Joe Manchin appears in The Bob Zadek Show not as a guest but as a recorded voice and as a subject of brief mention. The excerpts capture him in two distinct contexts: opposing EPA carbon regulations in a 2014 episode, and being described in a 2022 episode as the target of newspaper criticism for objecting to more spending. Neither excerpt presents an interview with him, and neither states his title, his state, or his party.
The EPA coal regulations, 2014
In the 2014 episode with Matt Zwolinski, Bob Zadek devoted the closing segment to the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon rules, which he described as promulgated under the Clean Air Act and then in draft form, to be finalized the following year Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014). Bob characterized the regulations as having been called the “war on coal,” a phrase he attributed to coal mining and coal burning states, and he argued that whatever the United States did as a country would have a de minimis effect on the planet, since the country accounted for a small and declining portion of carbon emissions. He further stated that if all coal-burning plants in the country were eliminated, the effect on climate change over a 20 or 30-year period would be less than one-tenth of one degree of change.
Bob’s central claim was distributive: the EPA plan would incrementally harm Americans and profoundly affect the poor negatively, because most of the cost of the regulations would fall on people least able to afford it. He then played recorded opposition, introducing it as Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Rand Paul.
In the first recorded clip, Manchin is heard saying that coal state lawmakers were speaking out and that they were saying President Obama had overstepped his authority by imposing strict new emission limits on power plants. The clip also has Manchin reporting that Senator Rand Paul says the Obama administration is caving to extremists. A separate recorded clip of Rand Paul follows, in which Paul says the administration shows a lack of balance and that environmental extremists are guiding its policy, drawing a comparison to the Keystone Pipeline.
In the second Manchin clip, played under Bob’s introduction about hardships on the elderly and the poor, Manchin raises the question of reliability. He notes that summer is coming and will be quite hot in some areas, and asks whether people will have reliability of the system, basically the grid — whether, when they flip their heat down or their cooling down, it is going to come on, and whether they will have the reliable and dependable power they have always depended upon. He invokes the polar vortex just past and asks whether people would die without reliability in the system, answering that it would be mostly the frail, the elderly, the youth and the poor. He says those are the things being talked about, and not even taking into consideration whether you can afford it. The excerpt ends there, mid-thought.
The segment also included a recorded clip of President Obama supporting the plan, in which Obama says he directed the Environmental Protection Agency a year earlier to build on the efforts of many states, cities and companies and come up with common-sense guidelines for reducing dangerous carbon pollution from power plants, and that the proposed guidelines would cut down on carbon pollution, smog and soot that threaten the health of the most vulnerable Americans, including children and the elderly.
Mention in the 2022 episode
In the 2022 episode with F.H. Buckley on progressive conservatism, Manchin is mentioned once, by Buckley, as an example of what Buckley calls the Democratic Party’s ties to its most extreme constituencies Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022). Buckley says the greatest example in the news that morning is that the Times and the Post are vilifying Joe Manchin for objecting to more spending, as if the inflation we see before us doesn’t exist, and concludes that they have simply lost touch. Bob does not take up the Manchin reference; the exchange moves on to Hispanic voters and the GOP.
Across episodes
The two episodes do not argue the same question about Manchin. In 2014 he is a recorded voice opposing EPA carbon rules on grounds of grid reliability and the burden on the frail, elderly, young and poor; in 2022 he is a name invoked by F.H. Buckley as an object of newspaper criticism for objecting to more spending. The excerpts show no development between the earlier and later treatment, and no position of Manchin’s is examined in both.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Manchin’s title, his state, his party, or any office he held, and they contain no interview with him. They do not name the bill or resolution at issue in the 2022 reference to objecting to more spending, nor do they give the substance of his objection beyond that phrase. They do not report any vote, committee action, or legislative history involving him. Nothing in the sources describes his career, his constituents, or his relationship to the host beyond the two recorded and reported fragments above.