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- [00:00]
Senator Chris Murphy
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Harry Littman
Welcome to Talking feds. One on one deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman.
- [00:23]
Interviewer/Host
I'm thrilled to be joined by Senator Chris Murphy. Chris Murphy has been in office since 2013 after previously serving in the U.S. house and the Connecticut state legislature. Known for his advocacy of gun safety, economic populism and foreign policy, he has emerged as one of the more effective and outspoken Democratic critics of the Trump administration. And he's frequently mentioned as a possible 2028 presidential contender. Not least, he is likely the most prolific walker in the history of Congress. Every year he spends a week walking from one end of Connecticut to the other, describing it in his book as his annual public opinion bath. We're here to talk about his new book, which in some ways grows out of the walks. Crisis of the Common Good argues that America's spiritual and civic unraveling, not exactly Trump himself, is the deeper crisis the country needs to address. Senator Chris Murphy, welcome to Talking Feds.
- [01:34]
Senator Chris Murphy
Thanks for having me. I will say though, my title as the senator who's walked the most across the state I think is in jeopardy. John Curtis, who's a freshman Republican senator from Utah, just announced that this summer he is doing a 250 mile walk.
- [01:54]
Interviewer/Host
So my, there's always somebody trying. I actually researched this and I said Congress because Truman famously walked two miles every morning. And so that's 700 or that might best you also. But let me just say you're, you got to be in the, on in the metal circle. And it's just such a salutary and impressive habit. Okay. If it's all right with you, I'd like to start with a couple questions based on current events.
- [02:24]
Senator Chris Murphy
Sure.
- [02:25]
Interviewer/Host
The war continues to toggle between peace talks and more Trump war mongering. You said of the emerging deal, and it's precarious. This is a surrender to Iran. And, and it's good that we're surrendering. Can you explain?
- [02:44]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, I mean, I just think this war was a disaster for the United States. It was getting worse and worse by the day. Every single day. We were in the war. We were getting weaker. Iran was getting stronger. You have to cut your losses. And so I'm glad the war might be over, but the deal is a disaster. But there was no other way around it. I mean, it's absolutely extraordinary. We are releasing all of our oil sanctions on Iran before we've even begun negotiations on their nuclear program. We are giving Them this huge cash payment essentially in exchange just for getting back to where we were before the war, the Strait of Hormuz being open. The problem is the deal also says Israel has to stop its war with Lebanon, a war that started as a result of our attack on Iran. And Israel shows no signs of being willing to stop that war. So while we've seen some increase in transit through the strait today, this peace agreement may blow up over the course of this week because Israel isn't on board. And apparently we didn't check with Israel before we signed this agreement. And this is just the price of incompetence. These guys are totally, completely incompetent, and we're seeing it.
- [04:03]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah. The general theme of Trump bloviating in some way and just not being able to make it happen or follow through has been on display the whole time. Just. I wanted to pause for a second on this 300 billion bounty to them. You have in a fantastic little graphic, by the way. Explain that that is more than the entire annual GDP of Iran. Or what can a country like Iran with its Middle east ambitions do with that kind of big pot of cash?
- [04:40]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, I mean, it's essentially reparations, which is obviously not something the winning side agrees to. It's an extraordinary amount of money. I mean, I'm not sure it'll ever come to pass. It seems to be connected to Iran agreeing to a restrain their nuclear program, and I just don't think they're ever going to do that. They've gotten everything they want. They've gotten the oil sanctions released. They now have been given effective control of the Strait. So I'm just not sure the $300 billion is real. I do say in that thread, you know, be careful. Every time Trump tells you you're not going to pay for something, you know, you weren't going to pay for the wall. Mexico was going to pay for it. You weren't going to pay for his new luxury jet. Qatar was going to pay for that. You weren't going to pay for the tariffs. Other nations were going to pay for that. You ended up paying every single time. So if this $300 billion actually does materialize, it will probably be you that's paying for it as well.
- [05:44]
Interviewer/Host
Speaking of things that aren't real that we're going to pay for, you've been very vocal about the slush fund settlement that would let Trump draw close $2 billion in federal funds for not only to pay back January6 insurrection payback, not only to enrich, but also for an Amnesty, supposedly on any kind of tax audit. Your book has a whole chapter on the cult of corruption. How does this fight that's underway kind of fit into that argument? And do you see any effective steps that Congress can do to block the fund?
