Katty Kay: Joe Manchin has a tough message for Democrats on Trump 6 hours ago Share Save Katty Kay US special correspondent Share Save Watch: Joe Manchin’s advice to Democrats for dealing with Donald Trump Three months into Donald Trump's second term, Democrats are struggling with how to counter the White House juggernaut. Some are trying to revive the 2016 resistance. Some suggest "playing dead" in the hope that Trump flames out.

But former Democratic Senator Joe Manchin suggests a very different way, one many Democrats may find unpalatable – work with the president. In a recent interview, one of the few he's given since leaving Congress in January, he told me: "[Trump] is the leader of our country. Why would you not work with him?

Just because he's a different party? Didn't vote for him? That's not a reason."

For years, Manchin was a unique politician who could win re-election as a Democrat in the deep-red Trump country of West Virginia. Occasionally, he was a thorn in the side of the Democratic Party, even voting against some of Joe Biden's key policies that couldn't, and didn't, survive without his support. Before leaving office in January, Manchin changed his official designation from "Democrat" to "Independent."

It's because Manchin is retired both from the Senate and from the Democratic Party that I wanted to get his thoughts on what's happening in Washington and how the Democrats would meet this moment. In my experience of politics, people tend to be more candid once they're no longer running for office. "I want Donald Trump to succeed," Manchin told me.

"I want to help wherever I can help. I want to give them my experience of the mistakes I have made that we shouldn't make again." Manchin says he hopes President Trump would also "open his arms up" and work with Democrats and Independents, but he clearly believes Democrats would do better with the electorate by working to get things done, rather than working to attack the president at every turn.

Indeed, the most striking thing about our conversation is how he doesn't hold back on criticism of his former party. Take, for example, the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, a 29-year-old from El Salvador who was deported back to El Salvador last month after a governmental error and an immigration judge previously saying he should remain in the US. "The Democrats are saying, 'what a horrible situation.

'…They're making more of a case out of this one person who's an illegal immigrant being sent out of the country that could have been tied to a gang…if I'm a Republican strategist, I am going to keep quiet and just let you all go on." Ábrego García denies that he was a part of a gang – and the Trump administration hasn't provided any evidence to establish that he was. And, in our conversation, Manchin was also clear that Ábrego García should have had due process and that any attacks on the authority of America's judicial system should not be tolerated.

But, in Manchin's view, many of Trump's actions in the early days of this second term are not as objectionable to many Americans as they might be to Democratic officials in Washington. "He's doing exactly what he said. People shouldn't be all upset," Manchin told me.

"The people who are upset right now lost. This is the system." Getty Images