Fighting the Broligarchs with Senator Chris Murphy

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau: Episode Summary – "Fighting the Broligarchs with Senator Chris Murphy"

Release Date: February 2, 2025

In this compelling episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, host Jon Favreau engages in a profound conversation with Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. The discussion delves deep into the pervasive influence of technology and the internet on politics, society, and individual well-being. Addressing critical issues from AI advancements to the current political climate, Favreau and Murphy explore the intricate ways in which our digital existence shapes modern life and democracy.

---

Introducing the Guest: Senator Chris Murphy

Jon Favreau opens the episode by introducing Senator Chris Murphy, a regular presence on Pod Save America. Murphy is recognized for his thoughtful approach, particularly concerning the impact of big tech on politics and personal relationships. Favreau highlights Murphy's unique position as one of the few elected officials featured on Offline, setting the stage for an in-depth discussion.

---

The Deepseek AI Moment and Its Implications

The conversation kicks off with the recent breakthrough by Chinese AI company Deepseek, which launched an AI model rivaling OpenAI's ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost—$6 million compared to the billions typically invested.

Jon Favreau [04:07]: "We love talking about loneliness. We don't love loneliness."

Chris Murphy [06:12]: "Deepseek does the same thing as those existing AIs without any of the AI infrastructure. The trillion-dollar, it turns out we actually don't need it to make a similar quality AI."

Murphy explains that Deepseek's open-source model challenges the existing AI economic structure, which relies on expensive infrastructure and advanced chips. This innovation not only disrupts the market, causing a significant sell-off in tech stocks like Nvidia but also democratizes access to AI, making it more affordable and widespread.

---

Geopolitical and Economic Impact of Deepseek

The emergence of Deepseek raises alarms and excitement in equal measure. Marc Andreessen refers to this development as an "AI Sputnik moment," prompting fears of China's growing dominance in technology.

Jon Favreau [05:43]: "Are we back to being afraid of Chinese technology now or do we still trust our tech overlords in Beijing?"

Chris Murphy [07:25]: "For better or worse, we are going to have more AIs. And for better or worse, we're learning that China is going to be a part of this technology, whether we want them to be or not."

Murphy discusses the potential for increased AI proliferation, the economic ramifications of overvalued tech stocks, and the geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China. He underscores the dual-edged sword of affordable AI—while it promotes innovation and accessibility, it also poses challenges in regulating technology and maintaining national security.

---

AI’s Energy Consumption and Environmental Implications

One significant advantage of Deepseek’s model is its reduced energy consumption compared to traditional AI models.

Jon Favreau [09:24]: "It also seems like one of, as you mentioned, one of the big concerns about AI is the cost of just all the energy."

Chris Murphy [09:39]: "This is great news if you care about the environmental impact of AI."

Murphy highlights the environmental benefits of more efficient AI models, reducing the carbon footprint associated with large-scale AI operations. However, he also touches on the ethical concerns, such as content censorship inherent in models developed under authoritarian regimes.

---

Censorship and Content Control in AI Models

The discussion shifts to the implications of AI models like Deepseek operating under strict governmental controls.

Jon Favreau [09:43]: "They are not as good a news if you want your AI to tell you what happened in Tiananmen Square."

Chris Murphy [09:47]: "The Deepseek will not do that. I am a little bit less worried about the censorship of it."

Murphy explains that while Deepseek's AI may bypass certain infrastructure limitations, it also inherits the censorship and biased information prevalent in the Chinese internet landscape. This raises concerns about the quality and reliability of information delivered by such AI models.

---

The Influence of China in AI Development

Exploring China's role, Murphy compares Deepseek's approach to Western AI development, emphasizing the potential for global collaboration and competition.

Jon Favreau [16:55]: "Wasn't Elon trying to do that with X?"

Chris Murphy [16:57]: "American tech companies are constantly trying to do WeChat and for complicated reasons it never works."

He notes that China's integrated approach to technology, exemplified by super apps like WeChat, offers a stark contrast to the fragmented efforts seen in the U.S. This integration fosters a more cohesive digital ecosystem but also centralizes control, posing challenges for democratic oversight.

---

The Role of Social Media and Tech Oligarchs in Politics

Murphy and Favreau discuss the symbiotic relationship between political figures and tech moguls, particularly focusing on Elon Musk's recent activities.

Jon Favreau [23:46]: "Elon Musk made a surprise virtual appearance at a campaign event for the German far-right political party AfD."

Chris Murphy [25:03]: "So look, when people... Elon Musk is too far right for the German far right."

They critique Musk's endorsement of far-right politics, highlighting the problematic alliance between tech billionaires and extremist movements. This partnership not only influences political discourse but also impacts the regulation and direction of technology development.

---

Interview with Senator Chris Murphy

The Threat to Democracy

Senator Murphy expresses deep concern over the current Trump administration's actions, viewing them as existential threats to democracy.

Jon Favreau [52:56]: "I want to have a bigger picture conversation about what big tech and the Internet are doing to our politics, society, our well-being."

Chris Murphy [53:23]: "If we were sincere during the campaign that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to democracy... then when he starts doing it, we can't be quiet."

Murphy emphasizes the urgency for Democrats to vocalize and act against democratic erosion, fearing that silence could lead to irreversible damage.

Media's Role and Accountability

Murphy criticizes the media's compliance with Trump's narratives, suggesting a failure to hold him accountable effectively.

Chris Murphy [60:10]: "He got a win when in fact, we were weaker at the end of that day than we were at the beginning."

He points out instances where the media uncritically accepted Trump's statements, leading to diplomatic and political setbacks.

Democratic Party's Strategy and Coalition Building

Murphy advocates for a more aggressive and populist Democratic strategy, moving away from elitist perceptions and addressing economic inequalities.

Jon Favreau [62:53]: "Is that right?"

Chris Murphy [64:57]: "We have to become a much more aggressive, pugilist, populist party. We have to name who has power..."

He argues that Democrats need to reconnect with economically disadvantaged voters by challenging the influence of billionaires and big corporations.

The Impact of Social Media on Community and Loneliness

Addressing the societal impacts of social media, Murphy links digital isolation to broader issues of loneliness and decreased communal trust.

Jon Favreau [75:04]: "It does seem to me like maybe the biggest vulnerability for Trump and the Republican Party right now is the alliance that they have forged with these tech oligarchs."

Chris Murphy [80:01]: "Kids since that time have now spent half as much time every single week with peers as they do did 20 years ago. There's just a cataclysmic decline in socialization."

Murphy suggests policies targeting the reduction of social media’s negative effects, such as regulating children's usage and promoting local communities to rebuild social bonds.

Policy Solutions and Cultural Shifts

Murphy proposes comprehensive policy reforms aimed at enhancing community ties and reducing reliance on detrimental digital interactions.

Chris Murphy [81:56]: "Let’s have a really concerted national strategy to support healthy downtowns and small businesses to bring us back in person. Let’s support local journalism."

He envisions a future where government policies foster real-world connections and support local institutions, counteracting the isolating effects of the digital age.

---

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Jon Favreau concludes the episode by commending Senator Murphy for his proactive stance and commitment to defending democracy against technological and political challenges.

Jon Favreau [82:12]: "Senator Chris Murphy, thank you for joining Offline and, and thanks for modeling the, the right, the right democratic behavior right now and for speaking out."

The episode wraps up with a reflection on the critical role of informed and active political engagement in safeguarding democratic values in an increasingly digital and interconnected world.

---

Key Takeaways:

• AI Democratization: Deepseek's affordable AI challenges traditional high-cost models, potentially democratizing access but raising concerns about quality and censorship.

• Geopolitical Tensions: The technological advancements by China intensify global competition, impacting economic and security landscapes.

• Media Accountability: The media's failure to critically assess political narratives undermines democratic accountability.

• Democratic Strategy: A shift towards a more populist and inclusive Democratic strategy is essential to counteract the influence of elites and billionaires.

• Social Media Impact: The pervasive use of social media contributes to societal loneliness and erodes community trust, necessitating robust policy interventions.

• Policy Recommendations: Supporting local businesses, regulating AI and social media, and fostering community engagement are pivotal for strengthening democracy and societal well-being.

This episode of Offline with Jon Favreau offers a nuanced exploration of the intersection between technology, politics, and society, urging listeners to consider the profound implications of our digital-centric lives on the future of democracy and community.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is brought to you by Delete Me. Data brokers make a profit off your data. Your data is a commodity. Anyone on the web can buy your private details. This can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts, harassment and unwanted spam calls. But now you can protect your privacy with Deleteme. That's why we recommend Deleteme. Deleteme is a subscription service that removes your personal info from hundreds of data. Brokers sign up and provide Delete Me with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there. DeleteMe sends your regular personalized privacy report showing what info they found, where they found it and what they removed. DeleteMe isn't just a one time service. Deleteme is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. To put it simply, DeleteMe does all the hard work of wiping your and your family's personal information from data broker websites. Look, this is important. I've done this before. It's. You think that, okay, whatever, a lot of information on the on the web for about you, who cares. But you know what, like your family's info and your parents and address, it's all over, over the place. So you really, it's a really helpful service. And then, and it's important also not to just do it once, but to keep doing it periodically, which Delete Me does. So it's great. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners today. Get 20% off your delete me plan by texting offline to 64000 text offline to 64000 that's offline to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. See Terms for details. Hi offline listeners. I want to recommend a podcast I think you'll enjoy. Possible. Co hosted by co founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, possible is an award winning show that explores the brightest version of our future and what it will take to get there. Tune in to hear Reid and Aria interview AI leaders such as Fei Fei Li about how human centered AI can enhance spatial intelligence. Bill Gates on the power that we have with AI to change our lives and Sean White on building humanistic empathetic AI that goes beyond intelligence. If you're curious about how technology, when used effectively, can shape the future of humanity, then subscribe to Possible Today wherever you get your podcasts.

