LEWISTON, MAINE – Former Sen. Joe Manchin, a longtime Democrat turned independent, took aim at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday for trying to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, calling his former party leader's efforts "crazy" as he joined Collins on the campaign trail in her high-stakes re-election race.

Collins, a moderate Republican who at times has voted against President Donald Trump and her party, is fighting for her political life as she runs for a sixth six-year term representing blue-leaning Maine in the Senate. She is the only GOP senator seeking re-election in a state Trump lost in the 2024 election.

The race between Collins and Troy Jackson, a former state Senate president, is a top flip opportunity for Democrats as they try to win back the Senate majority from Republicans in the midterm elections. The latest public opinion polls indicate a margin-of-error showdown, and the latest Fox News Power Rankings rate the race as a toss-up, as do leading nonpartisan political handicappers the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and Sabato's Crystal Ball.

Manchin, who worked closely with Collins during his years in the Senate, was asked by Fox News Digital how his campaigning with his former colleague would sit with Schumer, the top Democrat in the chamber.

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"Chuck Schumer would not be surprised of me being with my dear friend. There is no surprise there at all. I told him he was crazy in 2020 from working against her so hard and he’s crazy now to work against her," Manchin said, as he referred to unsuccessful efforts by Democrats to defeat Collins in her re-election six years ago, and their current push to oust her.

Manchin emphasized, "This is not right. She is the soul of America. She is the soul of the Senate, and he knows he needs more Susan Collins, no matter what side of the aisle they’re on. This is ridiculous."

Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer's political team and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for a comment but did not receive a response at the time this story was published.

A former West Virginia governor who served in the Senate from 2010 to 2025, Manchin frequently broke with his party, frustrating Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as Schumer and other Senate Democratic leaders.

As he works to oust Collins from the Senate, Jackson has repeatedly tried to anchor the senator to Trump, who has seen his approval ratings in Maine and across the country drop further underwater.

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But Manchin said that Collins is "not a Trump senator. She's not a Republican senator or a Democrat senator. She's an American senator that represents her state of Maine ... the most independent minded person I've ever met."

Collins noted that "Joe and I were part of every bipartisan initiative that passed the Senate and became law during the years that we worked together ... I just so enjoy our partnership in getting things done for Maine, for West Virginia and for America."

Manchin and Collins spoke with reporters after meeting with restaurant workers and customers at Simones' Hot Dog Stand, a famed local eatery in downtown Lewiston that's been serving customers for a century. It was the first of two campaign stops in Maine's 2nd Congressional District, a key swing district.

Collins and Jackson last week faced off on the debate stage for the fourth and final time. The senator used the debates to showcase how her Senate seniority has helped her deliver federal funding for Maine. Meanwhile, Jackson used the showdowns to position himself as an outsider who understands the struggles and frustrations of working-class voters.

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Jackson won a special nominating convention in late July to claim the party's Senate nomination, which was left vacant after primary winner Graham Platner ended his campaign following allegations he raped a woman he previously dated. Platner denied the allegations but dropped out.

Jackson, who earlier this year unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, had campaigned alongside Platner during the primary campaign.

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Collins, meanwhile, has a history of surviving Democratic efforts to unseat her.

Six years ago, she trailed Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, the Maine House speaker at the time, but Collins won re-election by nearly nine points while former President Joe Biden carried the state by a similar margin.

Fox News' Kailey Schuyler contributed to this story.

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is taking heat from the left yet again, this time over a report urging her staff to probe Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's potential ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Semafor reported Sunday that Weiss "personally advocated for CBS News journalists to pursue numerous story angles related to El-Sayed’s supposed sympathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood."

The report cited two anonymous CBS News staffers who were aggrieved by Weiss' directive. Anonymous CBS News staffers complaining about their boss to liberal media outlets has become commonplace in the media industry. 

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NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham believes disgruntled CBS News employees constantly offering anonymous quotes to liberal publications in an effort to smear Weiss "helps reinforce" the longstanding bias toward the left. 

"She’s making them do difficult things," Graham told Fox News Digital. 

"Can we look into whether Abdul El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, like his family says they do? How dare you," Graham quipped. "You’re not supposed to do stories that might make Democrats look bad."

While Weiss’ defenders have suggested staffers are essentially irked that she asked them to do journalism, progressives lashed out against Weiss over the latest report.

"A rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Muslim troll who has zero qualifications to be running national TV network is in fact running a national TV network and trying to get it to behave like a rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Muslim troll," far-left Zeteo founder and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan reacted on X.

"No self-respecting journalist should work for Bari Weiss," The Nation correspondent Jeet Heer wrote.

"Nobody should respect or trust ANYTHING coming out of @CBSNews at this point," far-left activist Shaun King exclaimed.

Notably, CBS News largely refrained from covering the controversy that blew up last week when unearthed social media posts from his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, claimed their family, including their mother, had ties to the controversial Islamist group after he flatly denied there was any connection to NBC's Kristen Welker.

"Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect," Abdelhadi wrote in a 2012 X post, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

Their mother, Fatten Elkomy, had attended Egypt's Alexandria University, which, according to a report from the Brookings Institution, had strong Muslim Brotherhood activity back in the 1970s.

In another 2012 post, Abdelhadi, a professor at the University of Chicago, wrote, "My family has long been MB, but I've always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively."

In a third post from 2013, she wrote, "Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in #Egypt. Lie low, stay safe."

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Graham feels that CBS News staffers who didn’t want to look into the El-Sayed story must find it "wildly offensive" to even consider a conservative point of view. 

"They object [to] the idea that they have to be somehow a little bit fair and balanced," Graham said. 

As for El-Sayed, he recently doubled down on his denial during a contentious exchange with NBC's Tom Llamas.

"It's funny to me," El-Sayed responded. "I was born in 1984 down the street in Rochester Hills. I was raised here in Michigan, went to the University of Michigan, rebuilt the health department in this city, led the health department in this county — and you want to ask me about what's happening in Egypt in 1970? Are you serious?"

"I get it, but you were asked a question, and you gave an answer," Llamas responded.

"I have no ties, we have no ties," El-Sayed said, reiterating his denial.

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The Democratic hopeful told Llamas he hadn't had conversations with his mother about her alleged Muslim Brotherhood activity and accused the anchor of using "hearsay evidence from a tweet."

"That's just not serious," El-Sayed said.

"But you've also gone after the president for truthfulness and when people ask you a question, do you expect the truth?" Llamas then asked.

"Are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?" El-Sayed fired back.

"I don't know, that's why I'm asking," Llamas responded.

"And I'm telling you that I was not," El-Sayed told him.

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In an interview on MS NOW, El-Sayed likened the questions about his family allegiances to ones John F. Kennedy faced as a Catholic while running for president in 1960.