Senator Joe Manchin said on CNN Sunday he “can’t imagine” supporting a filibuster carveout on voting rights.

Jake Tapper spoke with the West Virginia Democrat about voting rights legislation on State of the Union. Manchin said he doesn’t want to do anything to “separate our country further.”

After he talked about what he would support, Tapper asked him if there’s “any circumstance under which you could imagine allowing a carveout” for the filibuster on this issue.

“I know you oppose getting rid of the filibuster, but there are some people in the more moderate camp, like Angus King of Maine, who’s an independent,” Tapper said, “who have said he’s possibly willing to step back from his… opposition to getting rid of the filibuster just for voting rights because he’s so concerned and it’s become so partisan. Can you imagine ever doing that?”

“Jake, I can’t imagine a carveout,” Manchin said.

He recalled how Democrats used the nuclear option back in 2013 and argued that ultimately “that carveout worked to really carve us up really bad.”

There’s no stopping it. And if we don’t put this back in order, you get rid of the filibuster which makes us work together, and I’ve said this. The brilliancy of our Founding Fathers was this: why in the world did they give two senators to Rhode Island and Delaware at the time they were forming this great nation of ours when they told New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio you only get two too? It was basically to make us work together so the big states wouldn’t overrun the little states. It’s minority participation.

You can watch above, via CNN.

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