[Max Fisher]

I sort of did a deep dive about three, four years ago into the New Right. And they were having a much more interesting conversation than Democrats were having because they were talking about issues like meaning and purpose. Right. Like the most important things to human beings. What is their purpose when they wake up in the morning? How do they derive meaning? Where does actual contentment and happiness come from? Democrats were not. We just assumed that if you had a job and you had a decent wage that you were happy and content. And that's not actually how it works. People want to feel like they have power and control over their lives. And Republicans were more often than not delivering them arguments that actually spoke to that powerlessness that people felt.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Chris Murphy]

I'm Max Fisher.

[Jon Favreau]

And you just heard from today's guest, Senator Chris Murphy. Senator Murphy's a regular on Pod Save America, and we don't have too many elected officials on offline, but he's been outspoken on two topics we talk a lot about here. The growing and worrying influence of tech on our politics and the growing and worrying influence of tech on our relationships.

[Chris Murphy]

He's a very thoughtful guy for a senator, I have to say. Very offline of line. So I'm excited to hear what he says.

[Jon Favreau]

And that's not a backhanded compliment. It's just a compliment.

[Chris Murphy]

No, I mean, usually, you know, they kind of.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, believe me. Oh, believe me, I know. You don't have to convince me.

[Chris Murphy]

I mean, no disrespect to the Senate, an august body.

[Jon Favreau]

So when he reached out to say he wanted to talk about tech billionaires cozying up to Trump and controlling the flow of information, I thought it would be a great conversation. And it was. We talked about Elon Trump, Zuckerberg, all the other rich nerds reshaping our politics, what Democrats plan to do about it, and why. He wants to work with Republicans to address another problem made worse by social media and the Internet. Loneliness. We love loneliness here. We love talking about it. We don't love loneliness.

[Chris Murphy]

We're going to solve it with a senator is going to come hang out.

[Jon Favreau]

With you, and then I'm going to feel.

[Chris Murphy]

That's right. You're going to feel better.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. But before we get to that, this week, a Chinese artificial intelligence company named deepseek sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and Wall street when it released a new AI model that rivals OpenAI's ChatGPT. What makes deep Seek so alarming or exciting, depending on who you talk to, is the company's claim that its model was built with fewer advanced computer chips than other AI models at a fraction of the cost, allegedly $6 million, which is tiny, which is change, just pocket change for some of these, for some of these AI guys. For most of them, the announcement led to a major tech stock sell off on Monday, including a $600 billion loss for US chip maker Nvidia, which is the biggest one day market loss in US history. At the moment, Deepseek is the number one most downloaded app on the Apple App Store. So first, first Red Note, now Deep Seek. Maga's favorite techno utopian, Marc Andreessen called this AI Sputnik moment. Are we back to being afraid of Chinese technology now or do we, do we still trust our tech overlords in Beijing? What's going on, Max?

[Chris Murphy]

I know you mentioned the nerd tech billionaire overlords before they got a new one. Xi Jinping is up there. So we should talk a little bit about what makes this Deep Seek moment such a big deal. Because like, look, I normally hate to take AI models seriously in any way, shape or form. I think the entire business is kind of ridiculous. But this was like, even if you never plan to use AI in your life, this was a very big deal for the, like the economy, for the geopolitics. So I can like rap through like what makes this AI such a, like significant moment in our world. So AIs cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to make. There's a trillion dollar infrastructure economy around making them. There's these servers, really expensive chips, there's all the energy, there's all the construction. Like Trump just did, remember this $500 billion Project Stargate thing? So they crazy.

[Jon Favreau]

That was more around the infrastructure.

[Chris Murphy]

That was the, that was just the physical, the things you need to build in order to make the AIs. And deep seek does the same thing as those existing AIs without any of the AI infrastructure. The trillion doll, it turns out we actually don't need it to make a similar quality AI. And it is verifiable. It's open source. People are going through, they're checking how it works. They're people.

[Jon Favreau]

Which is, which is basically the way that the Deep Seq did this is because they built it on open source.

[Chris Murphy]

That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, and it's, it's, it's not the best AI, but it's like ranked third by a lot of these benchmarks. So it's real, it's legit. And this means that if that entire AI economy, that is a trillion dollars is like unnecessary, you turn out not to need it, you turn out not to need the chips, the energy, the infrastructure. And you also learn that the AIs that investors have poured tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into making, it turns out that's not what that product costs. We just as a global economy, wildly overpaid for it. That's bad news if you have a 401k. That's why we saw a trillion dollar sell off in the stock market. That's why there are some concerns that there could lead to a deeper sell off in these tech stocks. There's also the geopolitics of it, which is.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean we, we put the United States, put export controls, yes. Very strong on these chips.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Remember the chips act that we always, we always like to make jokes about. But this whole thing was like, the chips are going to be, these chips are going to be so valuable in the future for artificial intelligence, for a lot of other technology. And we want that, we want these to be made here in the United States. And so we want to, you know, and we also want to put limits on how many chips Nvidia can sell to China or other countries. And it seems like what happened is Deep Seek because they couldn't get as many chips as they wanted. They decided they needed a workaround and then their workaround was only $6 million.

[Chris Murphy]

Right. Which was reinventing the entire technology to do it like wildly, wildly on the cheap. It would be like if you figured out how to make a car for $100, like that would be bad news for Detroit and for the car market. I think it's a little too early to say like whether this is good or bad for the like geopolitics of it. Part of the premise of that ban was that AI technology or these chips could have some sort of like military national security applications. We still don't even know if that will ever be the case. And if it is the case, we don't know if the Deep Seek model of doing this without the chips, like will be able to circumvent that. Ultimately, I think what this means for consumers is that there is going to be a lot more AI in our world. Even as this is bad for the industry because it turns out that this technology is so cheap to make and it's so cheap to license. There was someone who figured out you can build a machine to locally host Deepseek to. So just have the entire program on your computer for $6,000. If you want to do that with one of the OpenAI AIs, you're looking at like maybe millions of dollars to build the infrastructure for it. So for better or worse, we are going to have more AIs. And for better or worse, we're learning that just China is going to be a part of, of this technology, whether we want them to be or not.

[Jon Favreau]

It also seems like one of, as you mentioned, one of the big concerns about AI is the cost of just all the energy. And it seems like the Deep Seq hints at maybe we don't need that much energy after all.

[Chris Murphy]

This is great news if you care about the environmental impact of AI. Now it may be that the big.

[Jon Favreau]

Income not as good news if you want your AI to tell you what happened in Tiananmen Square.

[Chris Murphy]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

Because again, they are.

[Chris Murphy]

The Deep Seq will not do that. I am a little bit less worried about the censorship of it just because the.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Chris Murphy]

If you ask Deep seek what's going on in Xinjiang province in China, they'll say like nothing. Everything is great. What are you talking about?

[Jon Favreau]

But there'll be plenty of other AI models. You can ask ChatGPT and find out.

[Chris Murphy]

That's right. Yeah. And you can locally host these. But yeah, this is I think legitimately great news for energy, our energy use. And in fact, the biggest stock dips on Monday weren't chip maker companies, they were energy companies. It was like the people who make gas turbines. So I will say development, I will.

[Jon Favreau]

Say before, as of right before this recording, we're recording on Wednesday, Nvidia has not recovered much at all. The tech stocks in general have, but like the NASDAQ has recovered somewhat, but Nvidia, not so much.

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah. And it's one of the biggest stocks in the world because there was this assumption that everybody was going to need to buy thousands or millions of these chips that are very expensive. And now it turns out that we don't. I don't need them.

[Jon Favreau]

Sam Altman originally said in response to this that it was incur. It was impressive. Now I saw that he's saying there may have been like intellectual property theft.

[Chris Murphy]

Oh, is he?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Trump said that it's kind of, it might be exciting or good news for everyone. Trump seemed positive on it. Vaguely positive.

[Chris Murphy]

They don't have IP law in China, so good luck to Sam. I really wish you the best in pursuing that one.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you think this means for some of the, like the broader implications of how humans relate to artificial intelligence? That now it may be. Not necessarily. Yeah. Now there's just going to be more of them and it's going to be like. It seemed originally like this was going to be a. You know, Sputnik was mentioned by Andreessen. This was going to be like a race to see which country could get the smartest AI to take over the world. But the open source part of this, part of this development now makes me think it's more of a global race for this, that. But like it's sort of. Everyone's going to benefit from everyone from other countries doing research.

[Chris Murphy]

That's a good point that we have been really focused on what this means for the makers of AI. But I think the more significant thing is maybe what it means for the clients of AI, where if you're a company in India, you're a small company, whatever kind, you don't have to have a bajillion dollar contract with OpenAI to use their AI that's trained on a billion servers that fill up half of Arizona. You can get something really cheaply. I think we don't yet know the implications of that because we don't know a lot of the use cases for this technology.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And I do, I do wonder. It started making me think of the implications of, of AI becoming like a commodity.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, like if it becomes really cheap and anyone can use that and then it becomes smarter, like that also seems like not a direction.

[Chris Murphy]

But you were the, the deep seat the Chinese AIs are going over.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, well, just. If we just keep improving, then we improve. You know, like it's. I will say that I'm, I'm using ChatGPT more.