- [06:27]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, Congress absolutely could block the fund. I mean, it's funny. I mean, we. Trump gets away with some of this corruption because we never even knew we had to have laws on the books to stop some of this corruption. We never knew we had to have a law that says the president can't reach into the treasury and just scoop out $1.7 billion to spend on his friends and loyalists. But Republicans in the Senate had the chance to add that on to a big spending bill a few weeks ago. They chose not to. But the courts, I think, are going to weigh in on this issue pretty definitively. I mean, the president just cannot legally give himself $1.7 billion that's not appropriated. So the courts probably will step in and protect us here. We'll get into this. Maybe. But I argue in the book that we have come to normalize Trump's corruption. And we should ask ourselves the question, why, right? Why do we have such a lower tolerance for corruption today? And one of the arguments I make in the book is that it's a symptom of us accepting corruption. In our economy, we think it's normal for somebody to become a trillionaire, as Elon Musk just did. In our economy, we think it's normal for there to be a handful of billionaires who just scoop up everything that's available to them. Well, there are people working from them who are living lives of poverty. So we've normalized corruption and mass greed in our economy. So why should it be wrong for the winner in our politics to just scoop up everything that's available to them that use all the powers of their office to make themselves rich, just like CEOs use all of the powers available to them to make themselves obsessively rich. I think the two things are connected together.
- [08:11]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah. And I want to say, son, you made another great point about your worry that our leaders and our citizens just compartmentalize each day. Yesterday's assault on democracy is forgotten as we awake to a new outrage. So there are all these cross cutting links that you draw, but people, I think, don't necessarily do it. For example, you write or say you can't see the indictment of Comey or, or the cancellation of Kimmel or the troops in Chicago as different events. They are all part of the same story. All A result of the implementation of a well thought out plan. Can you speak to that a little bit more the way things are of a piece when you step back. And yet in the daily hurly burly of the news, we don't appreciate them that way.
- [09:04]
Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah, I mean, I was one of the early alarmists about Trump's threat to democracy, and that was because I, I watched very carefully what his crowd was planning in the four years between Biden and Trump's second term. They were putting together a plan to try to use every lever available to them to destroy free speech, to reward the President's enemies, and to punish the President's political opponents. And they have done that consistently on a daily basis. It is kind of a miracle that the democracy is still alive because the President has been successful in creating a censorship state, in buying the silence of corporate America and academic America and legal America. But the people of this country have just refused to give in. They are showing up in numbers we've never seen in this country's history to protest what he's doing. So he's implementing the plan pretty effectively. They are all, all these incidences of corruption are part of a central storyline, but the democracy is still alive. It looks like we're going to have a free and fair election in November because people have just decided that no matter how much institutions have let them down, they are not ready for the destruction of democracy in this country.
- [10:25]
Interviewer/Host
I mean, it's the ultimate bulwark and it's a perfect segue into the book. You've argued, really, that mass mobilization, not elections alone, is what actually stops the corruption that is otherwise proliferating. Let's move directly to the book. So it argues that America is in a crisis, has lost its way, not primarily because of politics, or it's not your focus here, but because of a deeper cultural surrender to, as you identify, six destructive cults that together strip American, ordinary Americans of the meaning and purpose and community connection that makes good life possible. Can you sketch it out in broad strokes and why you've chosen these cults, as you put it? Or you could just say different forces to that constitute a pretty profound crisis.
- [11:31]
Senator Chris Murphy
I think we feel this in our country today, and when I talk about this book all over the nation, a lot of heads nod. People know that Trump is a symptom of a broader spiritual rot that is happening in this country. People are waking up today more exhausted, feeling more powerless, feeling more lonely than ever before. And that is because of a series of choices we have made in the rules that guide our culture and our economy to make people be more lonely, to make people feel more powerless, and until we change those rules, to make people feel more connected, to make people feel like they have a purpose when they wake up in the morning, then Trump won't be the last demagogue that's going to come along and tell you a simple story that it's Muslims or gay kids or immigrants that's to blame for your sense of agitation. So, yes, this book says, you know, here are six false systems of belief, here are the policy interventions that are necessary in order to destroy those cults. And that actually there's a lot of people on the right and the left that are pretty upset about the cult of profit, the idea that companies can pillage a community or treat workers badly as long as they make a profit. There are a lot of people on the right who are tired of the cult of technology as we refuse to regulate AI and social media, as they poison our kids. There's alignment between right and left. If we look at the primary problems in this country through the prism of what is denying people access to connection and purpose and meaning.
