Democratic Senator Joe Manchin might not be running for Senate again, but that doesn’t mean he’s done with politics. According to a new report, the senator from West Virginia has created a new “centrist” organization that is looking to remake politics – which really just means looking out for corporate interests. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Democrat Senator Joe Manchin might not be running for Senate again, but that doesn’t mean he’s done with politics. According to a new report, the senator from West Virginia’s created a new centrist organization that’s looking to remake politics, which really just means looking out for corporate interest. Now, it’s interesting, you and I have done stories on this organization for how many years? 10 years.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Almost 20.
Mike Papantonio: They’ve been out there almost kind of kicking around 10 or 20 years. No Labels. Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. No Labels, which basically just means we’re a corporate front group pretending to be a political party. And Joe Manchin has always flirted with No Labels. And right now he’s flirting with them to the point where there is huge speculation he’s gonna run for president under their banner.
Mike Papantonio: What’s he doing with American Together.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Americans Together. That is the dark money group. It’s registered to where they don’t have to reveal their corporate donors and it’s funneling a ton of money into No Labels. Mm-Hmm. But, technically, Joe Manchin, his name is not on the organization. What it is, is his daughter, the former pharma CEO, Heather Bresch. And Bresch is the one who when she took over Mylan, jacked up the prices on all the EpiPens. I was.
Mike Papantonio: Was it it 2000%? I mean, some Godly.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I was paying $1,200 twice a year for a single EpiPen for my children. And so to me, whenever I talk about Heather Bresch, it is very personal because I lost thousands of dollars every year because of Heather Bresch.
Mike Papantonio: A lot of people did. And the point is just again, all right, well he’s an important politician. Corporate media barely covered the story. You had to hunt the story, really, you had to hunt for the story. But the point is, No Labels, just so you understand and viewers understand, No Labels is just centrist blue dog Democrats that care nothing more than about how does Wall Street do. That’s what it is. And it could be a real deal. People like, they might not like him all over the country, but the South likes Manchin.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, they do.
Mike Papantonio: And conservative areas in this country like Manchin. He’s very good on his feet. He’s a threat.
Farron Cousins: He really is. And up to about a year ago, he was actually the fifth most popular senator in their home state.
Mike Papantonio: Really? Wow.
Farron Cousins: So, even West Virginia loved him. And it’s not because, oh, he did all this stuff for us. It’s because he did nothing. Because that’s what No Labels is all about.
Mike Papantonio: Doing nothing.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It’s not about, we’ve gotta make the lives of these people better. It’s no, we maintain the status quo because the status quo works wonderfully for these corporations.
Mike Papantonio: It’s like the last story we just did. Don’t prosecute these criminals when they kill people because they’re dressed up in suits and they have MBAs from Harvard and Yale. Let’s not. That’s what, that is No Labels, you see. That is the same thing that this Justice Department is doing. They will love Joe Manchin. And I gotta tell you something, if he gets out there, this 501c4, people, they don’t understand how dangerous that is. There’s no way to even know where the money comes from. I mean, it’s just dark, dark money. And it was made possible by Citizens United, of course. And so he, what is it, they raised 20, No Labels raised $20 million in the last year. It’s just a lot of money. They’re becoming a real entity. And now this might be the first face of a presidential run.
Farron Cousins: And right now there is a lot of hunger in this country for a third party candidate.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, definitely.
Farron Cousins: We see that in the polls. And so if people don’t know what No Labels is, obviously the name sounds attractive. Like, hey, I’m sick of Democrats, I’m sick of Republicans. No Labels, well, that just sounds wonderful. But no, it’s a, the best way I could describe it in my opinion would be this is essentially.
Mike Papantonio: Republican and.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s a corporate front group in my opinion. I mean, that’s what they do. They act in the interest of corporations. It’s not about bringing together the left and the right.
Mike Papantonio: Well, as a matter of fact, corporate America put it together. You understand, the Goldman Sachs folks, those people put all of this together and it’s just emerging. It’s gonna emerge this time. And truthfully, Joe Biden is an easy take down.
Farron Cousins: Well, and especially, you throw suddenly Joe Manchin into the mix. You got Bobby Kennedy, whose polls are really well since he switched to independent. Cornell West. Next year could be just chaos in the presidential race. And maybe we need a little chaos. I don’t know.
Mike Papantonio: I think we do. I think we need that kind of thing. I love that we have other parties. I wish we had something besides the No Labels party. But if somebody’s looking down a voting, I mean, they’re at the polls. They’re looking down a list. Biden, Trump will be in there, I predict. Then you go below that. Who shows up next? Does Manchin? Oh, I kinda like Manchin. Don’t know much about him, but he’s got this new party. Bobby Kennedy. I don’t know a lot about him, but I do know he’s good on the environment. People have that tendency because they don’t have, I mean, we take it for granted that everybody has as much information as we have. We do this every day. The average American is very difficult for them to keep up with this. They gotta worry about, they gotta go to work. They gotta make house payments. They can’t keep up with this kind of thing. So it’s almost a temporal kind of reaction there. This is a third party. Maybe it’s time for a shakeup. And Joe Biden is easy pickens in that regard.