[Chris Murphy]

Are you really? Yeah, not for like a lot of people. I played with it and I found some use cases.

[Jon Favreau]

My use cases. It is, it is replacing Google for me.

[Chris Murphy]

That's interesting because Google is garbage.

[Jon Favreau]

Just like if I, I was in the car today and you know, someone texted me and it read the text, it interrupted the podcast, read the text. And I was like, where did that setting change? Right? And I'm like, how do I figure, how do I figure it on the iPhone? And I just, I was, I was parked and I just was like, hey, what happens when they read the text on my iPhone?

[Chris Murphy]

And it was just like immediately, just a quick explanation.

[Jon Favreau]

So much better. And I, I just to see, I like, what, what would Google do? And Google's, you know, like five different links and you're like, is this one. This was a Reddit thread here. The other thing. So it, I think it is helpful for search engine like things. At least that's how I found it.

[Chris Murphy]

I also know, I don't want to name him because I don't want to blow up a spot. There's a YouTuber who you and I both know who uses AI a lot for like little workflow stuff. And it will be like he has a staff Illustra and it will be like he doesn't know how to convey the idea of an illustration to the illustrator. So he'll mock something up with an AI that is not good enough to put on the YouTube channel, but is a great way for him to communicate with his illustrator. And he has like 10 different uses for it. He uses it to summarize transcripts and it's like, it's a little scary to see how much he's like living inside of the machine. But it is also there are use cases for it. I think it's totally true.

[Jon Favreau]

I also asked in the middle of the night last night, help. Why is my 4 year old waking up all the time all of the sudden?

[Chris Murphy]

Does ChatGPT know?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, they had a lot of ideas.

[Chris Murphy]

Really? Was it, was any of it helpful?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's just like, you know, it's like separation anxiety when they get to this age. And here's some helpful tips. It wasn't anything like groundbreaking, sure. But it, like I said, it's a Google, it could be a good Google replacement.

[Chris Murphy]

I mean we talk a lot about how we for thousands of years lived in a world where the big problem was getting information, was understanding what's going on with my A body. Why am I having this medical experience? Well, you know, how does the world work now? We have way too much information and the big challenge is figuring out how to sort through it, parse it, understand it in the aggregate. I spend a ton of my time trying to do that and it's a ton of work. And if AI can reliably, which is obviously the big question, can reliably help us to make sense of the data. Information overload. I don't mind the idea of something that is a filter between me and the fire hose of information that's on the Internet as long as it's an effective filter.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean, two developments because I hadn't checked in on ChatGPT in quite some time that I think are helpful one now it's up to date, you know, so it'll say as of January 2025. And so that's helpful. And then also it gives you the sources like and there's just so there's little icons of like where they got all the information from. So you can like double check if you need to. Right, okay. So, so what do we think now? We got the, the Chinese, they're, they got their spyware app that the kids all like, just kidding.

[Chris Murphy]

I'm not going to do it.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm not going to do it.

[Chris Murphy]

No, I get it. I understand.

[Jon Favreau]

Given TikTok and now Seek, is China just set to dominate the big rush towards RedNote?

[Chris Murphy]

It does feel like all of a sudden China is everywhere. And I think that there we are going to see a lot of concern this week in the coming weeks of like, is it China's Internet now? And I think that's overstated. China's share of Internet technology is still actually smaller than you would think it would be given that they have a GDP about 2/3 of ours and they actually have more computer science PhDs than we do. It's still a totally American dominated, US dominated market. But I think that we are going to look back at this moment that Chinese Internet technology, with all of its quirks, all the things that make it different, entered our lives and just never left. And I actually don't know that that is totally a bad thing. I mean, there are some things about the way the Chinese Internet works that I don't love, such as the thought control and totalitarian speech policing. But there's a lot about the Chinese Internet that is really cool. Like, I don't know if you've ever used like WeChat style super apps.

[Jon Favreau]

They haven't.

[Chris Murphy]

It's, it's really cool. It's like takes everything that you would ever want to do on the Internet and then synthesizes it all together into one app where if you're like, yeah, trying to.

[Jon Favreau]

Wasn't Elon trying to do that with X?

[Chris Murphy]

He is.

[Jon Favreau]

That was the original vision.

[Chris Murphy]

Yes. American tech companies are constantly trying to do WeChat and for complicated reasons it never works. But if you, if you see it or if you even just like watch a video of someone using it, it makes our Internet feel like the fucking Bronze Age.

[Max Fisher]

Really.

[Chris Murphy]

Yes, it is. They are really. It's really cool. Part of it is because it's built around E commerce, whereas ours is just built advertising. Which is why our Internet is always looking shittier and theirs is always looking nicer. But it's just to say that like American tech has gotten stagnant. Like we've talked about this many times. When is the last time that American tech, which is now dominated by like Detroit Big three style quasi monopoly of a few companies, delivered a product that.

[Jon Favreau]

We actually liked Meta's like, here's the metaverse. It sucks, right? Here's some goggles that suck.

[Chris Murphy]

Apple.

[Jon Favreau]

Every time now Apple has like a big announcement. It's not. Remember Apple used to have big announcements.

[Chris Murphy]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

Like every cool new product every year is huge.

[Chris Murphy]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

The last cool thing, it's like, oh, we have another. We have a next generation camera on the iPhone that like no one can tell the fucking difference.

[Chris Murphy]

I know. And they, and the thing is they don't have to deliver better products now because this is what happens when a monopoly gets entrenched. And like, I really feel like we are at the equivalent of moment of. It's like it feels like being in the 80s and watching the arrival of the first Japanese cars, like the arrival of the first Toyota, like coming off of the boat. And the thing to remember is that people absolutely flip their shit when that happened. Like Japan was gonna take over. There was a best selling book called Becoming War with Japan because everyone just assumed that like, well, if they're coming for our cars first, then they're gonna take everything else next. Like you see their movies, like if you watch Die Hard, there's all of this anxiety about like Japanese companies. And I think ultimately like it was a good thing in a lot of ways. Japan made a lot of cars that Detroit would never make, could never make. And like they cut into that monopoly which drove down prices. There's a lot of innovation and like we are in a similar point where we have a Silicon Valley, Big three or they sometimes they call them the Magnificent Seven. And we kind of need. I need this competition. I think.

[Jon Favreau]

Spoken like a true globalist. Do you know that this is. We're in the America first era.

[Chris Murphy]

I know. I guess.

[Jon Favreau]

Do you understand that?

[Chris Murphy]

I guess. You know what? I actually have some skepticism about the America first agenda. I have to tell you. Weirdly, so does.

[Jon Favreau]

So far so good.

[Chris Murphy]

So does Donald Trump. Did you see Trump's response to this?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Chris Murphy]

I was so curious how he was going to respond because it was terrible for the stock market, which he's very sensitive to. And also his big buddies in tech, his new bro, his oligarch bros. Were hit so hard by this. I was like, yeah, but you know what?

[Jon Favreau]

He likes them take being taken down.

[Chris Murphy]

I think that's what it was.

[Jon Favreau]

He doesn't want them to.

[Chris Murphy]

I think that's what it was. Yes, yes. He's. He said, let me read the quote. I view that as an, a positive, as an asset because you won't be spending as much and you'll get the same result. So, yes, it's like that, that handshake that he does with other heads of state where he pulls him close and then kind of, this is why he.

[Jon Favreau]

I think, I mean, it's, it's part of what made him reverse on Tick Tock. Right?

[Chris Murphy]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

The kids like it, people like it. I want to make sure everyone has their video up because I don't want to get, I don't want people getting angry at me.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And also, if you think that if you want me to be tough on China, I can be tough on China and say that I have a good relationship with Xi because he's scared of me and, you know, and I'm tough and I'm a great negotiator, which is why he respects me.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

So you can do the script in your sleep now.

[Chris Murphy]

I know, it's very, it's very predictable. I, one more thing I will say on this is that if we are in another Toyota moment, if we are in another moment of the first Japanese automakers showing up for the first time, I would say, like, play that tape forward and look 30 years from now when the crypto financial crisis of 2058, you know it's coming, decimates our stagnant bloated tech sector in the same way the 2008 crisis decimated Detroit. You know, there's gonna be a lot of debate when President Malia Obama says that she's bailing out the big three of Silicon Valley because we have to save workers. The once storied Silicon Valley needs cultural preservation. But me personally, I gotta be honest, my heart is gonna be with Senator Tag Romney and saying maybe, maybe let them fail. But we'll hash it out. We'll hash it out when that happens.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, she's gonna get a stiff challenge.

[Chris Murphy]

From Barron Trump just as soon as we hear him talk.

[Jon Favreau]

Just as soon as we hear him talk. It's gonna be really tough.

[Chris Murphy]

First words are gonna be, I'm right.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, you know what? Maybe I'll give my data to Xi Jinping after all. I'll send him all everything he wants.

[Chris Murphy]

So look, when people, we've had this debate so many times, it's like, don't give your data to Chinese tech companies, but Silicon Valley takes your data just as bad. The solution to this is have data privacy laws.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Chris Murphy]

Have federal data privacy laws, which weirdly, even though we've been calling for, on the show for years, Congress has not yet passed.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, yeah, they're getting to it.

[Chris Murphy]

It's on the agenda.

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is brought to you by Lumen. Did you know 80% of resolutions fail by February? You can beat the odds with Lumen and improve your health. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath and on the app it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management. All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fats or carbs. Then Lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on your measurements. You can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals so you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time. And Lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Lumen's great. I've used it for a while now and you just you breathe into it in the morning. You breathe into it before and after workouts. You can get a great personalized nutrition plan from it and then sort of just keep track of of all your your metabolism and everything else during the day. It's great because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does. Optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and more. Lumen gives you recommendations to improve your metabolic health. Take the next step to improving your health. Go to lumen me offline to get 20 off your lumen. That's L u m e n dot me offline for 20% off your purchase. Thank you Lumen for sponsoring this episode.

