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Senator Joe Manchin, who left the Democratic Party last May and registered as an independent, is taking some parting shots at President Joe Biden as he finishes up his Senate career. 

Manchin appeared on CBS’s “The Takeout” podcast on Friday. He talked about how he had tried to get Biden to work across the aisle on the American Rescue Plan and how he warned about the dangers of inflation if Democrats followed through with their plans to extend unemployment benefits through October 2021, according to Fox News. But he says he was ignored due to the advice of 17 Nobel laureates.

“I warned of that, and I got criticized, as you recall, they told me they had 17 Nobel laureates,” Manchin said, adding that they were “17 educated idiots” who were telling Biden “what you want to hear because you paid them.”

“You’ve got inflation coming at you hard when you do this, and now you’re still keeping people out of the workforce because you’re going to give them an extension clear up until October 2021 of unemployment benefits, and they can’t go back and can’t be threatened to lose their unemployment benefits,” Manchin said. “You’ve got a perfect storm hitting you.”

Besides inflation, Manchin said that Biden had blindspots on immigration and Afghanistan, according to the outlet. 

Manchin served as West Virginia governor from 2005 to 2010. He ran in and won a special election to fill a Senate seat left vacant by the death of Democrat Robert Byrd, and he won a full Senate term in 2012 and a second term in 2018.