WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Thursday spoke on the U.S. Senate floor to call out President-elect Trump’s ongoing plan to crush political dissent and lay the groundwork to transition American democracy into an oligarchy – all before he is even sworn in. This week alone, House Republicans recommended former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) be criminally investigated for her work on the Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Trump sued Iowa pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll he didn’t like, and ABC News settled Trump’s bogus defamation lawsuit for $15 million. In his speech, Murphy laid out how these attacks on free speech and the free press, coupled with Trump and his billionaire friends demanding a Christmas government shutdown in exchange for their demands, threaten American democracy as we know it.
Murphy laid out the stakes: “America has been for almost all of our history a functioning, robust democracy where the party or individual in power changes regularly because people hold all the tools necessary to choose their leaders. But that could change in a heartbeat, so quickly, but without any one galvanizing moment that the transition might just be missed by all of us. You could just wake up one day and find out that the rules of democracy have been so rigged that Republicans or the Trump family never, ever lose again, and billionaires get to steal from all of us without any accountability.”
“But I think it's also equally important to talk about why Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and all of his billionaire friends are engaged in this very coordinated early attack, even before he's sworn in, to try to intimidate his political opposition and bully the press. And the reason they are doing this, the reason that they are trying to suppress dissent is because they are preparing to steal from us. Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies want to be in charge of government so that they can make themselves more wealthy at our expense. They want government contracts. They want to privatize government programs. They want to get bigger regulatory breaks. They want lower taxes,” he added. “Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies want government to serve them, but they know the only way they get away with that is if no one holds them accountable. So in order to steal from us, they have to silence political opposition, intimidate activists into submission, and try to get the press to fold. If they do that, then they can get away with using government as a mechanism to enrich themselves.
He exposed why Trump wants to shut down the government if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling: “Why do they want to raise the debt ceiling? It's easy. They want to pass a huge tax cut for the billionaires in charge of Donald Trump's government. That's their agenda. Big, big tax cut for billionaires and corporations. But the only way you can do that is if the debt ceiling is raised. The only way you can get away with that is if you can borrow more money on the backs of ordinary, average, everyday people in order to pay for that tax cut. So we're seeing the agenda of the Trump administration before they're even sworn in in front of our eyes. Rig rules in order to make the billionaires richer and telegraph that as your number one priority to Congress.”
Murphy concluded: ““The survival of our 240-year experiment is facing, right now, one of its most severe tests. I just think it's time that everybody woke up to that and pulled their heads out of the sand.”
A full transcript of Murphy’s remarks can be found below:
“Mr. President, I'm on the floor today to talk to my colleagues about something that is happening right in front of our eyes. It's a set of events that aren't random, they’re connected to one another, that threaten to destroy this country that we love. Everybody can see it. But for some reason, maybe the exhaustion of the aftermath of a brutal election, maybe the distraction of the Christmas season, maybe just an instinct to flee instead of fight, there are far too many people that are denying to themselves what they are seeing.
“What is happening right now is that Donald Trump and his billionaire advisors are unfolding for the country in real time, a plan to transition this country from a democracy to a restrictive oligarchy where political opposition is silenced, where the media isn't free, and where government just exists to enrich a small cabal of elites that surround the man in charge.
“I know a lot of my colleagues do see how these dots exist and how they connect, and I know in your gut, a lot of you see the specter of the disaster that is coming. But if you don't, I want to spend just a few minutes laying it out. And to make things simple, I'm just going to focus on three events that happened in the last seven days: the recommendation by House Republicans that Trump critic Liz Cheney be subject to criminal prosecution, the lawsuit filed by Trump against an Iowa pollster at an Iowa newspaper, and the decision by ABC to pay Trump $15 million to get rid of a bogus lawsuit.
