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- [00:00]
Senator Chris Murphy
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Podcast Host
By Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who in my opinion, is one of the biggest resistance leaders. And today we're going to talk about the incoming rambling dementia hour that is called the State of the Union. Senator, are you going or staying away?
- [00:22]
Senator Chris Murphy
Hell, no, I'm not going. I mean, he's made a mockery of the State of the Union, like, listen, I, I care about institutions, I want to preserve democratic institutions, but he is lit this one on fire. And we don't need to be a backdrop for his histrionics. It just legitimizes what's going to go on tonight. And that's a whole bunch of lying. That's a whole bunch of grandstanding. So I won't be there. I'll. I'll be with a bunch of my colleagues, a bunch of guests who are going to tell the story of what's really going on in this country. We'll be down the hill from the capital, outside in the freezing cold, telling the real story of what's happening in the United States today.
- [01:04]
Podcast Host
Good for you. I. I saw recently that one of your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Mike Lee, tweeted something. Kylie popped us up. He tweets cartel hitmen wear masks. Leftists aren't complaining. And you ducked, dunked on him immediately and responded with, oh, dear, Mike, I literally couldn't make our argument better than you do. The bad guys wear masks, the good guys don't. And of course, Mike Lee has already deleted his tweet because he got owned by you. But let me ask you this. Since we know that Christy Noem, Donald Trump are making a mockery of our institutions, do you think ICE needs to be abolished?
- [01:48]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, I mean, you are going to have to scrap what we have today and rebuild it. I mean, listen, I think we have to have some capacity to enforce our immigration laws, but this version of ice, it can't do it. So tear it down. Rebuild it with something that is humane, compassionate, enforces the laws, but doesn't terrorize immigrants, protesters, and the communities in which they live. So, listen, there's no doubt that the next president is going to have to tear down this version of ice, this version of cbp, and rebuild it from the ground up.
- [02:28]
Podcast Host
So this homeland, they have such a massive budget. And a story that's really been bothering me is the billions of dollars that have been allocated to purchase warehouses. And in these warehouses, they want to concentrate human beings. One could call these concentration camps. And this, to me, when you see what they're doing with the masks and you see where they're heading with these warehouses. I don't think that they should be given a center. I don't think Congress or Senate should give them a cent zero daylight. What is your position on that?
- [03:03]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, I agree with you that until this agency is obeying the law, until they stop terrorizing our communities, our children and migrants to this country, they should not get any taxpayer dollars. I mean, I swore an oath of office, and my oath of office commands me to uphold the Constitution and the law. This is a lawless agency. And so we should not fund an agency that is operating outside of the bounds of the law and outside of the bounds of morality. This is a black and white issue. And the American people are with us on this. They have seen what ICE is doing. They know that just because maybe it's disappeared a little bit from the headlines doesn't mean that ICE doesn't continue to violate the law and the Constitution. And so I think that people are with us. Don't fund the Department of Homeland Security until they start complying with the law. And there's no doubt that those warehouses, by the way, are going to be used in an effort to violate the law. Who are they going to put in those warehouses? They are going to put legal immigrants to this country. And again, it's really important that we understand what they're doing. They are not going after violent criminals. Maybe 5% of the people that are housed in these detention centers are people with serious violent histories. They are not going after illegal immigrants, if that's even the appropriate term. They're going after people who are here showing up for their court appointments, applying for asylum, obeying the law. Those are the people that are going to be thrown in those warehouses, which is another reason, on top of what are likely to be inhumane conditions in those warehouses, that we should not provide ICE or DHS any additional money beyond what they already have to build them.
