Senator Joe Manchin (I-WV) said Sunday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that he was no longer a Democrat because the party’s brand had become “toxic.”

Host Manu Raju asked, “Do you still consider yourself a Democrat?”

Manchin said, “I am not a Democrat. In a form of what? What the Democratic Party has turned itself into the national brand? Absolutely not. And they know that. There are good people on both sides.”

He continued, “The brand got so bad the D brand has been so maligned from the standpoint of… It’s just toxic, and the D brand is basically this. You know, I’ve told them. I said, first of all, as an American and as someone in the Senate, I’m going to take the constitutional oath, the Constitution that I take very, very, very, very seriously.”

Manchin added, “I’m going to help every human being pursue…the pursuit, the happiness life in their life, pursuit of happiness. I don’t care who they are. I don’t care what color. I don’t care about any of the things they love, and they do it. And that’s you.

“I’m going to make sure you have that opportunity and right to live your life. Just don’t make your life if it might be on the extremes or in the minority of a few, make me believe that’s the norm or make me and my family believe, or my children believe, or this or that,” Manchin continued.

“No, I will protect you. Just don’t try to mainstream it. And the Democratic Party, the Washington Democrats, have tried to mainstream the extreme,” he said.

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Manchin, along with retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who also left the Democratic Party to become an independent, served as a gatekeeper against some of the more extreme left proposals from his former party during the Biden-Harris regime.

He and Sinema drew heat for opposing massive spending bills and for opposing the elimination of the 60-vote filibuster rule.