Bonus: The Senators at the center of the 50-50 split

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POLITICO

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4.5 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“If we miss this opportunity, God help us.” Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski. Two moderate senators smack in the middle — and on either side — of a split 50-50 Senate. On our first episode of Playbook Deep Dive, the two friends open up in a rare interview with POLITICO’s Burgess Everett. They get personal: about reconciliation, frustration over the Senate’s hurdles — even why Murkowski hogs the best fishing holes. And Manchin reveals a major endorsement, heard first on this show.Subscribe to our new weekly politics show, Playbook Deep Dive, wherever you listen to podcasts.Rachael Bade is a co-author of POLITICO Playbook.Burgess Everett is co-congressional bureau chief at POLITICO.Adrienne Hurst is a producer for POLITICO audio.Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO audio. Special thanks to Elana Schor, Anthony Adragna and Ben LefebvreSHOW NOTES Democrat Manchin backs Republican Murkowski's reelection, by Burgess Everett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're in the Russell courtyard, sort of a gem of the Capitol.
0:07.0	Not a lot of folks know.
0:09.0	If I have to go get coffee at cups, that's a classic Capitol Hill sourcing move.
0:14.0	I will usually suggest if the weather is warmer than 40 degrees,
0:18.0	why don't we come sit out here because it's better than sitting in the basement of cups
0:22.1	when you want to talk to a source or something like that.
0:25.5	Totally fair.
0:26.6	Nature brings out people's best.
0:28.5	I agree.
0:30.8	And by the way, I'm Rachel Bade, one of our playbook authors.
0:34.4	Burgess, tell people who you are, please.
0:37.0	I'm Burgess Everett. I'm a congressional
0:40.7	bureau chief of our congressional team. I specialize in the Senate. And I'm a big Maryland
0:47.3	Terrapins fan if you want to know something about me. So I hear you broke some news.
0:54.1	Yeah, it's a moderate Democrat endorsing a moderate Republican, which doesn't happen that often.
1:01.9	And it kind of gets to the heart of the story that we're trying to tell about senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, a Republican.
1:13.5	This is an actual unique look at people and a relationship that you don't see.
1:20.7	The same thing that makes Manchin and Murkowski unique is the same reason that they're not
1:25.1	representative of the Senate. If there were more relationships
1:28.3	like Manschen and Markowski, we wouldn't necessarily care about two senators being friends. That would
1:34.0	be, you know, a dog bites man story in journalism parlance. And instead, it's a man bites dog. This is
1:40.3	unusual. Wait, these two people from different parties are actually friends and one of
	...

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