[Chris Murphy]

This podcast is supported by Comedy Central's Emmy Award winning series the Daily Show. Jon Stewart and the Daily show news team are kicking off 2025 with brand new episodes covering a brand new administration and a not quite brand new president. While it may feel like we've all been here before, it's never been covered like this with Jon Stewart behind the desk kicking off every week, Comedy Central's the Daily show new weeknights at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount.

[Jon Favreau]

Plus okay, a few more quick updates on America's favorite techno authoritarians. On Monday, Elon Musk made a surprise virtual appearance at a campaign event for the German far right political party Alternative for Germany, better known as AfD. And he told the crowd, in an apparent nod to Nazi Germany, that the nation places too much Focus on, quote, past guilt. But you have to really hear it to believe it. Let's listen. I'm very excited for the ifd and I think, I think you are really the best hope for Germany. It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in, in some sort of multiculturalism that, that, that, that dilutes everything.

[Max Fisher]

You know, I think there's like, frankly.

[Jon Favreau]

Too much of a, of a focus on, on past guilt. And we need to move beyond that. People who, you know, children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents or even let alone their parents, their great grandparents, maybe even. I mean, when is, when is tapping into German nationalist spirit and past grievances.

[Chris Murphy]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

And when does that end up?

[Chris Murphy]

Never had time to make Germany great again. Something important to know about that clip is that his face was projected onto a giant screen like that 1984 Apple ad, which looked very creepy.

[Jon Favreau]

And this is not the most important thing, but he's a terrible speaker.

[Chris Murphy]

He's not a good speaker.

[Jon Favreau]

Not a good speaker.

[Chris Murphy]

He can't get a trainer.

[Jon Favreau]

Not inspiring, even Inspiring for a far right. Right fan, whatever we want to call this party.

[Chris Murphy]

Look, some of those AFD guys, they are good public speakers. If there's anything the German far right has a proven capability with, it's a rousing speech.

[Jon Favreau]

And you know what? He can't.

[Chris Murphy]

They're following in that tradition. But Elon Musk can't fucking hang.

[Jon Favreau]

So I gotta say the is it a Nazi salute or not Debate about Elon Musk. I know the reason I was not so into that is not because I thought. I don't know. I don't know what it was. Certainly didn't. Look, I don't know why you would make smart guy. I don't know why you do that. But it's like it's a debate. I think Sarah Longwell said this on one of the bulwark pods. She's like, it's like that, the dress, remember the Nord. It's like everyone can fight about whether it is or not, but like no one's going to win that fight and it's not going to lead to anything. This to me is a little different in that he is. We now have someone who is like the President of the United States, closest advisor, the richest man in the world, who also controls maybe one of the biggest media platforms in the world, certainly the most influential among politicians and media. And now he's giving his speech to the far, far right German political party. And Selling them. Don't worry about past guilt. Germany.

[Chris Murphy]

So the, the context for this, that makes it, I think, even worse than it will look to an American, because you might be looking this and you might be saying like, well, maybe Germany does have too much national guilt, and maybe it is okay for them to feel good about being German sometimes because Germany makes nice cars too.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And if you' great grandfather was a Nazi, like, that is, you're, you're not at fault for that.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Chris Murphy]

The, the thing to understand is that within the context of Germany and German politics and the AfD especially, this is a very familiar, like, I'm not even going to call it a dog whistle. Just like this is a set of phrases that has a very specific and clear meaning. The reason that they use coded language is Germany has very strong Holocaust denial laws. There are a lot of things that legally you cannot say. And this is the statement that.

[Jon Favreau]

So they hate free speech, is what you're saying.

[Chris Murphy]

Free speech. The German far right developed years ago, like, this set of talking points that it's basically the equivalent of, you know, the 14 words that, like, we must preserve a future for the white race or for white children or something. This is the equivalent of that where everybody in Germany knows exactly what this means. Which, what it means is the Nazis, maybe they made some mistakes, but everyone puts too much blame on them and they're not as bad as everybody says. And maybe we have some lessons to learn from them. So I, I, I really want people to understand. And this is actually, in case you think this is just my, like, lib. American interpretation. This specific set of phrases used to be a thing that would get you kicked out of the German far right because it was considered too extreme. I covered an AfD rally years ago.

[Jon Favreau]

Really.

[Chris Murphy]

A guy said this, it became huge international news, and he got, not formally kicked out of the party, but, like, basically exiled from the leadership for years.

[Jon Favreau]

Wow. Yeah.

[Chris Murphy]

So Elon Musk is too far right for the German far right.

[Jon Favreau]

That is fucking terrifying.

[Chris Murphy]

He's not a good guy.

[Jon Favreau]

He's not a good guy.

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah, I know. And he's getting worse and he's getting more influential, too.

[Jon Favreau]

And I do, like, I do think that since Trump has come to power again, too, it really has unleashed, like, just some of the worst of the fucking worst. I was on X last night because I was trying to figure out what's going on with the government freeze that was frozen and then it wasn't frozen. And then what was frozen and then the right was like, it's all exaggeration. And nothing happened. And then other people are like, no, no, I couldn't get the Medicaid portal open. It was. I mean, it was so I'm like, trying to look, right? And I see Ann Coulter retweets this guy.

[Chris Murphy]

Have you been following her for a long time? Good follow.

[Jon Favreau]

She's a great follow. Good stuff. She retweets some guy who. He was like a Hillsdale College kind of guy, like, far right. And he has a picture up of the judge who put a pause on the OMB order. And she is a Muslim American.

[Chris Murphy]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

And 4th Circuit.

[Chris Murphy]

Oh, no.

[Jon Favreau]

And he said, this unelected Muslim American immigrant is now telling the President what he can and can't do. And then he responds to his own tweet and says, says, you know, I've been saying this for a while, but the real danger is not illegal immigration. It's legal immigration. Deport them all.

[Chris Murphy]

Jesus.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah. And this is like a guy who. He's like a real, you know, like 70,000 followers. You know, like Ann Coulter's retreating. All these other people following him were like, part of the maga. I didn't. I hadn't really gone deep on the, like, who was arguing about the H1B visas. That whole fight, I think we. We mentioned. Yeah, yeah, but. But some of, like, the just overt xenophobia and racism that came out during that was just like. I think it was a surprise for even some of them, the MAGA supporters inside the tent. Yeah. Oh, we were telling people we're not really racist, that we just don't like illegal immigration, but, wow, we got some people in here in the tent who are, in fact, pretty racist.

[Chris Murphy]

No, the explicit stated position of the, like, pro MAGA side of that debate was deport everybody who is of Indian origin. If you came here in the last three generations. Yeah. I think that there's has been a lot more movement in the Overton Window than certainly I appreciated very quickly. And I think contrasting this moment in my mind with 2017, because obviously coming into it, I've been thinking a lot about, like, okay, what did we learn? What worked. What worked for me, like, individually. And there's been a lot of. We've all noticed the fact that there is not the same collective national, like, we're not doing this, taking a stand, freak out that there was last time, right. There wasn't a big march on the Mall. People aren't going to the airports. There's a little bit more of a feeling of like, here we go. Again, resignation. I guess we'll get through it. And then on top of that, you also have. And I think it's really important to remember this. Eight years ago, every major cultural or business luminary in the country was taking a very strong stand that says we are here to resist Trump. Trump is bad. He's not what we stand for. They were putting out statements and now the biggest companies in America are up there at the fucking dais at the inauguration. And I think that, that, you know.

[Jon Favreau]

What, they weren't that helpful last time around. So you can have them.

[Chris Murphy]

It's, it's absolutely, it's true. But I think that all of the, I think what we are learning, it's right, they were not helpful in any material way. I think what we're learning is that, you know, two months ago I would have told you, okay, all that flailing we did, maybe we overdid it a little bit and we just made ourselves miserable and stressed. And I think what we're learning is that actually all of those social signals we were sending to each other and that so many like elites in the country we're sending down, we're saying that like this guy is outside the Overton window. The stuff that he says he wants to do on day one is extreme and unacceptable. And some of it's going to happen, but we're going to scream about it every step in the way. And I think that what we've learned is that when we kind of throw up our hands and say like, okay, well we're going to try to survive and get through it, what happens is that Overton window just gets pushed 10 more degrees.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, the thing I've been worried about for a while and was worried about throughout this last campaign is like, by the end of this Trump term, it's very possible that Trump could look like the moderate establishment figure in the MAGA movement. Because the people that are going to be staffing the government, they're going to have a lot of power. They're going to make a lot of decisions. Like, they've thought about this stuff a lot. You know, Trump is a host and an entertainer and he's like an old time, you know, he's got like sort of 80s style racism from New York, you know, like that guy. And he hasn't thought a lot about all of this shit. I mean, there was, there was some, there was some piece about Stephen Miller where in the New York Times where they said that Trump makes a joke with Miller once a while and he's like, he's like, oh, this guy, this guy. He's like, he goes, He's, he's, he wants everyone in the country to look like him. Yeah, he's pretty. He's even crazier than me.

[Chris Murphy]

Like, right. Like, right. He makes fun of it.

[Jon Favreau]

And that's Stephen Miller. Right. And then you've got like, this, the guy I was just mentioning, like, these are the people that are coming into the government. And it's actually very frightening.

