has been teasing a third-party run all year and has made previous comments that have raised speculation. The West Virginia Democrat said he would need to test the pulse of the voters to see if they could be open to supporting a centrist Democrat, and that would be a deciding factor in whether he would opt to launch a presidential bid.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure, to mobilize that moderate, sensible, commonsense middle,” he said in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker.

“I’m totally, absolutely scared to death that Donald Trump would become president again,” he added. “I think we will lose democracy as we know it.”

Manchin, who was widely viewed as the most vulnerable incumbent heading into the 2024 Senate elections, announced last week he would not run for another term in a lengthy statement. The West Virginia Democrat said he instead plans to travel the country in hopes of trying to unify the divided political wings.

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Manchin spent months playing coy about his 2024 plans as poll after poll showed him trailing Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV), his leading Senate opponent, by considerable margins. Justice is a Democrat-turned-Republican and a longtime friend-turned-political foe of Manchin. He is also the only Republican who polled competitively against Manchin, a former governor of the ruby-red state.