Former Sen. Joe Manchin details Biden’s pressure campaign to win his vote in new memoir

(WASHINGTON) — A new memoir from former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who clashed with former President Joe Biden over his legislative agenda, highlights the sharp disagreements the former moderate Democrat had with the Biden White House and his party — and describes Biden’s campaign to pressure Manchin to back his plans.

ABC News obtained excerpts of Manchin’s memoir, “Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense,” before its release on Sep. 16.  

One of the swing votes in the evenly split Senate, the longtime senator from the coal-producing state opposed Biden’s $2 trillion-plus Build Back Better proposal, a sweeping domestic policy, tax and social safety net package that included climate and tax provisions that Manchin rejected.

Manchin said his rejection didn’t stop Biden from trying to use the bully pulpit to convince Manchin to change his position.

In a private White House meeting, Manchin said he told Biden “this isn’t your legislation. It’s Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s. I’ve known you for a long time, and I do not believe that you believe this is the right thing for the country.”

“He grabbed my arm,” Manchin wrote of Biden. “‘Joe,’ he said, ‘the country needs you.'”

“When the most powerful man in the world is putting the weight of the world on you, it causes you to pause. I took a deep breath and grabbed his arm. ‘Mr. President,’ I said, ‘the country needs you too,'” Manchin wrote. 

Manchin also criticized the Biden White House’s handling of negotiations with House and Senate Democrats over the infrastructure package, which at one point were held up in the House by progressives in what Manchin called “a misguided effort” to pass the larger domestic agenda.

“The political incompetence of his staff was staggering,” Manchin wrote about Biden’s trips to the Hill to meet with House Democrats. 

“[Biden] came from a working-class family. He built his career fighting for hardworking families, the very people who felt forgotten by Washington,” Manchin wrote. “But now he seemed beholden to the elite and far-left social agenda baked into [the Build Back Better Act]. This wasn’t the Joe Biden I knew — or maybe, as a senator from Delaware, he wasn’t able to show his true stripes before.”

Manchin said he felt that Biden “was losing touch with the very values that defined his career.”

Once Manchin revealed in a Fox News interview that he would not support the proposal, effectively killing it in the Senate, Manchin said he received a “hostile” voicemail from Biden, and that Biden was “irate” when he returned his message. 

Manchin said he told Biden he was frustrated with the White House’s outreach, and the fact that Biden singled out his opposition in a statement, telling Biden he believed it put his family “in harm’s way and disregarded my genuine attempt to work with you.”

Biden ended the conversation on a cool note, according to Manchin.

“‘We have a pissed off Irishman and a pissed off Italian, I think we should let things cool off.’ We didn’t talk for three months,” Manchin wrote.