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CBS Tried to Defend Socialism to Joe Manchin — He Looked at Her Like She Had Two Heads

Updated: POLITICS

Give CBS’s Margaret Brennan credit for the attempt.

She walked into a Face the Nation interview with Joe Manchin on Sunday, asked him whether he could ever support a self-described socialist candidate, and when both Joe and daughter Heather Manchin said “absolutely not,” she pressed further: “Even if they had some good ideas?”

Joe Manchin’s response was three words: “Are you crazy?”

He then said what every sane American has been waiting for a mainstream Democrat to say plainly on national television: look at the DSA platform. They want to dismantle everything — the structure of government, Congress itself, the Senate. No police. Abolish prisons. Defund the military. “That’s crazy stuff,” Manchin said. “We want a crime-free area. We have to have police for that.”

Here’s how it went:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Heather, could you ever support a self-described socialist candidate?

HEATHER MANCHIN: No.

FORMER SEN. MANCHIN: No way. My God, no.

MARGARET BRENNAN: No? Even if they had some good ideas?

HEATHER MANCHIN: And it surprises- and it–

FORMER SEN. MANCHIN: I support the good ideas, but how could you support some of the crazy stuff they’re for? Have you seen their platform? They’re for just dismantling everything that we know, whether it be the- whether it be the structure of government, Congress itself, or the Senate, they want to get rid of. And then they start talking about all the crazy things. No police, no this, no this, no that. Are you crazy? We want- we want a crime-free area. We have to have police for that.

All of this is correct. None of it is complicated. And the fact that a CBS host felt the need to push back on the idea that socialism might have “some good ideas” while conducting an interview with a former Democratic senator tells you exactly where the mainstream media’s sympathies lie — and why the Democratic Party’s socialist wing has been able to advance as far as it has with so little institutional resistance.

Manchin also explained why he didn’t run for president in 2024 as an independent — and it’s the same reason every would-be third-party savior fails in this country. Ballot access. He could only get on 16 to 20 state ballots. Without 50-state presence, there’s no platform, no path, and no point.

This is worth noting as Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene sit in a candlelit cabin in Maine threatening to build a new party. Ballot access is the wall every third-party movement eventually runs into — and it doesn’t get easier to scale just because the people threatening to build the party are more famous than the last group who tried.

But back to the DSA, because Manchin’s alarm is well-founded and more urgent than his gentle “crazy stuff” framing suggests. The DSA co-chair confirmed on live television last week that she wants to abolish the Senate, the presidency as it currently exists, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, and prisons. These are not fringe positions inside her organization. They are the official platform. And Hasan Piker — who has more influence over the Democratic base than Joe Manchin — is backing the candidates who hold those positions in primary after primary.

Manchin sees the trajectory. Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville sees it. Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman sees it. Pennsylvania Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro sees it around the edges. Not one of them has found a mechanism to stop it inside the party structure. The DSA doesn’t need a majority to take over. It just needs primaries — and it’s been winning those.

Joe Manchin called it crazy stuff on CBS Sunday morning. He was right. Now somebody needs to actually do something about it.

Calling things crazy on television isn’t a plan.