On Wednesday, February 19, 2025, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy appeared alongside Hasan Minhaj for an episode of Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know. During Murphy’s conversation with Minhaj, the Democrat from Connecticut did not hold back. In fact, he went as far as to say, “The entire American political system is corrupted by money.”
“I think the entire American political system is corrupted by money,” Murphy said.
“I think Democrats have been corrupted by money as well, much less than Republicans have been, [and] in a much less overt way, but I’d think it’d be silly to pretend as if Democrats, not everyone, but some Democrats…ultimately, are impacted by the fact that they’re spending a lot of time with donors,” he added.
Murphy has never shied away from criticizing lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including those in his own party. Following the most recent presidential election, he declared it was “time to rebuild the left.” Much like his conversation with Minhaj, Murphy took issue with lawmakers’ closeness to donors and the economic elite compared to the working class.
“The left skips past the way people are feeling (alone, impotent, overwhelmed) and straight to uninspiring solutions (more roads! bulk drug purchasing!) that do little to actually upset the status quo of who has power and who doesn’t. Does racism explain part of the attraction of the right’s nativism? Of course. But mass deportation is a (terrible) response to Americans’ real sense they are helpless in the face of global forces (like increased migration). The left largely ignores this pain,” Murphy wrote. “We don’t listen enough; we tell people what’s good for them. And when progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base.”
As Murphy has become increasingly vocal about his displeasure with the direction the Democratic Party is heading, he’s emerged as a potential leader for the Democratic Party in the near future.
“He’s really interesting right now,” said Matt Duss, a former policy adviser for Senator Bernie Sanders. “He’s articulating a really powerful theory of the case about rebuilding an American political consensus. And he’s doing so in a unifying and constructive way.”