- [13:10]
Interviewer/Host
And just to follow up and 0 on this word symptom that you used at the beginning, your argument, I just want to make sure I have it right, is that Trump is, is a symptom that we, he didn't break us, in a sense, we broke or our. The sort of cultural communitarian backbone of the society broke and that produced, or we produced Trump as a result. Is that a fair summary?
- [13:43]
Senator Chris Murphy
Correct. I mean, Hannah Arendt, who's The great post World War II writer describing the origins of totalitarianism, says the primary origin of totalitarianism is rootlessness. If someone doesn't feel rooted in their community, then they are going to be likely to be pried away from society by the arguments that the totalitarians make. And so this is a book about how we find roots, how we create healthier local communities, again, healthy small towns, healthy, healthy small cities, so you can feel rooted in your community, how we create work where you feel dignity in that work, not that you are just your labor is simply extractive so that people can find rootedness in their work. How we make a more healthy democracy so that you feel connected to your democracy, you feel powerful and rooted in your democracy. Trump exploits our lack of roots. And that is been true of every would be totalitarian in the modern history of the world.
- [14:51]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, I think Arendt and Orwell are the philosophers of our time in history. Staying for a second with this sense of not being rooted. You have. It's very interesting, the sort of historical moment you trace of the kind of break to where we are, the cracks. Anyway, so you've got Reagan's farewell speech and Trump's first time cover landing five days apart in January 89. And you say the turns that started them are now complete. Just wondering from your Connecticut eye view what. What the completion actually looks like. So walking through a town like Wethersfield today versus the one you grew up in, you know, what do you see that speaks of the really consummate uprootedness that we're now living through?
- [15:48]
Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah, we went through a transition, I argue in this book, from a social contract economy to a cult of profit economy. It was true that our economy has never been perfect, but in the 1960s, the average CEO made 60 times that of the average worker. Labor unions were much more powerful. There was a sense that corporations owed a duty to the community in which they lived. All of that disappeared in the 70s, 80s and 90s through a series of legal decisions, a set of political campaigns against labor unions, a changing of our politics. And so today, if you're in a place like Wethersfield, you will find that most of the companies people work for aren't owned by local residents. They are owned by private equity companies, folks who live in Davos and Aspen, all at the same time. In Wethersfield, there are less institutions that are healthy. The Civitan Club, the Lions Club, the Rotary Club that my grandparents belonged to that made them feel rooted in Wethersfield. They are either gone or they have dwindling membership. Commerce is very different. You know, people barely leave their houses these days to get groceries. They order from home. And if they do go to a grocery store and it's not the one that my grandmother shopped at that was owned by the McHugh family, a local family in town. It's a big international corporation. All of that leaves people feeling powerless, leaves people feeling alone, that they are in a community where there aren't institutions they can belong to that give them a sense of connection, that there's no locally owned commerce where they don't have power because unions have dried up. Those were all decisions we made. And what my book argues is we could just choose to build a different kind of capitalism, a capitalism where we decentralize ownership so that it's more likely that your supermarket is owned by somebody who lives in your community, where more people belong to labor unions so they feel powerful in the economy where we actually provide incentive for in person commerce rather than online commerce, in person existence rather than online existence, so that people have more opportunity to find each other, to create companions, to create friends. Those are all a series of choices we could make.
- [18:07]
Interviewer/Host
There's so many great anecdotes in the book, we can't cover them. But it opens with your son's rider's hockey league, private equity owned, gated behind a subscription, every kid stats ranked online as against your own little league team back in the 80s. And it really, it really does resonate the book overall. Senator argues for patience and a kind of neighborliness showing up at the town council meeting, at local, almost any kinds of things that build connections. But I wanted to ask because you're also one of the more combative Democrats when it comes to Trump, and plenty of voters seem to say they want a fighter. So how do you square those two things? Patience, neighborliness in the public square, and your own sense of what you think the party needs in a nominee and actually duking it out in a way that in some sense kind of buys into what currently ails us.
