Joe Manchin says Donald Trump can win, wants to make the GOP ‘grand again’

A Democratic senator told Fox News former President Trump can win in November and said the Republican Party needs to be made "grand again" while the Democratic Party must be made "responsible again."

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who announced in November that he will not seek re-election, said he "most certainly" believes Trump can achieve a victory in the 2024 election. West Virginia will vote in its primary election Tuesday. 

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The red state senator told "One Nation" host Brian Kilmeade on Saturday he comes from an area of "pragmatic," "hardworking people."

"They don't want government jumping on your back, telling you what to do and making it harder for you. They believe in freedom and democracy," he said. "They believe in all of that. They believe in giving a helping hand, but they believe you ought to get off your butt and do something sometimes." 

The lawmaker, who rejected the idea of being a "Washington Democrat," expressed concern about the direction of both political parties. 

"The parties have gone so extreme, and somehow we've got to bring the Grand Old Party — make it grand again — and make the Democrat Party responsible again," he said. "I think they both lost their ways, and they're just listening to their own chatter here in Washington, but none of this makes sense. We don't live our lives like this." 

Manchin said he's spoken to President Biden about the direction the nation is heading in.

"I've told the president, I said, 'You've got to be careful,'" he said. "A lot of these bills and a lot of the direction, the executive orders, people that came from the generation that I've come from and that you've come from is basically John Kennedy asking not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. We continue down this path, and people are starting to ask, ‘How much more can my country do for me?’ That's not who we are. It's not how we have the country we do, and it's not what I'm willing to sit back and watch it be taken away. So, I'm going to be fighting for basically how much more can I do for my country, and I appreciate what my country has done for me."

The senator also weighed in on the country's response to the Israel-Hamas war and "misinformation" that is leading people to declare their "allegiance and support for a terrorist organization like Hamas."

"I… lived through the Vietnam time period when we saw an awful lot of protests, but the protests I saw back then, whether I agreed or disagreed, the protests I saw were trying to make America better. These protests are trying to basically tear down the fabric of America, and there's no way that we should tolerate it."

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Manchin also said he had an encounter with Cindy McCain, widow of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and that she told him last week she had 30 trucks "full of food" that were "hijacked."

"… she says, 'I had 30 trucks full of food — 30 trailer trucks that were hijacked by Hamas. Their own people — they wouldn't let them feed their own people.'"