[Chris Murphy]

And he is surrounded by so many people. Project 2025, America First Project, who see Trump for what he is very cynically and I think see him as a vehicle, partly because he's got a lot of these crazy impulses and instincts and he'll say anything. And I think partly because they also know that he's, like, kind of lazy. He's not that with it in a lot of ways and can be manipulated. And they came in clearly with a lot of plans that they are executing on. And I think that they have. I'm not trying to freak people out. It's not worth losing sleep over things that happened yet. But they clearly are planning to do more than this. So you do wonder, do we need a little bit more of 2017 and a little bit more of doing resistance cringe?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah. Resistance cringe. That's what we need. I worked Orange man bad.

[Chris Murphy]

I think in retrospect, I think it was really effective.

[Jon Favreau]

No, I know. Well, it is. It's the thing I always wrestle with is how to balance the, like, you never want to be the movement that cried wolf. Right. And so.

[Chris Murphy]

Which is what everybody says.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and it's. That's why it's hard. You don't want to, like, take every outrage to an 11. Right, right. Every day. But it turns out that compared to the first term.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

We're already, you know, a weekend and it's.

[Chris Murphy]

I know. And I think there is some of the, like, the Democrats cried wolf last time. I think some of that is because a lot of the, like, quote, unquote, resistance was pretty effect.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Chris Murphy]

And a lot of that was because some extremely close calls with, like John McCain just happened to hate Trump more than he hated liberal policies or, you.

[Jon Favreau]

Know, people that we did not like very much and didn't agree with, who were within. In the Trump administration.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Who were pushing back and stopped him from doing.

[Chris Murphy]

I know. I think that is the big set of breaks that we are really going to come to appreciate now that they're not here.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Anyway, not to, not to get off course here, we do have a red note, a smaller item here, which is in other Dear Leader news. Google announced this week that they would comply with President Trump's executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. In a tweet, the tech giant announced that as part of a, quote, long standing practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources, the name of the Gulf would be changed on Google Maps. Other platforms and outlets like the Associated Press have said that they will continue to call it the Gulf of Mexico. What's going on with Google is this. What is this what happens when you get a front row seat to the inauguration?

[Chris Murphy]

I. So this is for better or worse, standard Google Maps practice when they're dealing with authoritarian governments. It's not standard practice when they're dealing with democratic government. So like if you open Google Maps like in China or in India, which I guess is not fully authoritarian, but like has some tech authoritarianism, like, you will see things that reflect the government's official position on different places. But oh, for sure, this is absolutely all part of the, like, giant quid pro quo between tech and Trump. And like, I guess we're just gonna find out what Google got in exchange for this. Like, maybe we're gonna get Waymo 747s.

[Jon Favreau]

I will say there's been some polling on how people feel about Trump's executive orders and one of the least popular is renaming Gulf of Mexico.

[Chris Murphy]

Is it really? I didn't see that.

[Jon Favreau]

I bet people are probably just like, yeah, that's fucking stupid.

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah. And we're used to it. It's called the Gulf of Mexico. This is what we lear just it's a thing that has always been and felt normal. So I guess the ide did you see also in our, our oligarchy, tech oligarchy, quid pro quo. Watch ChatGPT now is on all federal work machines. Yeah. OpenAI got a giant federal contract for now until.

[Jon Favreau]

Until that next call with Xi Jinping. And then you know what?

[Chris Murphy]

Maybe it is better.

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe that is.

[Chris Murphy]

Maybe that is okay.

[Jon Favreau]

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your relationship green flags? We often hear about the red flags we should avoid. But what if we focus more on looking for green flags in friends and partners? If you're not sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags. Actively practice them in your relationships and embody the green flag. Energy yourself. Whether you're dating, married, building a friendship, or just working on yourself, it's time to form relationships that love you back. Look, everyone needs therapy even if you don't think you need it. I didn't think I needed therapy and then I went to therapy and now I love therapy. It's helpful to have someone just sit there and listen to you and it always makes you feel better when you leave. So give better help a try. It's fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient. Serving over 5 million people worldwide, you can access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties, and you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. Discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com offline to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com offline this podcast is.

[Chris Murphy]

Supported by Comedy Central's Emmy Award winning.

[Jon Favreau]

Series the Daily Show.

[Chris Murphy]

Jon Stewart and the Daily show news team are kicking off 2025 with brand new episodes covering a brand new administration and a not quite brand new president. While it may feel like we've all been here before, it's never been covered like this with Jon Stewart behind the desk kicking off every week. Comedy Central's the Daily show new weeknights at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount plus.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, one more kind of fun, kind of enraging item. Our sweet spot before we get to my interview with Chris Murphy. On Monday, New York Magazine published a piece entitled the Cruel Kids Table. Great title, which featured the, quote, young, confident and cruel MAGA influencers who helped elect Donald Trump president. Features Writer Brock Collier attended a series of inauguration parties for young Trumpers in D.C. and spoke to them about what drew them to the MAGA movement and how they're thinking about the next four years in power. And a lot of these people basically told Brock that they joined, quote, the movement so they could feel free to make offensive jokes again. That was a big.

[Chris Murphy]

That's it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, a big draw. Here's a key part of the piece though, that I'd love to get your reaction to. Quote, conservatism is a cultural force, not just a political condition, is back in a real way for the first time since the 1980s. But here in D.C. one can also witness the emerging influence of a newer type of conservative they are not disenfranchised or working class or anti elite or many of the other adjectives used to describe Trump supporters since 2016. Rather, they are young, imposingly well connected, urban and very online. What do you think? Does this younger MAGA set have More staying power now that it's become cultural instead of, instead of just political.

[Chris Murphy]

So look, every time there is a new Republican administration that comes into office, going back at least to Reagan, yeah, we get a piece like this. A big magazine like, sends a reporter to cover an inauguration party for 20 somethings. And the reporter always comes out and is like, whoa, guys, there's a new breed of young conservatives taking Washington by storm. They're fratty, they wear pearls, they're rude, they went to college and they're going to take over the gop. It's a new GOP now and they're making conservatism cool. And it's like every time, these are just college young Republicans. That's who it is. It's a thousand people. It's the same thousand people who's been here since the 80s. They feel weird and different because it's not representative of the broader coalition. At the end of inauguration, they're all fucking going back to St. Louis to work at their dad's dentistry or car dealership. These are not Senate staffers. They're not Supreme Court clerks. These people are not. I just, they, I don't know. Just think eight years ago when Milo Yiannopoulos was like, he's the new GOP now. Where is he?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, yes, but now we just had an election where Gen Z went more Republican than any, any 18 to 25 cohort over the last however many years or decades at this point.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

So there's a lot of them out there. I don't think that necessarily all the people who voted for Trump in that cohort are like the people in this piece.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Who seem like, just like, like you said frat and sorority.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, well, off.

[Chris Murphy]

There's, there's a scene in the piece when they go to get, get IV drips at a $4 million townhouse in Arlington and it's like, okay, I know. I went to college with these people too.

[Jon Favreau]

It is funny. Elijah at Crooked, he tweeted the story and he, he said, I like this discourse because it's a bunch of nerds treating typical frat bros like a new phenomenon.

[Chris Murphy]

Which is basically Max and Elijah aligned once again. Once again, me and my guy.

[Jon Favreau]

I do think there's something about the MAGA becoming a cultural, like the cultural vibe shift versus just the political vibe.

[Chris Murphy]

That's true. Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

And I think part of the cultural vibe shift is a lot of people who are Republican leaning who know that a lot of what the MAGA movement stands for and what a lot of What Trump is going to do or has done is bad and they don't like it, but they like parts of it. Either they want to make offensive jokes or they just want tax cuts and limited government. Right. Whatever it is. Right. And, and the, the cultural transformation has given them cover to be like, you know, it's fine now.

[Chris Murphy]

Right. It's.

[Jon Favreau]

We're going to all forget about January 6th, right. And the stolen election and some of the worst races and stuff like that. We're just going to use, you know, the R word and we're going to use this and we're like, so it does feel like it's a cover for this.

[Chris Murphy]

I do. I agree with that. I think that the, the focus on, like, I'm not allowed to say the things that I want to say now with Trump, I'm allowed, I think is a really big point of overlap between the piece. So I think our say non representative set and the much larger number of zoomers who turned culturally MAGA who voted for Trump for a different set of. I think what are largely different set of reasons I reading this was so funny because they all keep like they truly. You're not exaggerating. Every single person this reporter talks to. Why do you support Trump? I want to say the R word. And I feel like I'm not allowed to. And there's this kind of mystery. I was like struggling with it as I was reading the piece because everyone says I'm not. You're not allowed to say offensive things when you're hanging out with your friends. You're not allowed to say the R word. And it's like, what are you talking about?

[Max Fisher]

What do you.

[Chris Murphy]

That Biden isn't installing the North Korean like microphones in your home to say if you're making jokes or not, like you go to any fucking dive, go.

[Jon Favreau]

Say it and see what happens to you. That's what I'm saying. It's just like, you know what it is A, these are social norms that are enforced. If you want to say any offensive word or make any offensive joke, go out in public and do it, put it online. Government's not going to come after you. Maybe people might decide that they don't want to be your friend, or maybe they might say, that's not nice or that's hurtful.

[Chris Murphy]

You know, that's not illegal.

[Jon Favreau]

But like, yeah, go, go for it.