- [04:56]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I mean, these are really paperwork issues and the way they are treating human beings. You saw Liam Ramos, he had his little beanie on with the bunny ears. And there's thousands upon thousands upon thousands of kids like that in the United States right now. And a lot of them are hiding, like they're hiding in their homes because they don't want to go out in public. And they. What I think has been so horrible about Trump 2.0 is the delight in which Trump and his cult of personality enjoy this form of recreational cruelty. The way you hear Stephen Miller when he gets on cable news, the way he talks about it their social media where they use showing people shackled up and they put asmr, like, it relaxes them. And then you have. Oh, forget that. Oh, Nancy Maze is her name. She says for fun when she gets home from work, she likes to watch ICE Raids. And so beyond Trump, okay? This guy's old. He's a dementia duck. Something's going to happen before we know it. But what he's incubating, Senator, is what really concerns me, what he is incubating in American culture right now. I worry that the Democrats are not putting up enough of a resistance to this because these oligarchs own all the algorithms. So as we head into the State of the Union, which is awful. The State of the Union is really bad. Let's you and I talk about the state of the resistance, which you and I are in. And so the state of the resistance, I feel, is, meh. I don't feel like it's that great right now. I feel like it could be better. I feel like MAGA doesn't hate our Democratic leaders enough. Remember how much they hated Nancy Pelosi. What do you. What's your take on the state of the resistance?
- [06:52]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, we're not good enough. I mean, I'll just be honest with you. We're not good enough. What I think allows me to sleep at night is that the President has not been successful in suppressing popular dissent. We still have huge numbers of people showing up to protests, record numbers for the last no Kings Day. When there are elections happening, voters are turning out in huge numbers and rejecting his candidates. But there's another story when it comes to elites. Corporate elites are doing nothing to stop him. The media is folding left and right. And while we have had good moments here inside the institution, we haven't had enough of them. I mean, frankly, every Democrat should be boycotting the State of the Union speech tonight. There should be no Democrats providing a backdrop for what he is going to do and say. I don't frankly think that we should have funded the Department of Justice or the Department of Defense so willingly without at least having an argument over putting constraints on DOJ's ability to lock up and pursue Democrats or DOD's ability to pursue illegal wars overseas. I'm glad that we're doing what we're doing right now. This is a strong moment saying no funding for the Department of Homeland Security until they start behaving legally. But we could have drawn that line with DOJ or with dod, not just with the Department of Homeland Security. So I think my assessment is that the public has not gone underground, has not been bullied into silence, that we have had moments where we have risen to the task, but there's still a lot more to do.
- [08:45]
Podcast Host
I really appreciated you said that you regretted your vote for Marco Rubio, and I really appreciated the honesty in that because I have kind of had a political evolution of sorts since Kamala lost. And I realized that I kind of bought into kind of the corporate idea of what the Democratic Party is supposed to be. And I was a good MSNBC Democrat. And I see so many of the Democratic leaders that I would die on a hill to vote for servicing corporations before they surface. Working class Americans. And I saw the way the Democratic establishment treated Zoron in who was. Who won his primary and how they treated him in New York. And it just step after step after step. I would say I've kind of been deprogrammed off of this corporate Democratic yuck that the party seems to have. And the last time you were on my podcast, I remember you saying something where you said, you know, I used to think, Bernie, I don't know what's going on with him, but I'm finding myself more and more in agreement with him. So it seems like you two have kind of evolved on some of these things. And I think political evolution and admitting our mistakes is important. It's growth. And so where are you now with corporate money, corporate Dems and affordability, and the Zoran Mamdanis of it all?
- [10:13]
Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah, I just don't think that politics any longer is organized around traditional left right dynamics. I think the most important cleavage today is are you for corporations and their continued consolidation of power or are you for workers? Right. Do you wake up every day trying to think about how to make the market work better for corporations, or do you wake up every day thinking about how to empower workers? And I think that the American public understands that, that the corruption of our economy is downstream of the corruption of our politics. That these corporations get everything they want from our economy because they get everything that they want from our government. And so if you don't get corporate influence out of our politics, then you have no hope at fixing and unrigging our economy. So I did used to take corporate PAC money. I don't any longer. I probably, you know, would have listed cleaning up private, anonymous corporate money in politics as a top 10 issue. Now I think it's a top two issue. I don't think the Democratic party regains its legitimacy in this country writ large or with lower income voters. Unless we wake up every day trying to get corporations out of our politics so that we can pass the, the big reforms necessary, the reforms that Bernie Sanders and Zorin talk about to fix the big problems that regular workers out there are facing.