“First, the recommendation from House Republicans that Liz Cheney be prosecuted. Liz Cheney was a member of the January 6 commission that tried to find some accountability for the assault on this Capitol that resulted in people dying, that resulted in an officer with blood running down his face running into this chamber to rescue us before the violent rioters got a hold of us.
“Donald Trump did not like that narrative that he had something to do with, that he inspired the January 6 riot. He doesn't even like the narrative that January 6 was a riot. His events are opened by the January 6 choir in commemoration of the events of that day.
“What happened this week is that Donald Trump made good on his promise. He said during the campaign that he was going to use the military, law enforcement, the National Guard to deal with the enemy within. And when asked who the enemy within was, he said Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Democrats. Now people laughed it off during the campaign because that doesn't happen in America. We don't use law enforcement to lock up your political opposition, but that's exactly what's being recommended when it comes to Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney did nothing criminal. There's not even a whiff of a criminal allegation. She was just in charge of a commission that Donald Trump opposed, but House Republicans, taking orders from Donald Trump, just recommended that the next administration, the next Department of Justice criminally prosecute Liz Cheney. And by the way, Liz Cheney won't be the last. There will be other political opponents of Donald Trump who are referred for prosecution.
“Now that would be laughable today, under an FBI and a Department of Justice that doesn't lock up people for political reasons, but Donald Trump is changing the guard at the FBI. He's putting in someone loyal to him as the next Attorney General, the person he's going to put in at the FBI wrote a book about how important it was to eliminate from government anybody that doesn't line up with the political priorities of the president. He has said that the people who ran fair elections in 2020 should go to jail because if you didn't run an election that resulted in Donald Trump being elected, then you did something wrong.
“This week, the House recommended Liz Cheney for criminal prosecution. Donald Trump cheered that recommendation, and we are getting ready to vote on an Attorney General and a Director of the FBI who have made clear they are ready to eagerly prosecute Trump's political opponents.
“This is really important to talk about because this is one of the key ways that democracies fall all around the world. It frankly doesn't take hundreds of political prosecutions. It only takes a handful before ordinary, average Americans just decide that they would be better off staying quiet instead of facing potential harassment or intimidation or a jail sentence for speaking out the way that Liz Cheney did.
“The second thing that happened in this last week was that Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against a pollster in Iowa. The grounds of the lawsuit are simple. He didn't like the results of the poll. The poll said the Iowa race was close. The poll ended up being wrong, but he is suing the pollster and the newspaper because he was upset that that poll helped galvanize opposition to him. That poll, which suggested that race was close, got a lot of people to donate to his political opponent, gave people in Iowa some hope that maybe a Democrat could win. That's not allowed in Donald Trump's world. It's not allowed in Donald Trump's world for anything to be in service of his political opposition. So he's filing a lawsuit that has no chance of succeeding because he wants to try to intimidate journalists and the press into submission.
“Whether we like it or not, it just is true that maybe in the future, a pollster who has a poll in front of them that shows a race closing, shows a race that's favorable to Democrats won't publicize that poll out of fear of a lawsuit.
“And connected to that lawsuit is the third thing I want to talk about, the decision by ABC to pay Donald Trump $15 million to settle a bogus lawsuit, a bogus defamation lawsuit that would have never succeeded in court, but ABC, for whatever reason, decided it would be better for them to just pay Donald Trump to make it go away.
“And you are seeing repeated decisions by people in the media to just go along with Donald Trump rather than risk his ire, rather than potentially put their profits at risk if Donald Trump and his regulatory agencies turn against them. You saw Jeff Bezos tell his newspapers not to endorse Kamala Harris. You have seen an effort by Comcast to divest itself from MSNBC. You've seen ABC pay off Donald Trump $15 million. Over and over and over again, you see members of the press starting to decide it's just better not to fight him.
“These three things taken together show you the playbook. Threaten political opposition with jail, throw a few of them into jail to show you're serious, sue and intimidate and harass anybody that does anything that is helpful to your political opposition, and intimidate and harass the media in the hopes that they will just go away and stop criticizing you.