[Chris Murphy]

Well, I think, I think you kind of hit on what is happening here because I think people who are saying these things, like, if you go to not that I spent A lot of time hanging out with, like hanging out at 20 something dive bars or college bars. But if you go to them, these conversations are happening that all these people in this profile swear are not happening. And that's when I was like, oh, I understand what's happening here. These people aren't socializing in bars. They're not socializing. They're on their phone. And it like, yeah, the phone is the, like yelling at each other for what you say, speech policing, like, whatever bullshit. Like, that's. The social norms there are terrible. Like, of course you're unhappy there. Touch grass. Touch grass.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, it did make me think, you know, we spend all this time theorizing and trying to analyze like this MAGA coalition. Now you've got like the techno, you know, the Elon folks and the techno utopians and the Christian conservatives, like, what is connecting all these people. And it's like, you know what, it's really only giving a shit about yourself and deciding that, like, you get to do whatever you want to do and you get to have whatever you want to have. And that other people really don't matter that much. Feelings don't matter that much, but also like their basic standards of living don't matter that much. And the truth, telling them the truth doesn't matter that much. And it's just like, it's this very anti. It's at its core antisocial behavior, which is ironic because it's like a part piece about everyone partying together. But it is very much like, I'm going, what's good for me? What's good for me is good enough.

[Chris Murphy]

Right? It's permission and all the rest of.

[Jon Favreau]

You can go fuck yourselves.

[Chris Murphy]

Yes, it's permission to. And I think you can connect this to so many moments in the last year. Like, even just something that I think about a lot is that when Trump started tapping all of these people for the cabinet who were all accused sexual assaulters or documented sexual assaulters, and it's like, what's going on here? Or like, even, even before he was taking people the cab, like the people around him, there were all of these allegations. And I think that part of the reason that the coalition was okay with or even encouraging of that is it they read it as permission to, you know what, you're allowed to treat people however you want. These are people who are. Treat other people like shit. You vote for us, you get to do that too. And I think you're right. I think it's, it's telling people, you get to be selfish you get to live without the social contract. Now, where does that desire come from? I'm sure it's complicated. I do think that a lot of it is that we have. And I know we talk about this all the time, but I think there's a reason it comes up all the time. We don't have social networks anymore.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Chris Murphy]

We don't have in person socializing anymore. We're not connecting with, you know, this is like what Derek had talked about. You don't have your village anymore. There's set of people around you. When you have that, you feel viscerally the sense of the importance and value of having social norms that we all collectively work to uphold. It's when you're isolated that it makes a lot more sense that you would say everyone else. And it's actually good to be cruel to other people because it proves I'm going to take whatever I want for myself.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, that is exactly right. And I do think it's. It's a lesson for the opposition to that movement. Right. Because there's a lot of things you can pick at and fight at that movement. But if, if we're going to be a real opposition that gives people a choice, then we also have to like live the opposite values.

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Which is.

[Chris Murphy]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Taking care of each other, showing each other some grace, some kindness, being in seeing each other, being in community with other people, not just being online on our phones. Like I do think part of this, the social alienation and the being on the phone is it. It sort of robs us of the experiences that make you able to live in a community and to like be in a collective government.

[Chris Murphy]

Yes. That's interesting. The idea of progressivism as a cultural force for community. First that with that, which I think it makes a lot of sense why that would naturally lead people to progressive values.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I've been thinking about.

[Chris Murphy]

So we come back to my solution. Senator Chris Murphy is going to hang out with everyone in America.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, what a perfect segue. All right, before. Before we get to Senator Murphy, just two quick housekeeping notes. The first is the fires in Los Angeles have been devastating. And as proud residents of Los Angeles ourselves, we want to do everything we can to help those affected and support the organizations rallying around our neighbors in need in the months ahead. We just launched Friend of Los Angeles Merch in the crooked store with 100% of the proceeds. Proceeds going to us in our pocket. No, just kidding, Twitter, 100 of the proceeds are going to vote Save America's Action Wildfire Relief Fund. You can show off your LA pride while supporting organizations like the LA Regional Food bank, the Los Angeles Fire Department foundation, and the Latino Community Foundation. You can shop now at cricket.com store or donate directly to the fund at votesaveamerica.com relief also, the next four years are going to be a challenge, but Dan Pfeiffer, You've heard of Dan Pfeiffer? The co host of Pod Save America is here to help cut through the media noise with his Message Box newsletter. In the months ahead, Dan will break down the 2024 election, dive into how Democrats can rebuild their coalition, and strategize about how we can take on the right wing media machine. He'll also provide readers with guidance on where to volunteer, which campaigns matter most, and how to talk to persuadable voters about Trump's dangerous actions. That's all that was written. But you know what Dan's message box is. It's essential. Everyone should read that.

[Chris Murphy]

I'm a subscriber. It's really, it's sharp, it's quick. It really helps me cut through the noise. I always agree with him, which is the most important metric.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah. When Dan writes one that I don't agree with, I just, you know, delete it.

[Chris Murphy]

It never happens.

[Jon Favreau]

Deleted immediately. No, it is, it is really thoughtful and fantastic and you should, you should, you should subscribe. You can sign up now for a 30 day free trial of message [e-mail] and Dan loves this part. Yes we Dan crooked.com yeswedan when are.

[Chris Murphy]

We going to put on crooked.com Max Atista it's gonna be on that landing page.

[Jon Favreau]

We gotta get some merch for you.

[Chris Murphy]

I'm ready. I'll start doodling on some T shirts.

[Jon Favreau]

Please send us ideas for Max Merch.

[Chris Murphy]

Thank you.

[Jon Favreau]

After the break, my conversation with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy Offline is brought to you by Zebiotics Pre Alcohol. Let me tell you, if there's a surefire way to wake up feeling fresh after a night of drinking, it's with Zebiotics Pre Alcohol Zebiotics Pre Alcohol Probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for your rough next day Day Pre Alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow.

[Chris Murphy]

Just the other night I was out with my friend Pete. He just had a big promotion and.

[Jon Favreau]

I was like, dude, you don't wanna.

[Chris Murphy]

You gotta try this.

[Jon Favreau]

You can't, you can't, you can't be your usual self at work tomorrow. It's your first day, it's your big.

[Chris Murphy]

Job, it's your first day. You want to show up a little bit fresher, my man. And he said, that's what he said.

[Jon Favreau]

You got it. I have yet to find a single person who I've recommended zebiotics to who has told me, you know what, it didn't work. You were wrong. A single person couldn't find one. And I, and I basically recommended to every single person that I talk to that when I'm using it too. And it's, everyone loves it. We're works, converts all around. So try it out. Go to zebiotics.com offline to learn more and get 15 off your first order. When you use offline at checkout, Zebiotics is backed with 100 money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com offline and use the code offline at checkout for 15 off.

[Max Fisher]

The last thing you want to hear.

[Jon Favreau]

When you need your auto insurance most is a robot with countless irrelevant menu options. Which is why with USAA auto insurance, you'll get service that is easy and reliable, all at the touch of a button.

[Max Fisher]

Get a quote today, restrictions apply.

[Jon Favreau]

Senator Chris Murphy, welcome to Offline.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Jon Favreau]

I want to have a bigger picture conversation about what big tech and the Internet are doing to our politics, society, our well being. But first, I got to hear your thoughts on the opening weeks of Trump 2.0. To me, you seem genuinely more alarmed by what this Trump administration has already done than even most of your Democratic colleagues. How are you thinking about what to react to what to say and how to fight back?

[Max Fisher]

So I think if we were sincere during the campaign that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to democracy, that he was going to essentially steal from all of us to enrich his billionaire friends. Then when he starts doing it, we can't be quiet because then we compromise our legitimacy writ large as a party and a movement. There's this popular meme in Democratic politics today that the resistance didn't work and that we have to reserve our Capital and that ultimately there'll be this perfect moment when everyone will emerge from the tunnels and start the fight. I just don't believe that, that that's how political power works. I think it's really hard to get people up off the mat if you aren't telling them what's happening, which is in front of our eyes, the destruction of our democracy and the handover of power to the billionaires. So I'm kind of upset that there hasn't been more urgency expressed by Democrats. I don't think we have much credibility if we're complaining out in public and we're voting for all of his nominees and we're helping them pass legislation on the inside. And I think the moment where all is lost is much sooner than people think. You know, there is a moment where the legitimization of political violence, the threatened prosecution of Democrats, and the tilt of the information platforms towards the right becomes, you know, becomes so dangerous that there is no return. So, to me, the fight is right. And I get it. People are licking their wounds. It's hard to get people up off the mat. But I don't know that we'll be able to turn this back on if it stays off for too long.

[Jon Favreau]

There's. There's people, you know, taking time to lick their wounds and figure out the right moments. There's also, and I struggle with this, too, like, figuring out how to talk about what they're doing, where we're alarming people, but we're not panicking people, and we're not, you know, turn making everything turn, taking it to an 11. With every single development that happens, Trump and, you know, his regime media, unsurprisingly, have a different story. They're telling about the actions they're taking. You know, he just wants people in government who are going to carry out the policies and promises that that won him a free and fair election. And maybe you don't like all his pardons, but he's got the authority in the Constitution. And maybe you don't like him taking a wrecking ball to the federal government, but, you know, he gets to fire who he wants and sign executive orders that he wants, and if you don't like them, you can take them to court. That's fine. So what's all this hysteria about the end of democracy? And obviously, that story is getting out to a lot of people, and I wonder how you think about sort of navigating that in this kind of information ecosystem.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, so I understand that. I mean, I get it that people aren't up to fight 247 every day, but there is a sort of shock and awe strategy here to numb us early on. And so if you aren't able to create outrage around the wholesale, total complete endorsement of the January 6th violence, and if you aren't able to muster real organic outrage at Trump's attempt to sort of burn down 100 years of budgeting precedent and seize control of appropriations so that he can use money to reward his billionaire friends and punish his political enemies, then I just, I don't think that we'll be able to get people up out of bed later on. I don't know that it gets much worse than those two things. Once you've done those two things, once you have let people know that if they engage in violence against Democrats, they're clear, and once you grab control of federal spending so that you can suppress dissent by threatening people with a funding cut off, I don't know that that, that we have the tools any longer. So to me, those two things that he did, you know, have to be the five alarm fire for Democrats.