- [11:52]
Podcast Host
You know, I've been really surprised at the capitulation by industry titans because in my world, like, if you have fuck you money and somebody like Donald Trump is trying to bully you, you'd be like, fuck you. You're only going to be here for four years. My company is going to be around longer. Then you're going to be President. 80 year old dementia boy. I mean, that would be like the big thing if you had that kind of money. But they all have capitulated and it's so gross, it's so disgusting to see them treat their customer base, the American workers, with such disdain. All right, let's move on to the State of the Union tonight. So you're going to watch it. Do you think you're going to have any sort of like, shot games? You know how you can take a shot if some, if Trump says something like, what, what if we were, to my viewers at home, to my listeners, what do you think that the word should be that we all take shots?
- [12:49]
Senator Chris Murphy
Oh, it's a, it's a, it's a great question. I don't know, I won. Tremendous, tremendous, tremendous is maybe my best, my best, my, my best guess, but I wouldn't recommend, I mean, that sounds like, that sounds like a miserable way to spend your night to get like sloppy hangover drunk watching Donald Trump. Like, if you're gonna get that drunk and have to deal with a hangover, like, I don't know, like, do something better with your night than watching this charlatan.
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Podcast Host
How many times do you think he's gonna say that he won the 2020 election?
- [13:30]
Senator Chris Murphy
I mean, over, under, like the over under is maybe, is maybe three, four. I mean, you know, I mean, to be serious, like he is getting ready to try to push through the Senate, you know, this, this, this bill, the SAVE act that, you know, he thinks is a pretext for the federal government to take over state elections. It really isn't. But like, that is on his mind every single day. It also may be true that the reason we invaded Venezuela is so that we could capture the guy that Trump thinks rigged the voting machines in 2020. And under duress, he can get Maduro to claim that that happened.
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Podcast Host
Don't you think he's going to pardon Maduro to get Maduro to say that?
- [14:13]
Senator Chris Murphy
I mean, Like, I just think, like, you have to understand that this is the thing that motivates him to get up every morning. Like, they're basically like two things that drive Donald Trump's day. One, covering up for himself and his friends their involvement in a child sex ring, and two, proving that he never, ever lost an election. Like, that's Owen building a ballroom, right? Those are probably the three things that he spends 75% of his day on. Conspiracy theories relative to the election, covering up the Epstein scandal and building the ballroom. And I wouldn't be surprised if he spends some time talking about one, two or three of those things tonight.
- [14:58]
Podcast Host
And what are your predictions? The Supreme Court's going to be there. They just gave him a big L on his tariffs. He's wound up like a cheap clock over that, saying that the Supreme Court justices are under foreign influence and all of this stuff. And that's a pretty, you know, that's a pretty big claim for a sitting president to claim about the justices that the ones, a couple of them that he appointed. I think he's gonna, I think he's gonna go off on that. I don't think he can say on script. I don't has the ability to do it. What's your prediction on that?
- [15:30]
Senator Chris Murphy
I mean, it might be in the script. I mean, I think he's a, I mean, he's a, he's a bully. And he really does believe with evidence that bullying conservatives works. Right? He has bullied congressional Republicans. He has bullied Senate Republicans. He believes that he can bully Republicans on the Supreme Court. And here's my worry. I mean, my. So listen, they got the decision right on the tariff case. It was black and white. It wasn't a, a tough or hard call. But I worry that, you know, they're, they're, they are crossing him on tariffs in part because it's good for the corporate class that helped elevate people like Gorsuch and Roberts and Coney Barrett so that they can give him a victory on something that strikes more deeply at the heart of American democracy, like an attempt by Trump to take over elections in Minnesota or Georgia or Pennsylvania. They're all politicians, right? And so they're trying to, you know, preserve part of their legacy while staying in good graces with the Trump ecosystem. Maybe I'm sort of too cynical about the way that the Supreme Court makes decisions, but I don't think so. This tariff case, you know, may be quickly followed by a decision on, for instance, the federalization of elections that could be really, really damaging to our ability to survive this fall.
- [17:03]
Podcast Host
I think that's a really good point because I always think when I watch Trump and all of the people surrounding him, they are governing, like they're never going to face accountability and Trump is never going to face accountability for any of this because the Supreme Court gave him immunity. They are the architect of this lawlessness. It starts with the Supreme Court that handed down the presidential immunity. And so I have zero faith in this court. And I think that as I your cynicism, I think is what we need right now because we have to be clear eyed about who they are and who we're resisting. And you're exactly right. That's exactly what they're going to do. They're going to, they're going to, this was, okay, we're going to be normal here and then they're going to fuck us. You're exactly right.