- [19:19]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, listen, I think we're in a fight right now, and you have to fight. And this book argues the fight shouldn't just be to get rid of Trump. The fight should be to create a different economy in a different culture in which we don't have to fight as much. Right. So sometimes you have to fight that war in order to live in peace. And so right now, we are engaged in a fight. We have to be pugilistic, not just against Donald Trump, but against all of the billionaires and corporations that are trying to create an atomized society in which we are told that we exist only to buy their things instead of existing to help each other. So I actually think they're consistent. I think right now we have to beat this guy. We have to beat back the forces that are aligned with him and set a new series of rules for our culture and our economy that allow people to feel more connected. An example would be a much higher minimum wage. I argue in this book for a $25 minimum wage, a living wage, which would allow more people to work 40 hours, which would allow them in their leisure time that they don't have today to, you know, play cards with their neighbors, to join a church, to join a civic club. People can't do that today because they're working 60, 70 hours a week. But to get there, to get a $25 minimum wage, it's a fight. You're going to have to punch the corporations and the super PACs in the nose that are standing in the way of workers being empowered. So yeah, sometimes you have to engage in conflict in order to live in peace. Yeah.
- [21:01]
Interviewer/Host
And of course you can observe that you're doing the fighting. And there's many of your solutions involve sort of supply side government conduct. But I think it's very telling that you then you don't stop at minimum wage, but you go from there down the stream to meaning, purpose, happiness, the kind of antidotes to the real sort of spiritual, if I can put it that way, or just civic loss. You lean hard on the Harvard study of adult development. 90 years of data boiling down to relationships as the real predictor of happiness. How central is that sort of finding to your whole argument? Or let me put it this way, is this fundamentally a book about happiness lost and potentially happiness regained?
- [21:57]
Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah, of course. We're celebrating 250 years of the Declaration of Independence. And what does it say? It says that government isn't supposed to, you know, work to increase GDP or lower crime rates or increase student test scores. It says government is supposed to create a set of rules to allow people to be happy. And we have just lost the thread. I think in government we have stopped actually asking the question, what makes people happy? And what this Harvard study, this century long Harvard study that follows people of all different backgrounds, races and asks them, are you happy? And if you are happy, what are the things in your life that have led to that happiness? That they find that it's relationships and that it's a common purpose, that you are, you have strong relationships in your life and that you are engaged with those people in some shared common purpose, often having to do with the betterment of your family or the betterment of your community. And we just stopped working on that long ago. I mean, if we really were focused on creating strong, connected human beings, we would have regulated social media the minute that it showed up on the scene. And we would be laser like focused on regulating AI. Because those two technologies are probably going to do more to destroy friendship and companionship than anything else out there. We would view the minimum wage not as much of a as we would view the minimum wage as a social solution giving people leisure time as much as an economic solution putting money in their pockets. So yes, I'm asking people to engage in a slightly different conversation than we typically have. Instead of just running the gears of government as normal, let's stop, step back and ask what actually contributes to being happy? And are we working on those things enough?
- [23:50]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, and again, it's sort of a two part thing, you have an appendix, all kinds of solutions. I think it's fair to say they're largely supply side things government can do. How do you sort of see the citizens role or place here? If you could wave a wand and all these things would be passed, more money, more leisure, etc. Do you think that'll do it and people left to their own devices will become more connected, will have more purpose? Or is there like, are you prescribing a lot of personal work that families and communities and individuals need themselves to do?
- [24:29]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, I mean listen, I am a politician, I am not a sociologist. And so this book is making the case that the last mile of meaning, the last mile of happiness, has to be traveled by the individual or the family, but that we are responsible as government leaders to laying down the tracks, right? To setting the conditions by which you can get to that last mile. And so when work is just extractive, when you feel no where, you feel like you don't have any ownership over the outcome at your work, it's really hard to get to that last mile of happiness. So yes, this book argues for higher wages, it argues for more employee ownership. It that argues to change the constitution of corporate boards so that community members are on those boards, workers are on those boards. If you reform the economy so that people feel more powerful, they're more involved in the economy, it's decentralized. So the owner of the supermarket and the hospital live in your community, you know who they are. Then I think the route to happiness and fulfillment in the economy becomes a lot easier. But you still have to walk the those last steps. So no, the book acknowledges that everybody has a role to play in their personal lives, but it really is saying government has to do more to get you closer to fulfillment than it's getting right now.
- [26:01]
Michael Waldman
I'm Michael Waldman, host of the Briefing podcast. I'm a former White House speechwriter, a lawyer and a constitutional scholar. And I'm president of the Brennan center for Justice. We work to repair and strengthen American democracy. From gerrymandering to abuse of presidential power, from Supreme Court reform to congressional corruption and more. What fun. You're going to hear new ideas in this podcast and you're going to hear about the strategies and the legal and political fights that will shape the next phase of American politics. If you care about our democracy, the Briefing is a podcast for you.