[Jon Favreau]

Do you think some of the reticence about speaking up has to do with the fact that some of your colleagues are just personally afraid? Like, do you sense any fear among your, either your Democratic colleagues or even the Republican colleagues?

[Max Fisher]

Listen, that is not a conversation that we have have out loud. But I don't know how what has happened in the last week doesn't have an impact. I haven't shared this yet, but it is just true. My office has received phone calls and threats that are different than anything we had received prior to the pardoning of the January 6th protesters. We have had to have very different conversations internally about how we protect me, my family and my staff. I assume other offices are getting those calls. I assume those calls are reaching other Democratic activists who speak up online all around the country. And whether or not that reaches the level of consciousness, I don't know. But when your family is threatened with harm, of course, it may at the very least subconsciously depress your interest in fighting as hard as you can. And, you know, given the fact that Elon Musk can sort of rouse those people with one or two or three tweets, it probably also has to do with why there hasn't been a concentrated effort to take him on personally because folks don't want to end up as I have been and many others on the receiving end of sort of his social media storms, because what comes with that is an implicit threat of violence.

[Jon Favreau]

Those threats do not seem to have slowed you down. Down. How are you personally sort of handling that?

[Max Fisher]

Well, I just, you know, feel like I have a unique responsibility. I mean, I'm one of 47 Democratic senators. I, I'm going to take some precautions to make sure that me and my family and my staff are protected. But if, if I, you know, mute my voice, you know, then all is lost. And, and yes, I don't completely understand why everybody isn't fighting as hard as, you know, as some of us have been. So I feel like my role right now is to model a kind of vigorous, organic, authentic anger at what is happening, to hopefully inspire others to join.

[Jon Favreau]

You told Greg Sargent last month before Trump took office that you thought the media was already refolding in terms of holding him accountable, either out of fear or financial concerns or both. How do you think journalists have been doing now that he's president over the last couple weeks?

[Max Fisher]

Badly. So take the 24 hour, 12 hour kerfuffle over Colombia as an example. So there was no problem with Colombia. They were running three deportation flights a week. Trump pissed them off by sending a military flight in. And they made some noise, always about doing this with commercial flights instead of military flights. There was some threats back and forth. American tariffs against Colombia, Columbia tariffs against America. And in the end, we ended up exactly where we started, with three flights a week, with the flights mainly being commercial flights, with the deportees treated the exact same way. But the press, man, they treated it as if this guy was a diplomatic savant. Colombia backs down after Trump threatens with tariffs. Colombia didn't threaten to do anything. Columbia was willing to do three flights a week before Trump was president. They're doing three flights a week right now. But the press, because they're so busy and they're so overwhelmed, often submit to his narratives. So he got a win when in fact, we were weaker at the end of that day than we were at the beginning, because now there's a diplomatic rift between the United States and Colombia. China is jumping in to fill the void. And it's like that we're going to get less cooperation from Colombia on really important issues like combating illegal drug trade. So I do think that the media is pretty constantly or pretty routinely getting duped in this first week. And maybe I understand because they can't take the time to sort of get educated on what's actually happening, and they just accept his narrative.

[Jon Favreau]

So I want to talk about the Democratic Party. You spoke about how in the last couple weeks, you know, Democrats have not been doing as much as, as they could to, to speak up and show that sort of, you know, raw anger and alarm that, that you are. You've also had a broader and I think, deeper critique of the party. I want to read something you wrote in the Atlantic. Today. Democrats are non competitive in half of American states. In largely rural parts of the country. Americans who feel left behind by neoliberal economics want to regain control over their economic destiny. Destiny? They worry about social media capturing their children and global commerce wiping out their main streets. They lose sleep over the decreasing power of families and local institutions. The majority of voters who feel this way today support Trump. This is disastrous for the future survival of our democracy. But it isn't too late. Democrats can build a new, lasting political coalition if we become the party that best understands and addressed this angst. You wrote that in October of 2022, which makes me think that you were not completely surprised by the results of the election we just had. Is that right?

[Max Fisher]

No, I was not completely surprised because, you know, we have become the party of the status quo. We have become the party of the elites, in part because our coalition now depends on higher income voters. And so. And then during the campaign, we compounded that phenomenon by making the defense of the existing democracy the tent pole of the campaign. Instead of an attack on the billionaire class and the corporate class, that is actually infuriating people, and they are ready for a legitimate attack on consolidated corporate and billionaire power. But they didn't see that from Democrats because we decided to, to make democracy the most important thing. And listen, it was very important to protect democracy, but it made it look like we were protecting the existing version of democracy, which has just served over the course of the last 50 years to consolidate power into the hands of the very few. So, yes, my argument is that we have to become a much more aggressive, pugilist, populist party. We have to name who has power, we have to prepare, propose bigger solutions to fix that imbalance than we have in the past. And we need to market those solutions to a broader audience and stop being so perfect in the filter for who we let into the party that, yes, we should be talking to people who might not line up with us on choice and guns and climate if they think that the economy is rigged. And of course, in the first days of the Trump administration, they are handing us that opportunity because they are so unapologetic about folding in with the billionaire class, that coalition of socially and culturally progressive and more conservative people who believe in unringing the economy. It's there for us to take. But we've got to convince them that we are actually serious about deconstructing elite power.

[Jon Favreau]

Can you talk about the political journey you've been on that led you to this critique of neoliberalism? It's not what you hear from most Democrats. And I know since, you know, you've been talking about it, you've gotten from Democrats on the left, from someone, the center left, whenever you've sort of shared your, your thoughts about the future of the party, even though I think, and I think polling bears this out, they are broadly accepted among the election electorate. But the folks who sort of do Democratic politics for a living, pay close attention to Democratic politics, fund Democratic politics, may have different views. So what sort of led you to this critique?

[Max Fisher]

Well, I mean, one very simple thing. You know, during the Biden administration, you know, all the traditional economic indicators tell you that the country's doing really, really well, right? Unemployment going down, crime going down, GDP going up, tackling the pandemic. And yet you watch the way that people are reporting their satisfaction and their happiness and it's continuing to plummet. I went, I sort of did a deep dive about three, four years ago into the new right. And they were having a much more interesting conversation than Democrats were having because they were talking about issues like meaning and purpose, right? Like the most important things to human beings. What is their purpose when they wake up in the morning? How do they derive meaning? Where does actual contentment and happiness come come from? Democrats were not. We just assumed that if you had a job and you had a decent wage that you were happy and content. And that's not actually how it works. People want to feel like they have power and control over their lives. And Republicans were more often than not delivering them arguments that actually spoke to that powerlessness that people felt. Democrats were not. We were engaged in these very wonky, wonky conversations about price and cost and jobs. Republicans were much more in touch with the sort of spiritual crisis that people were going through. And so that's why I do believe that you have to talk about that loss of power that people have had and how you are going to aggressively transfer power from a handful of people who have too much of it to people that don't have it and perhaps at the same time be a little bit less judgment about the ways in which people have a little bit slower journey on cultural and social issues than higher income, higher educated voters have.

[Jon Favreau]

It's interesting because obviously if people had a chance to make a better living or had decent standards of Living, they would be happier. But as you point out, there's something, I know you've said that it's metaphysical, some of the challenges that we face, that it's spiritual and, and you know, the Right's answer to that takes root in religion and family and sort of traditional cultural norms. And what do you think the Democratic Party's answer to that is beyond policies that can lift people up economically?

[Max Fisher]

Well, I mean, part of it is understanding that there are pieces that the New Right has come to understand that aren't fundamentally wrong. So one of the things that the New Right says is that one income should be good enough for a family. Right? Now, they believe that that one income should go to the male right. They want a sort of traditional family in which the man works, the woman doesn't, and the economy is structured in a way that delivers that sort of trad world. Why couldn't Democrats also be for the premise that one income should be enough for a family, but be aggressively agnostic as to who is working? Right. That actually is a premise that would sell broadly to Americans. But we have become convinced that if we talk about anything that sort of sounds traditional or codes patriarchy, that we are violating our kind of progressive base. And so I do think that we get scared off by some of the ideas that they have that are kind of. That come from dangerous places but have elements to them that are actually good. And that's a good one. We should. We should be for an economy in which if one parent wants to stay home to raise the kids, they can, and that their spouse's income is enough to pay the bills.

[Jon Favreau]

How much do you think the parties focus on the importance of identities, whether they are racial identities, gender identities, sexual orientation? Where you're from, what you believe about politics has, you know, sort of led us to this place where we have de. Emphasized the need for national identity. And I sometimes wonder that as the party of where we believe in progressive government and collective action and community, that this, this focus on sort of putting us all into our own buckets, which also, you know, the Right does as well. Well, sometimes saps us of that, that national identity that can sort of, you know, bring us together and give us something to rally around.

