Chris Murphy: ‘If We Continue to Engage in Business as Usual, This Democracy Could Be Gone’

Sen. Chris Murphy cautioned lawmakers that continuing to engage in norms during the Trump administration could bring an end to American democracy. His comments come after 10 Democratic senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, voted with Republicans to pass Trump’s spending bill and avert a government shutdown.

“If we continue to observe norms, if we continue to engage in business as usual, this democracy could be gone,” Murphy said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Donald Trump has taken unprecedented actions in his second term as president, ignoring the rule of law and democratic checks and balances, engaging in shameless corruption and authoritarian actions. He has fired large swaths of federal workers and military veterans, dismantled and decimated entire agencies and departments, begun mass deportations, sided with dictators, and threatened allies that he would use the military to seize their land and subsume them into the United States. Meanwhile, several Senate Democrats are worried about maintaining norms while the majority of their party’s congressional legislators are concerned the party is not prepared to do what’s hard to save democracy.

“Are we willing to fight?” Murphy said. “I admit that it would take some risk-tolerant behavior in order to effectively stand up to this president. And so the question really is for my party writ large,

are we willing to do the very difficult things necessary to meet this moment?”

Murphy argued that the electorate is pushing Democrats to fight back, including voting against Trump’s spending bill: “I understand that a no vote was a risk, right? But I think the American public right now want us to stand up, Democrats, to stand up and take some risks.”

When Welker asked whether Schumer is “the best person to lead your caucus in this moment,” Murphy responded: “He can lead this caucus. But we need to have a conversation inside the caucus about whether we are willing to stand up to Republicans. Listen, we have options. We could decide to not proceed to legislation as an ordinary course of business. There are big fights ahead of us like the debt ceiling, like another potential government shutdown in six months. So we have opportunities as a caucus to stand up and meet this moment. And I think the American people are demanding that we do that.”

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By allowing a government shutdown, Murphy said, it “would have sent a message that the Democratic Party is not going to be bullied by Donald Trump.”

“I think the way the president is acting, using law enforcement to target dissidents, harassing TV stations and radio stations that criticize him, endorsing political violence, puts our democracy at immediate risk,” Murphy warned. “So if you are a Democrat in the Senate or in the House, you have to start acting with urgency. And that is the conversation that we have to start having inside our caucus.”