- [26:35]
Interviewer/Host
There are a lot of important thinkers that seem to have influenced you. Maybe prime among them Michael Sandow, but there are aspects of it, including your last answer that sound pretty lefty and others that sound pretty 1950s, you know, fuddy duddy. I just wanted to give you a chance to. Another impression I got from the book is this is really not a kind of typical left right notion or, you know, a play in that realm. It's. It's really broader than that. And, and doesn't. It doesn't have to do with politics as we normally think of them in a everyday way. Is that fair?
- [27:20]
Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah. You know, it's funny, an earlier interviewer said, boy, you know, this, this, this makes me think you're not running for president because this is not a book you'd write if you were running for president. This book is about the metaphysical state of the nation. And yes, I mean, I certainly have been made fun of in a lot of my work around these issues. An article that I reference in the book critiqued my work on loneliness by saying, chris Murphy wants the government to help you find friends. Friends. And I do admit that sometimes it may feel illegitimate for government to be in the business of helping people find connection. But I argue again that if we are really serious about celebrating the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence tells leaders that we are supposed to care about happiness and happiness is most correlated to positive radio relationships. And I do argue in the book that this is an opportunity for a political realignment. That the things necessary to build more healthy communities or to create a common good, capitalism or to regulate technology, they actually bring together Republicans and Democrats. There are issues like guns and climate and healthcare that might be suspended in political gelatin. But a lot of the solutions to the barriers to friendship and companionship are things that the right and the left are actually aligned on.
- [28:51]
Interviewer/Host
And if I can just take a minute to step out of my interviewer's role and those criticisms are a load of crap. The things we're learning about the impact of technology down to the root. I'm a father of children just coming into adulthood. But all this really is ultimately about happiness, meaning, purpose, self actualization. And I think seriously, and we talked about this the last time we talked, your focus on the most real thing that there is, I think is rare and super commendable. Anyway, editorializing finished. Let me just. We're about out of Time Crisis of the Common Good. Really a great read. Let me just ask you, if a reader takes only one thing from this book and not your colleagues, that's a bigger problem for you to corral. But a regular reader takes only one thing from this book. And acts on it. What do you want that to be?
- [30:00]
Senator Chris Murphy
Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I think the main takeaway from this book is don't accept anything the way it is. Right? For instance, this idea that our economy is built simply on whether a company makes a profit or not and nothing else matters, that is not inevitable. That is a choice. And so I want people to be willing to challenge as I talk about in these books, these cults. But yes, in the end, you have an individual choice as to whether to engage in the common good or not. I end this book with this very personal story about being home alone on Thanksgiving morning right after my wife and I had seen separated first holiday I wasn't with the kids and I was feeling, you know, really lonely. I was scrolling on my phone and I remembered that there was this family that set up a card table out on the. On the town green near where I live, and they would give donuts and breakfast and coffee out to the homeless who often congregate around the green. And so I put down my phone, I went down to the town green and I spent about an hour with them, just kind of helping them out. And when I walked back home, I could feel that loneliness having lifted. It wasn't totally gone, but I felt powerful in that I had lived for a short period of time that morning outside of myself. And so I do want people to question these cults and I want them to support leaders that are willing to work outside of the margins in our politics. But I also want people to realize that you can set an example, that you can organize a block party this summer, that you can, you know, join that church that you were interested in but were a little nervous to step foot. And you can do something as small as I did, just participate in somebody else's charitable work. All of that is transformational in and of itself. So that's probably the main takeaway I want people to have from this book.
- [31:55]
Interviewer/Host
Senator Chris Murphy, the book Crisis of the Common Good. Congratulations on it and thanks very much for spending some time with us on Talking Feds.
- [32:04]
Senator Chris Murphy
Awesome. Thanks for having me.
- [32:08]
Harry Littman
Thank you for tuning in to One on One, a weekly conversation series from Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube where we are posting full episodes and daily updates on top legal stories. Check us out on substack harrylitman.substack.com where we're posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law, and Talking Fez has joined forces with the Contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this new media venture and committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust just now, linked up with an ambitious and vital project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political political discourse. Find out more@contrarian.substack.com thanks for tuning in. And don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Lou Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle, Rosie, Don Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansuma Hadrinathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistants by Akshaj Turbailu. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Deledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.