[Max Fisher]

Well, and, and when I talk about the spiritual crisis that's happening in this country, it is very much along those lines that people really do want to believe in a broader common good. They don't want to just belong to an identity group. They, they. They don't want the only things to matter being the health of their individual family. They actually want to belong to something, something bigger. And that's very hard today. It's very hard today because institutions that brought you in contact with people that were different from you, like a church or union, are much, much weaker. Both parties are selling this us versus them narrative. The Republicans, you know, pitting ethnic groups or religious groups against each other. Democrats sort of telling you that the way you should identify yourself as based upon your sexuality or race. And I think people are sort of crying out for a much more unifying vision about what unites us and some real practical policies that would help us get that done. I mean, that's why to me, something like universal service is a really wonderful good idea that speaks to a value that people sort of want to rise to. The idea that we're going to structure government, government in a way that helps us serve others, in a way that helps us learn about other people, that speaks to our better angels. And Democrats traditionally haven't talked in those terms. We just talk in old fashioned kitchen. I will help you get more healthy economically and that's going to deliver happiness. When happiness actually comes from belonging to something bigger than you, belonging to a community. And government policy could instead, instead help effectuate that goal.

[Jon Favreau]

I remember when I started working for then senator Barack Obama, it was 20 years ago this month. One of the first big speeches he gave was about faith and his faith and all faiths. And you know, he started that speech writing about this spiritual crisis of belonging and, and, and the lack of meaning. And so that was in 2005. That was before the iPhone. That was before social media became the primary way in which a lot of people interact with each other and find other people in community. And so I want to zero in on the social media part of your critique because it's something we talk about all the time on this show, not just what it's doing to our kids, what it's doing to us, our relationships, our ability to interact and debate and just function as a society. Feels like an enormous problem that even if we were able to pass a lot of the proposed policy solutions, it would still leave us addicted or at least reliant on these platforms to communicate and interact. What do you think? Is it possible to put the toothpaste back in the tube here? Does this require sort of a cultural shift as well as a policy strategy?

[Max Fisher]

Listen, I knew no, I don't think you could put all the toothpaste back in the tube because these are really useful tools. And it's just wild to me that after 100 years of looking at new technologies, whether it be nuclear power or specialized medicines, and deciding that we're going to regulate them in a way that gets the good and tries to suppress as much of the bad. We just stopped doing that when it came to social media and the Internet. And now it looks like we're about to do that with AI. No, but I think that some common sense regulations here, especially with respect to how social media intersects with children, children, would give us a fighting chance. Because what happens when you become so addicted to the technology as a kid is that you have no chance to break out of that as an adult. And the data, John, since he gave that speech 20 years ago, is just shocking. Right. Kids since that time have now spend half as much time every single week with peers as they do did 20 years ago. There's just a cataclysmic decline in socialization. And politically, what's interesting about this moment right now is that Republicans seem to be retreating from a critique of social media because those tech companies have now folded into the new right. And so whereas even two years ago there was kind of an argument that the right and that Republicans were sometimes more critical, critical of the tech companies and we were at risk of being outflanked on what I think is a very popular message, now it's there for the taking because you're not allowed to criticize Facebook or Amazon or X Twitter now that they are part of the regime. So Democrats have a real political opportunity to be the party that says, no, we're not going to let any kids on social media until they're 13. Those phones are not going to be allowed in our schools. Take the hard line. Republicans can't. Can't. And that's a real political opportunity for us.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. It does seem to me like maybe the biggest vulnerability for Trump and the Republican Party right now is the alliance that they have forged with these tech oligarchs. Not just because people don't love billionaires making decisions, all the decisions about our lives, but also because they happen to run these platforms that are making us all miserable. And I do wonder if, as you're thinking about, like, what the Democratic Party needs to do do is sort of exploiting this division or this wedge between sort of the, the new right and the tech billionaires that have now taken over the party is, is part of the strategy here.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, but can we do it? Because, you know, we, we were in bed with them for a long time.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Max Fisher]

And there is a, there is a still a, almost Genetic reluctance in the Democratic Party to take on the tech industry. For from the highest levels of the Democratic Party down to the middle and grassroots. We also just are really hesitant to kind of use the kind of terminology and name the kind of names that are necessary to be legitimate. Again, I spoke to this earlier in the conversation. I mean, Elon Musk is not super popular. Like, he's not. He's there for the takedown if Democrats want to engage in it, but you have to engage in it. And there's a little bit of. There's an element of Democrats being afraid, and then there's an element of Democrats just not being used to engaging in a real hard critique of the tech industry. And I just think if we don't engage, we're wrong, because these guys are destroying us and we're missing a big political opportunity.

[Jon Favreau]

Seems like one of the big challenges right now is, is that Trump has all the power. He and his allies have the megaphone. And to the extent that Democrats get heard, it's in response to him smashing our institutions, which comes through as a defense of those institutions, even though many of us agree with voters that those institutions are badly in need of reform. How do Democrats offer people an alternative vision for the country in the midst of what is essentially a non stop, all out assault on American democracy? Democracy.

[Max Fisher]

So just two, two pieces to that one, I think we are learning that you have to take him on in real time, that you literally can't allow for five or 10 minutes to go by. But between what he says and attacking it as a lie, and you and I are speaking on the day after the crash, the airplane crash, and, you know, I had a debate inside my staff today after that press conference he gave, like, should we wait, wait, you know, out of respect for the families, or do we need to correct the record right away? And we decided to, you know, engage immediately. So I think Democrats are understanding that the second one is a bigger topic and that is rebuilding Democrats credibility as the government reform party. Because when we critique Trump for engaging in kleptocracy, for stealing to enrich his billionaire friends, people are like, really? Right, you guys, you guys are just as corrupt. You know, you let Menendez stick around, you know, in the caucus when he was guilty of heinous shit. And you haven't talked about actual government reform for decades. Like, that's never. That has not been at the top of your priority list. And so I think we have to solve for that and we have to kind of get back to where this party was 20 years ago when ethics reform and campaign finance reform reform were like a top one, two or three issue for Democrats. It isn't anymore. It isn't like what number is campaign finance reform for Democrats today? Like 15, 16. So I think ethics reform, campaign finance reform, like just has to be elevated as an issue that we talk about every day.

[Jon Favreau]

And just to get back to, it's another topic that we just, we talk about all the time on this show is loneliness. I know you've been talking a lot about that. We've had a former surgeon general now Vivek Murthy on, and I've talked to Robert Putnam, and I wonder how you think about incorporating that in the larger story Democrats are telling about where the country needs to go because again, there are policies, I think you mentioned national service. I think that that would be helpful. But I do think that the loneliness, it's not just about what it's doing to our mental and emotional well being. It's, it's, I think that we, we don't trust each other as much anymore because we don't know each other. And we all we do know of each other are the caricatures we see of each other online when often we are at our worst. And I think that this, this loneliness epidemic, you know, it's talked about a lot with, with kids and, and, and just like how people are feeling. But it feels to me like it is inextricably linked to, to the health of our democracy and that we cannot get out of this moment unless we sort of address that. How do you think about addressing that?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, I mean, listen, I think people do want healthy communities in which they have relationships, again, with people that aren't just their immediate family. The weird thing is, and this was in a recent Atlantic article by Derek Thompson that was very good on this topic, he points out that today actually we're way more connected to our immediate, immediate network than we ever were before. Right. It used to be that you'd have to wait until you got home at night to talk to your wife or your kids. Now you're in touch with them all day. We're much more connected to our sort of global identity network. Right. I now know in real time what, you know, the people that believe in the things that I believe in, whether it be political or otherwise, are doing on a daily basis. But you're much less connected to your, you know, sort of less formal connections. The folks that live in your neighborhood, for instance. And that's why we automatically grow suspicious of other people because we sort of don't have that connection to community members and we let other people define them for us. But there are solutions to that, right? Solutions that are really attractive to people. Like having a concerted effort to rebuild downtowns to just say, you know what, this feels really icky to buy everything from Amazon or Walmart. Like, let's have a really concerted national strategy to support healthy downtowns and small businesses to bring us back in person. Let's support local journalism. Let's have local newspapers again where we can learn about our neighbors. Let's build healthy institutions. Is there a government policy to help churches be more healthy, to help labor unions be more healthy institutions on both the right and the left that we can join and be a part of? I mean, I think that that's a conversation that people are ready for that's kind of outside of the traditional left, right dynamic and speaks to the, to the, to the loneliness and the emptiness that people are feeling in this sort of hyper consumer economy, this hyper online economy in which we, in which we've sort of lost connection to our neighbors.

[Jon Favreau]

Chris Murphy, thank you for, for joining Offline and, and thanks for modeling the, the right, the right democratic behavior right now and for speaking out. I appreciate you doing that and keep it up.

[Max Fisher]

Thanks, man.

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Ilic. Frank Jordan Kanter is our sound editor. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Seglin. Delon Villanueva produces our videos each week. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer and Adrian Hill for production support. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East Foreign. I'm sure you can relate to being in a bad relationship and feeling like there's something better out there. No, I'm not talking about your dating life. I'm talking about your home Internet. Right now with US Cellular, you can get fast home Internet for just $39.99 a month when bundled with a wireless plan. And it comes with a three year.

[Chris Murphy]

Price lock guarantee so you don't have to worry about it changing on you.

[Jon Favreau]

After the honeymoon phase. So break up with your old expensive cable Internet and get us cellular make the switch today. Terms apply. Visit uscellular.com for detail details.

[Max Fisher]

The last thing you want to hear when you need your auto insurance most.

[Jon Favreau]

Is a robot with countless irrelevant menu options. Which is why with USAA auto insurance. You'll get great service that is easy and reliable. All at the touch of a button. Get a quote today.

[Max Fisher]

Restrictions applied.