Senator Chris Murphy
Appearances
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, I mean listen this whole thing is bullshit I mean, this is this is Ramaswamy and Musk, you know trying to capture government for their own interests Maybe it's just a TV show But it is definitely not an honest attempt to try to trim the fat off of government it is either just PR or it's part of the kleptocracy in which government is just going to be turned into a instrument to enrich them.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Maybe they cut some car subsidies, but it definitely won't be the ones that go to Elon Musk. But I do think it is true that our party decided over the course of the 2024 election to become the defenders of democracy. And that made it look like we're the defenders of the existing democracy, which nobody likes. So when I came into politics 20 years ago, federal politics
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
You know campaign finance reform ethics reform cleaning up government like that was a top three issued for Democrats We talked about it all the time We were really vocal critics of the way the democracy worked and you know by the time that Trump came around that was kind of like six or seven or eight on our list and so we definitely do have to start elevating our assault on the status quo of
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
In democracy and arguing for why we want to get billionaire dollars out super PAC money out the revolving door closed Whatever it is. We've got to become we've got to sort of recapture our our roots Which is the government and democracy reform party. I Think we do that and we attack their attempts at reform as bogus and we'll be in much better position right before the election
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, no, I do not think we have the requisite credibility today. And Joe Biden, for all of his strengths, was not necessarily the right messenger to open up a new populist critique of the way that the neoliberal economy works.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I think he was very sincere in his belief that we should start breaking up corporate power and breaking up monopolies, but he was not practiced in that rhetoric because that's not what he had spent his life working on. But I think there's a bunch of ways that we can solve for this. I mean, we can change the way we recruit candidates.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I think I do a pretty good job as a United States senator, but maybe we should not have as many lawyers and maybe we should have more folks who come straight out of working class or union backgrounds running for office at the local and federal level. I think that would help us build credibility as a party.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
We can understand how our really good ideas that just sort of toy with the margins of the existing marketplace don't inspire people. I like the fact that we are through Medicare prescription drug prices, but that really falls cold with a lot of folks. We should just cap prescription drug prices. We should just say that nobody should pay more than X for these drugs.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
25 super important drugs, we should just say that your rent can't increase by more than X percentage a year, that credit card fees can't go higher than this number. I think we just need to be engaged in sort of more broadside frontal assaults on the existing marketplace, have bolder economic reform ideas, and maybe think about having a better diversity of candidate backgrounds.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, I mean, listen, Oxford is known as breeding populist revolts, right? That's where it all starts.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Just walking over to my office for this interview, I was having that exact conversation with Elizabeth Warren as we were talking about the fact that they are two different messages, right? There is a billionaire cabinet being assembled right now, right? Greater wealth in 169 countries. This is the kleptocracy being constructed right in front of our eyes.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
People who are going into these agencies to steal. steal for their friends. But that's a little different argument than the argument against Kash Patel, right? Kash Patel is being put into the FBI in order to destroy our democracy, in order to make people bear a punishment for political dissent. Neither of those things is super popular.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
If I had to pick, I think it's more important to sort of make people understand that this oligarchy that is being constructed is real and that this fake populism that Trump ran on is indeed illusory. So I think it's probably more important to spend time
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Talking about the billionaire takeover of government because that is real that is happening But I I think you've got to be able to walk and chew gum I also think that we should raise as loud as we can what is happening at DOJ and the FBI and this is where I I I'm a little worried about where our party is.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I think we are still giving them more credit than they deserve I think Democrats don't really believe that Some of our colleagues are going to be in jail six months from now I don't think they understand how the media is as we speak starting to fold Under Trump's pressure and so I would love us to kind of raise the temperature on the threats to democracy I don't think we're over stating the case.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
But I think if we're kind of mild and milquetoast in the way that we talk about why Kash Patel is nominated or why Pam Bondi is nominated, then that argument falls pretty flat.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, I mean, part of what you're telling Republicans is that this is a jumping off point. If the FBI becomes captured by the White House, if it just becomes an arm, a political arm of the White House, there may be no putting that genie back in the bottle, right? There may be a Democrat who comes along and uses it for their own purposes as well.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
But I think the trouble here is that you have to assume if you beat one of these nominees that somebody better will come along. And what Republicans have been pretty good at over the years is once in a while opposing a nominee, patting themselves on the back, and then somebody even worse gets nominated and they wave them through. I think Trump's made the decision.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that he wants the DOJ and the FBI to be his political persecution agency. And I don't know that Republicans actually have the strength to oppose multiple rounds of nominees.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I'm going to try to convince my Republican colleagues, but I am much more focused on making the case to the American public because I have little confidence that the requisite number of Republicans are going to actually stand up multiple times, which is what they would have to do, even if they beat Patel or Bondi on the first vote.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Right. And listen, this is how democracies fall. There are very few instances where a healthy democracy collapses where there is a before and after moment, right? That the parliament building doesn't burn down in every dissent.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
