Senator Joe Manchin

And I know that because I kept saying that your staff is pushing you too far left, Mr. President.

You've never been that far left.

And I just, someone says about, you know, I've always liked Joe Biden.

We always got along well.

Good man.

I just don't think he lost the will to fight.

Never saw that, never.

And I've been with him a lot, okay?

We always had good conversations.

Now, with that said, I just said, I know how much energy it takes if you've got to fight with your staff every day to do the things you want, rather than the staff saying, we'll take care of that, Mr. President.

Because I would ask him, we agree on something, and I'd ask him a week or two later,

and nothing had happened, so I knew there was no follow-up.

So I knew Rahm was kind of driving the train.

And with that, I'll tell you how this thing came to a head.

I said, I'm not voting to get on the BBB.

And this goes on for a while.

There's just pressure and pressure, and they need my vote to even get on reconciliation.

So it finally came down to, I said, you know, you've got some good things in that BBB bill.

The one thing you really need is infrastructure.

Remember the bipartisan infrastructure bill?