“I don't think it's a coincidence that during this period of media harassment by Donald Trump, when Liz Cheney was referred for criminal prosecution, all of the headlines played it totally straight. None of the headlines suggested that the criminal prosecution was bogus, was built on lies, was built on no understanding of the law. The headlines just said ‘Liz Cheney referred for criminal prosecution.’
“I think it's really important that we lay out what's happening here because this is how a democracy vanishes. But I think it's also equally important to talk about why Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and all of his billionaire friends are engaged in this very coordinated early attack, even before he's sworn in, to try to intimidate his political opposition and bully the press. And the reason they are doing this, the reason that they are trying to suppress dissent is because they are preparing to steal from us. Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies want to be in charge of government so that they can make themselves more wealthy at our expense. They want government contracts. They want to privatize government programs. They want to get bigger regulatory breaks. They want lower taxes.
“Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies want government to serve them, but they know the only way they get away with that is if no one holds them accountable. So in order to steal from us, they have to silence political opposition, intimidate activists into submission, and try to get the press to fold. If they do that, then they can get away with using government as a mechanism to enrich themselves.
“And if you want further proof of their agenda, look what's happening right now today, as we speak, Republicans and Democrats had a deal to keep the government open and operating, to fund much needed disaster assistance, and it was killed yesterday by the two billionaires closest to Donald Trump. And when asked as to what their alternative was, they said raise the debt ceiling. Donald Trump said raise the debt ceiling. You'll have my support for a continuing resolution if you raise the debt ceiling.
“Why do they want to raise the debt ceiling? It's easy. They want to pass a huge tax cut for the billionaires in charge of Donald Trump's government. That's their agenda. Big, big tax cut for billionaires and corporations. But the only way you can do that is if the debt ceiling is raised. The only way you can get away with that is if you can borrow more money on the backs of ordinary, average, everyday people in order to pay for that tax cut. So we're seeing the agenda of the Trump administration before they're even sworn in in front of our eyes. Rig rules in order to make the billionaires richer and telegraph that as your number one priority to Congress.
“Listen, there aren't just democracies and dictatorships in the world. There are dozens of countries that occupy a gray zone in between those poles. Countries where there are still elections, but the media and the political opposition are so weak, weak because they've been beaten into submission by the regime, that the people actually have no power. There are elections, but the same group, the same man, the same family, wins every time.
“America has been for almost all of our history a functioning, robust democracy where the party or individual in power changes regularly because people hold all the tools necessary to choose their leaders. But that could change in a heartbeat, so quickly, but without any one galvanizing moment that the transition might just be missed by all of us. You could just wake up one day and find out that the rules of democracy have been so rigged that Republicans or the Trump family never ever lose again, and billionaires get to steal from all of us without any accountability.
“I know that that sounds hard to believe. I admit that I might be wrong about all of this. America's democracy, it is the longest existing democracy in the history of the world. It has proven to be resilient. It's filled with grit. It has survived challenges before. But like every one of us eventually disappears from this planet, so does every democracy. Every democracy has a last day. And if you look around the world, the steps that lead to the termination of a democracy, the end of self-governance, are shockingly similar from country to country.
“The wealthy people who control the media and the economy fold into the regime. Better to join than to fight. The citizens get scared of joining up with the opposition movement because they're fearful of harassment. Better to stay quiet than fight. If we don't speak out more loudly and more boldly about the events of the last week, and the way that we are seeing a purposeful, detailed road map constructed by Donald Trump and his billionaire friends to transition democracy to an oligarchy. If we don't fight like hell against these nominees, especially those going to the Department of Justice that will execute this assault on democracy, then our nation very soon could easily befall the same as these other destructed democracies.
“The survival of our 240-year experiment is facing right now one of its most severe tests. I just think it's time that everybody woke up to that and pulled their heads out of the sand. I yield back.”
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