ICYMI: Murphy on ABC News: This Is One Of The Most Dangerous Moments America Has Ever Faced
Press (Murphy)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 21, 2025
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Deni Kamper
MURPHY ON ABC NEWS: THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS MOMENTS AMERICA HAS EVER FACED
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Sunday joined ABC’s This Week with Jonathan Karl to discuss the Trump administration’s insidious attacks on freedom of speech and the dismantling of the rule of law in favor of a two-tier justice system that favors the President’s allies and targets his political opponents. He also encouraged the Democratic Party to broaden our coalition by focusing on economic inequality and breaking up concentrated corporate power.
Murphy underscored how the Trump administration is actively leveraging the power of the federal government to erode Americans’ constitutional rights: “This is one of the most dangerous moments America has ever faced. We are quickly turning into a banana republic. The President of the United States is now employing the full power of the federal government, the FCC, the Department of Justice, in order to punish, lock up, take down, off the air, all of his political enemies… This is what happens in deeply repressive states… There is no more fundamental right in America than the right to protest your government.”
Murphy pushed Republicans to join Democrats in standing up for the First Amendment: “When is enough for Republicans? I was very glad to see Ted Cruz stand up and say what is simply true. It is unconstitutional and deeply immoral for the President to jail or to silence his political enemies, and it will come back and boomerang on conservatives and Republicans at some point, if this becomes the norm. But next week, we need every Republican in the Senate, in the House, not only speaking up but going to Donald Trump and telling him that they are not going to let him get away with this massive new contraction of speech. This is a decisive moment for the country.”
Murphy slammed the Trump administration for dismantling the rule of law: “There are just two standards of justice now in this country. If you are a friend of the President, a loyalist of the President, you can get away with nearly anything, including beating the hell out of police officers. But if you are an opponent of the President, you may find yourself in jail again. That is Cuba, that's Iran, that's Russia, that is not the United States. And this just has to be a moment where leaders come together, whether you are a Republican or Democrat, and say, enough is enough.”
Following the announcement that he would be introducing the No Political Enemies (NOPE) Act last week, Murphy emphasized the need to safeguard Americans’ fundamental rights in the face of unprecedented attacks: “Our legislation just simply makes it easier for you to raise First Amendment defenses in court. It doesn't create any new rights, new constitutional rights. It just makes it simpler for people to say when they show up to court, “Listen, I did nothing wrong here. All I did was speak my mind.” It creates an easier avenue for you to contest prosecution that's brought against you for just speaking politically about the president. I wish this legislation weren't necessary, but I think we're going to need some exceptional new tools at an exceptional moment.”
Murphy urged the Democratic Party to broaden their coalition by focusing on economic inequality and tackling concentrated corporate influence: “I think the Democratic Party has an opportunity to reach into Donald Trump's base to really build upon a potential realignment in this country. If we are aggressively talking about deconstructing concentrated corporate power, including in the media, and we are talking about fundamentally increasing the amount of money that people make and the protections that they have when they go to work, that's not socialism. That's just right sizing the economy so that people have power instead of corporations having power.”
A full transcript of Murphy’s interview on ABC can be found below.
KARL: Senator Murphy, let's start right there with those words towards Pam Bondi. The President mentioned some of his enemies, including James Comey, the former FBI Director, Letitia James — it sounds like he is directly ordering his attorney general to prosecute his enemies.
MURPHY: This is one of the most dangerous moments America has ever faced. We are quickly turning into a banana republic. The President of the United States is now employing the full power of the federal government, the FCC, the Department of Justice, in order to punish, lock up, take down, off the air, all of his political enemies. As you know, this is what happens in Iran. This is what happens in Cuba. This is what happens in China. Deeply repressive states in which, if you have the courage to stand up and speak truth to power, you are silenced. I mean, there is no more fundamental right in America than the right to protest your government.
And the question today is, when is enough enough for Republicans? I was very glad to see Ted Cruz stand up and say what is simply true. It is unconstitutional and deeply immoral for the President to jail or to silence his political enemies, and it will come back and boomerang on conservatives and Republicans at some point, if this becomes the norm. But next week, we need every Republican in the Senate, in the House, not only speaking up but going to Donald Trump and telling him that they are not going to let him get away with this massive new contraction of speech. This is a decisive moment for the country. It is a decisive moment for Republicans who have to decide to preserve this core fundamental American value, the freedom of speech.
KARL: Okay, we'll get to the speech aspect of this in a second. But first, what we saw from him overnight with this statement to Pam Bondi, and what we saw Friday with the firing. He said it was a firing of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who investigated Letitia James on this allegation of mortgage fraud and who found no evidence to move forward with a criminal charge. The President believes that he — well, he knows he was targeted for multiple criminal prosecutions, spent most of his time after he left office fending those off, and now he wants to get retribution against those who he believes he insists went after him falsely.