- [17:45]
Senator Chris Murphy
One for you, one for, one for you. And in the end, like, they got elevated to the court because they're in with the Trump crowd. And Trump really does believe that if he marginalizes them with that in crowd that it will affect their decision making. And you know, he's been right in terms of how that's impacted everybody from Mike Johnson to John Thune. And he's probably right about that. When it comes to the Supreme Court, they're politicians. I mean, Gorsuch, Coney, Barrett, they got to the court because they played the game and they're still playing the game. And right now, Trump runs the game when it comes to the American right. I'm just not counting on any of them being heroes.
- [18:33]
Podcast Host
I completely agree with you. We have to come to the terms with that. I think if we ever get power again, we're going to have to term limits on justices, we're going to have to reform the Supreme Court. There needs to be an accountability oversight board. I mean, Clarence Thomas, his wife was involved in the coup. He has no business, business ruling on, you know, cases that have to do with January 6th. And I also think, and I want to get your opinion on this. The President is running a pardon racket right now. You pay a million dollars and get pardoned. Don't you think we need to do away with the presidential pardons?
- [19:07]
Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah, I do. I haven't sort of given a ton of thought to this yet, but that seems sort of patently obvious at this point that that clause is now just rife for abuse. And so, you know, there's probably some really good ideas out there on how to limit it. Maybe you don't have to get rid of it, but it's just a racket right now. Totally just a racket. And, you know, I mean, given that the United Arab Emirates are like putting $180 million secretly in the President's pocket, a million dollars to know one of Trump's lobbyist buddies, you know, looks quaint in comparison. So maybe we don't talk about the pardon corruption as much as we should, but increasingly the polls are starting to show that people are increasingly focused on the corruption. I think at the beginning they had kind of priced it in. They knew Trump was corrupt, they were willing to excuse it, but they're now sort of coming face to face with the sort of nuclear grade level daily corruption. And folks are starting to say, yeah, I knew the guy was corrupt, but I didn't think he was this corrupt. And I think if we keep talking about it, just telling the truth about what he's doing, you know, this will be what, you know, gets that 39 approval rating down to 36. And man, when you're at 36, you can't win.
- [20:34]
Podcast Host
It is 36. New Washington Post. Washington Post poll came out yesterday and it's at 36.
- [20:40]
Senator Chris Murphy
Is it 36? Yeah, I mean, that's, that is the number at which, like, you know, Democrats running for the Senate are winning Iowa and Alaska and Texas. And so we got to keep talking about corruptions. You know, I probably talk about it more than any of my colleagues. I'm going to actually go down to the floor in the next few weeks and give a long speech just going through the tick tock of what's happened in just the last few months, but keep focusing it. Just because the American public didn't respond to that narrative right off the bat doesn't mean that the cumulative impact of the corruption isn't going to start to change the way that they think about him.
- [21:13]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I think, I just think the, the Oval Office is, it's operating as a crime syndicate. I just, I think that he is operating using the federal government. All of our hard work, all of our 250 years, all of our good faith, our imperfect. He is using it to enrich himself and his son's dumb and dumber right in front of our faces. And I just, every day, like, every
- [21:37]
Senator Chris Murphy
day, that's what they're, that's what they're doing. And they, and they decided early on, I mean, the first term they were involved in corruption, but it was, I don't know, kind of lower level, more peripheral corruption this time because he knows he's probably not likely going to be in the Oval Office for more than a couple years. He's just going to make as much money as he can off of the office, and people are starting to figure it out.
- [22:02]
Podcast Host
I completely agree. I'm so happy that you're not going to the State of the Union. I like that you're not giving him an inch. I think that is the way to go because he's such, I call him because I'm from the South, a titty baby, and that kind of getting no attention is the best way to deal with him. Senator Murphy, thank you so much for all of your hard work. So many people look to you as a leader of the resistance, and I know all of my listeners do. So we'll keep watching you.
- [22:29]
Senator Chris Murphy
Awesome. Thanks for having me.
- [22:41]
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- [23:09]
Senator Chris Murphy
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- [23:11]
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