What's going to happen here is that just enough of the political opposition either goes to jail or gets threatened with imprisonment that a lot of regular ordinary Americans just decide to not show up to the protests, to just stay home, to put their energies somewhere else.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that the press feels sort of just fragile enough, feels the threat of having their license pulled just serious enough that they shave the edges off the way that they cover the president. And if that's the case, then you won't really notice the moment in which the opposition has become so weak that they can't win another election. That's what happened in Hungary. That's what's happened in Turkey.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
That's what's happened in Serbia. They still have elections. There's still an opposition that sort of has the trappings of being real. But the regime always keeps them weak enough that they can never win. And so Republicans will be able to say, well, no, I still see a Democratic Party. I still see op-eds criticizing Donald Trump. This is a healthy democracy, but it's just unhealthy enough.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that the Trump family never, ever loses power. And I think that's really hard for Americans to believe because we've gone 240 years with two healthy parties. But the playbook is out there for Trump to follow. It's been used a dozen times in other countries and other democracies that are no longer healthy democracies.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And that's what I worry about, that Republicans will just be able to look themselves in the mirror and say, you know, the Democratic Party's still there, everything's okay, but that the thing is permanently rigged in their favor.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I mean, I am surprised. But I mean, listen, we're going on 30 years of... greed having become an American virtue in which there is really no shame involved in ordering your life in a way that just prioritizes getting wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. And so these guys get away with it because people kind of understand that as long as it's a means towards enrichment,
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
you are fulfilling an American value. But it is extraordinary what everybody from Apple to Amazon to Facebook to Comcast to ABC News has done to signal to Trump that we are not going to give you trouble. And it's because these billionaires and these companies have become so massive and so diversified
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that government policy really matters to them in terms of what their returns are, in terms of how much money their shareholders make, and in terms of how much money the CEOs take home. And broadly, it sort of feels like the country is giving these billionaires a pass because we've just valued enrichment ahead of the common good or ahead of protecting democracy, and that's super sad.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
That's a relatively new sort of value alignment in this country, new to the last 40 years, but it's part of what will sort of sing the song of democracy's downfall.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I think the most important thing to do is to convince people that we are in the slide, right? Because if people still think this is a potential dissent, then they aren't going to hold anyone, media companies or their elected officials, to account for participation in that slide. If they bring charges against Liz Cheney or against Adam Kensinger,
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
That in and of itself could spell the end of American democracy because that will be a signal to people that there's just too much risk to get involved in politics. And so if that were to happen, we need people to understand that that is a potential death blow.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And your elected officials position on that one act, the bringing of charges against a member of the January 6th committee is a red alert moment. And here's where I don't think the party is and the movement is meeting the moment. I agree with you, we are in mid-slide, but we don't talk like it.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And so the only way that we put pressure on Republicans at the state level, at the federal level, to raise their voices, to put pressure on Republicans to stop the slide, the only way that we get media companies to change their tune is to make people understand that the unraveling is happening as we speak, and that's broadly not the way the Democrats are talking today.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
We're talking as if it's a potential development sometime in the future after January 20th.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Well, I mean, I think it involves a broadside attack on the power of billionaires in our economy today. And have Democrats been a little reluctant to engage in that critique because some of those billionaires are on our side? Certainly.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Um, is it maybe part of the reason why we have stopped, um, elevating campaign finance reform, meaning getting private money out of politics, um, in our issue, uh, priority because, you know, we now more than ever rely on some of those really, really rich people to fund our campaigns and super PAC shirt. Um,
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So this is, I think, part of what we have to get our arms wrapped around, that people want to vote for the party that is going to blow up the current rules of engagement between the economic elites and government. And right now, they don't believe that's the Democratic Party.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I think we've got to be able to look at ourselves and decide whether we want to still have our own operations funded in part by you know, that very same set of economic elites.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I didn't. So we passed the Senate years ago. Right. So any of us have the opportunity to block it. I did not. I did not block it because I think on balance, it's probably the right thing for the country. But there is this argument about, you know, kids having to. sit out in the freezing cold super early in the morning, which is also not awesome.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I'm for it, but I'm not like enthusiastically for it. I'm not evangelizing on it.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
That sounds so confusing. Here's my compromise. If you pair it together with the elimination of the penny. I'm in. I mean, we got to stop minting these fucking pennies. I could take a look at that.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I know everybody's like, oh, I've been to Connecticut. I've driven through your state, right from Boston to New York. No, stop. Take a stop in New Haven. Go to Sally's or Modern or Pete's. There's plenty of options. And your opinion about our state and your willingness to spend a little bit of time on your way through will be transformed.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Suspends Ukraine Aid, Canada-Mexico Tariffs Kick In, Major Address Tonight: AM Update for 3/4
I think every Democrat needs to make up their own mind. I think that State of the Union speech is going to be a farce. I think it's going to be a MAGA pep rally. not a serious talk to the nation.