WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on Tuesday joined the CBS Debriefing the Briefing hosted by Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett to discuss Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s dangerous decision to call Congress back into session to focus on non-COVID related business, China’s role in concealing early information around the COVID-19 pandemic, and Trump blocking coronavirus taskforce members from testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives.

On the Senate coming back into session, Murphy said: “…If we were in the Senate right now talking about getting money to my state to try to help the response, or if we were talking about trying to fix the disastrous rollout of testing from this administration with new congressional action, I'd be willing to take that risk. But that's not what we're doing this week. We are trying to approve and confirm one of Mitch McConnell’s former interns to the federal judiciary. That doesn't seem to have anything to do with the crisis at hand.”

On China, Murphy said: “China hid the extent of the problem from the world. They were late in admitting the ease with which this virus transmitted from human to human. And still to this day, they are not disclosing critical scientific information that would facilitate the ability to develop treatments and vaccines.”

Murphy continued: “China has an enormous amount to answer for and our global response would be made more effective if China had acted differently at the outset of this virus and acted differently today. So clearly, we have to have a reckoning, the world has to have a reckoning with China about their disastrous mishandling of this virus, especially in the early days.”

On Trump blocking Dr. Anthony Fauci and others from testifying before the House, Murphy said: “The president is saying that Democrats are rooting for people to die, because they think that they're going to gain some political advantage over this misery persisting. That is disgusting. It is disgusting that that is what the President of the United States is suggesting, and not even obliquely. He's being very clear on the record that that's what he thinks democrat’s priority is.”

Murphy continued: “What we want is for this administration to get serious about attacking this virus, what we want is to make sure that trillions of dollars in our taxpayers money gets spent wisely. It doesn't get spent bailing out the president's friends, it actually gets spent on creating more testing capacity, treating more people at hospitals, helping states stop from going bankrupt. And so the president's general disdain for democracy and the oversight that Congress does is nothing new, that's been his take from the beginning.”

Click here to listen to the episode in full.

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