Joe Manchin Torches ‘Toxic’ Democratic Party in Blistering CNN Interview: They ‘Tried to Mainstream the Extreme’

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D), who broke free from the Democratic Party last spring to register as an Independent, had nothing but derision for the Left when he sat down for a one-on-one interview with CNN’s Manu Raju.

“Do you still consider yourself a Democrat?” Raju asked Manchin, who is set to retire at the end of this term.

“I am not a Democrat. In the form of what the Democratic Party has turned itself into, the national brand? Absolutely not. And they know that,” Manchin answered, continuing:

Here’s what I told them. I said, you ought to figure out how you lost somebody like me. I was born as a Democrat because of my grandfather’s love of FDR. I was a very strong Democrat because of my family’s love of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I came through the whole iteration, and then I was a Democrat in West Virginia, and it has always been a 75 to 80% plurality of Democrats, registered Democrats. But there was a split. I was never in the liberal side of it. I was never in the establishment side. So I always had to fight my way through.

RAJU: Is it a shift on social issues?

MANCHIN: Yeah. The brand got so bad, the “D-brand” has been so maligned from the standpoint of, it’s just it’s toxic. And the D-brand is basically this. You know, I’ve told them. I said, first of all, as an American, and as a as someone in the Senate, and I’m going to take the constitutional oath, the Constitution that I take very, very, very, very seriously, I’m going to help every human being pursue…happiness in their life, pursuit of happiness.

I don’t care who they are. I don’t care what color. I don’t care any of the things, who they love…I’m going to make sure you have that opportunity and right to live your life. Just don’t make your life, if it might be on the extremes or in the minority of few, make me believe that’s the norm or make me and my family believe, or my children believe, or this or that. No, I will protect you. Just don’t try to mainstream it. And the Democratic Party, the Washington Democrats, have tried to mainstream the extreme.

Raju then read a quote from Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX): “Okay, this is from the incoming chair of the House Progressive Caucus. He says, ‘If the Democratic Party was a little more like Chairwoman Jayapal and a little less…like Joe Manchin, I think we would have won this election.”

“They gotta be nuts!” Manchin said. “For someone to say that, they’ve got to be completely insane!”

Watch the clip above via CNN.