Murphy warns of the end of American democracy

US Senator Chris Murphy took to the floor of the US Senate on Thursday afternoon to warn his colleagues and the nation about the threat President-elect Donald Trump and his “billionaire cronies” pose to American democracy.

“There are far too many people who deny themselves what they see,” Murphy said at the beginning of his remarks. “What is happening right now is that Donald Trump and his billionaire advisers are unfolding in real time a plan for the country to transform this country from a democracy to a restrictive oligarchy, where the political opposition is suppressed, where the media is not free, and where the government just exists to enrich a small cabal of elites surrounding the man in charge.”

Murphy singled out three events in the past week that he said heralded the transformation of the United States from a representative democracy to, in his words, a “restrictive oligarchy.”

First was the finding by the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight of the House of Representatives that former U.S. Rep. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, was to be investigated for criminal wrongdoing in connection with her role as vice chairman of the US House Select Committee on the January 6 attack.

“Liz Cheney did nothing criminal,” Murphy said. “There’s not even a hint of a criminal allegation. She was just in charge of a commission that Donald Trump opposed. But the House Republicans, taking orders from Donald Trump, just recommended that the next administration, the next Department of Justice, prosecute Liz Cheney criminal.”

Murphy continued: “And by the way, Liz Cheney won’t be the last. There will be other political opponents of Donald Trump who were referred for prosecution. That would be laughable today under an FBI and Justice Department that doesn’t lock people up political reasons.Donald Trump is changing the guard at the FBI.The person he wants to put in the FBI wrote a book about how important it was to remove anyone from the government agree with the President’s policy priorities.”

Trump has nominated Kash Patel to head the FBI, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as attorney general after his first pick, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his name amid allegations of sex trafficking and sexual relations with a minor.

The other event that Murphy highlighted was a lawsuit that Trump initiated against Iowa investigators J. Ann Selzer and Des Moines Register over a poll released just before Election Day that showed Vice President Kamala Harris with a 3-point lead over Trump. The former president went on to win the state by 14 points, and his lawsuit alleges Selzer and the registry engaged in fraud and election interference.

“This poll, which suggested the race was close, got a lot of people donating to his political opponent, gave the people of Iowa some hope that maybe a Democrat could win,” Murphy said. “It’s not allowed in Donald Trump’s world. It’s not allowed in Donald Trump’s world for anything to serve his political opposition. So he’s filing a lawsuit that has no chance of success because he’s going to try to intimidate reporters and the pressure to submit. Whether we like it or not, it’s just true that maybe in the future a poll that has a poll in front of it that shows a race is closing will show a race that is favorable to the Democrats, do not publish the poll for fear of a lawsuit.”

Finally, Murphy pointed to the settlement from ABC News, in which the company agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library. The settlement resolves a lawsuit by Trump alleging that news anchor George Stefanopolis defamed him by inaccurately saying that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping author E. Jean Carroll.

Murphy called the lawsuit “bogus” and said it would never have succeeded in court.

“But ABC decided for some reason it would be better for them to just pay Donald Trump to make it go away,” he said. “And you see repeated decisions by people in the media to just go along with Donald Trump rather than risk his wrath, rather than potentially risk their profits if Donald Trump and his regulatory agencies turn against them. You so Jeff Bezos tells his papers not to endorse Kamala Harris. You’ve seen ABC pay Donald Trump $15 million. Over and over again you see members of the press decide , that it it’s just better not to fight him.”

Murphy said Trump and his billionaire advisers are trying to intimidate political opponents and bully the press so they can enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.

“They want government contracts, they want to privatize government programs, they want greater regulatory crackdowns, they want lower taxes,” he said. “Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies want the government to serve them, but they know the only way they can get away with it is if no one holds them accountable. So in order to steal from us, they have to to silence the political opposition, intimidate activists into submission and try to mislead the press. If they do that, they can get away with using the government as a mechanism to enrich themselves.”

Murphy highlighted the torpedoing of a bipartisan deal to keep the government funded through March by a tag-team effort by Trump and Elon Musk, who railed against the plan at social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which he bought in 2022. Murphy said they killed the deal, asking for a debt ceiling increase instead of funding a potentially massive package of tax cuts and other benefits for the wealthy.

He warned that ultimately, as political opponents are silenced, the wealthy people who control the media will “fold into the regime” and that such an outcome in the United States could happen sooner than Americans are ready over.

“America has, for almost our entire history, been a functioning, robust democracy where the party or individual in power changes regularly because the people have all the necessary tools to choose their leaders,” he said. “But it could change in a heartbeat so quickly, but without a single galvanizing moment, that the transition might just be missed by all of us. You might just wake up one day and find that the rules of democracy have been so manipulated, that the Republicans or the Trump family never lose again and billionaires are going to steal from us all without any accountability.”