MURPHY: Again, it's really important to underscore what happened here, right? This is a Republican US Attorney in Virginia who came to the conclusion that the Attorney General of New York did nothing wrong. There was no evidence of a crime, and so Donald Trump, because he doesn't care about the facts — all he cares about is the threat of imprisonment for his political enemies, so that it suppresses the speech of other people who might speak up — is now going to put his own political loyalist in charge of that investigation. And again, I think you have to put it in an even broader context, because there's two things happening. One, you are going to be prosecuted for political speech in this country, but you are also going to be excused. You are going to be let off for real, actual criminality if you are a supporter of the President. Witness what happened to every single violent January 6 protester let out of jail. See what happened to Tom Homan, his border czar, who literally accepted a bag of cash, $50,000, and the investigation was dropped once Donald Trump became president. So there are just two standards of justice now in this country. If you are a friend of the President, a loyalist of the President, you can get away with nearly anything, including beating the hell out of police officers. But if you are an opponent of the President, you may find yourself in jail again. That is Cuba, that's Iran, that's Russia, that is not the United States. And this just has to be a moment where leaders come together, whether you are a Republican or Democrat, and say, enough is enough.
KARL: Let me ask you, you introduced a bill called the No Political Enemies Act, and you say it creates a specific legal defense for those targeted for political reasons. Doesn't the First Amendment cover that? Is it necessary to have another piece of legislation? We have a First Amendment — it is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
MURPHY: Yeah, listen, I think what Brendan Carr has done at the FCC is illegal and unconstitutional, and if it's contested in court, I think he will lose. The problem, though, is that increasingly you have Trump sycophants, not just in charge of the DOJ, but sitting in courthouses all over the country, and so you have a legal system that is increasingly getting rigged against those who are daring to speak up against the president. Our legislation just simply makes it easier for you to raise First Amendment defenses in court. It doesn't create any new rights, new constitutional rights. It just makes it simpler for people to say when they show up to court, “Listen, I did nothing wrong here. All I did was speak my mind.” It creates an easier avenue for you to contest prosecution that's brought against you for just speaking politically about the president. I wish this legislation weren't necessary, but I think we're going to need some exceptional new tools at an exceptional moment.
KARL: You've probably seen that a lot of people on X and social media are recirculating something that you said back in 2018, arguing that what you said now shows you to be hypocritical in what you're saying now. Let me just read from this tweet from yours, and it was still a tweet back then: “Private companies deciding not to let their companies be used to spread hate and lies is not the same as government censorship. If it feels the same, then we need to ask why a small handful of companies have so much control over the content Americans see.” So you know, a lot of the President's allies will point to a decision like the one made by ABC Disney regarding Jimmy Kimmel and saying, Look, this is a private company making a decision that a private company has a right to do.
MURPHY: Well, I think there's a real difference, because these companies made that decision in the context of a threat from the FCC, right? This is a federal regulator who is using the power of government to coerce both NexStar and ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel down off the air. Listen, every single president, every single politician, has drawn issue with something that a media figure has said, and may use the power of persuasion to try to get them to change what they say. That's very different than using the power of government in a coercive way — that's actually illegal. The Supreme Court has said, “No, you cannot use the regulatory power of the government to say to a broadcaster, if you don't say what I want you to say, as the President of the United States, there will be an official, legal consequence.” That's illegal, and that's the fundamental difference here.
KARL: So I want to turn to another subject in the brief time we have left. There was a poll out about the Democratic Party. There was a poll out earlier this month from Gallup that asked views of socialism and capitalism. And I want to take a look at this part of that poll. It showed that 66% of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism; independents, 38%, just 38%; Republicans, 14%. Is that the future of the Democratic Party, is a more favorable view of socialism?
MURPHY: No, it is not. But I have seen, I think, even more interesting polling that shows you across party identities, people in this country are sick and tired of corporations having so much control over our lives, and are sick and tired of work not paying. So I think the Democratic Party has an opportunity to reach into Donald Trump's base to really build upon a potential realignment in this country. If we are aggressively talking about deconstructing concentrated corporate power, including in the media, and we are talking about fundamentally increasing the amount of money that people make and the protections that they have when they go to work, that's not socialism. That's just right sizing the economy so that people have power instead of corporations having power. And frankly, I think that's why a candidate like Mamdani in New York is doing so well, because he's talking about transitioning power from people that don't have it to people that have it. So I think that's the message that ultimately has the potential to unite a lot of right and left.
KARL: We're out of time, but very quickly, is Chuck Schumer making a mistake by not endorsing Mamdani? He is the only major political figure in New York, it seems, who has not endorsed him.
MURPHY: Yeah, I guess I don't give advice to my colleagues about who they endorse and who they don't endorse. I think the success of his candidacy is a really important signal to Democrats and Republicans about the power of taking on concentrated corporate power, and I hope that at least my party learns from that.
KARL: All right. Senator Chris Murphy, thank you for being with us this morning.
MURPHY: Appreciate it.
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