The Bulwark Podcast - Chris Murphy: Time to Break Norms(?)

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Republicans are nullifying bipartisan budget deals and planning a mid-decade redistricting to try to hold the House after the midterms. Trump is methodically working to crush dissent in the media, chill major Dem donors, and shut down the party's online fundraising portal, ActBlue. One political party is breaking all the norms, while the other is trying to stick to them. Sen. Murphy tells Tim that democracies die when the rules change and the opposition refuses to adapt. Meanwhile, Trump's detention regime is not only making prison-builders filthy rich, it will also likely draw in ICE candidates eager to abuse their power. Plus, Epstein is a bad story for the administration no matter how you slice it, and Tim shares his thoughts about Hunter.  Sen. Chris Murphy joins Tim Miller. show notes Sen. Murphy's Substack piece on regulating AI For 20% off your first purchase, head to FairHarborClothing.com/BULWARK and use code BULWARK.

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, delighted to welcome Senator from Connecticut. It is Democrat Chris Murphy. How you doing, man? I'm great, man. Good to see you. Thanks for having me back. Good to see you. I haven't seen you since Easter, maybe. New Orleans Easter is a little different. It's a little different than Hartford, Connecticut.

Than Wasp Easter? Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll see how it's going. I want to talk to you about the state of play broadly before we get into Epstein and all this stuff and kind of the democratic response to this administration. Back in November of last year, you were talking to my colleague Sam Stein. And that's what you said. You said, I'm crossing my fingers that we'll be in some normal world in which I can find some narrow areas of agreement with Trump, but I'm spending most of my time thinking and preparing for dystopia. And you shouted out a few thoughts about what that dystopia might look like, including arrest warrants for opponents and things of that nature. I'm wondering how you feel now in July as compared to your dystopian expectations about

the state of the country. We are living in a democratic dystopia. It's worse than I think I could have imagined. And I was probably one of the most alarmist voices even before he got sworn in. I think what makes this moment so urgent for me is that none of this is accidental. This is clearly a plan to try to undermine our democracy so seriously that we don't have a free and fair

election in 2026. This is not a world in which he's going to cancel elections next fall or three years from now. What he's doing is following this, you know, tried and true playbook from Hungary, from Serbia, from Turkey, whereby you just slowly methodically crush dissent, crush the avenues of support that flow to your political opposition, such that when you have elections, you know, people feel like they have a choice, but it's a fake choice. And really, there's no way for the opposition to gather enough oxygen

in order to win. It's a really potent strategy because there is, coup, there is no moment where the parliament building burns down, there's no day where democracy exists and then the following day it doesn't, you just stop being able to win elections and that's sort of where I think we could be headed for if all of us don't recognize that we've got to engage in some, you know, pretty exceptional, maybe ahistoric tactics in order to wake up the parts of the country that right now are still sleeping because they think that this is a normal political environment. That's interesting you went there and there are like a million places you can go, right?

The way that he's bullying universities and bullying, heck, bullying Coca-Cola. We're learning this morning Coke's changing their product thanks to the president, which is a small government conservatism at its finest, the immigration regime. So to go straight to the elections, I don't know, because to me, I feel like I'm as alarmist as people get, and that's one area where I'm a little bit more sanguine, I guess. I don't know. I feel like the next year's elections will probably be pretty good for the Democrats. The way that our elections are run are so diffuse, it's kind of hard, you know, to nationalize.

What specific things are you worried about the most in that area? Yeah, listen, I certainly am not giving up on the fact that I think we still absolutely have a path to have elections that matter. But if we exist in a space where, you know, the major sources of financial support for Democrats decide to sit on the sidelines because President Trump is micromanaging the economy and he is making people with money and resources pay a price if they step into the political arena. If there are more Stephen Colbert, some of the most significant voices that explain the danger of Donald Trump to the public, our silence.

If violence continues to creep into our politics so that a lot of our activists decide by next fall, next summer to just stay home because it's just a little bit too rough out there. If Act Blue disappears next fall, next summer to just stay home because it's just a little bit too rough out there. If Act Blue disappears next summer, when it's too late for us to stand up another way to funnel donations into Democratic candidates. If redistricting gets pulled off in a way

where we just have a much narrower path to a majority, if red states do that, but Democratic states decide to stick to norms and wait for four years to draw districts again, we could be in a world where Donald Trump's approval ratings are 39% and we don't win the House and we don't win the Senate. And Republicans smell blood in the water because they got away with the contraction of democratic space enough to be able to withstand what should have been a bloodbath for them in the midterms

and they just crank the dial even firmer. Now that's not inevitable. We have the ability to make sure that many of those things don't happen, but it takes collective action out there in the American public and they're looking for us, the most significant and vocal invisible Democratic leaders to show some fight. So there are two things in there that I want to pick out.

I think that money in politics is a little less important than people think these days. In 2025, I just think that the nature of how our elections are run, the value of the TV ad compared to what it used to be isn't the same. All that said, there's no value to money in politics. And you said something that's interesting. You're out there more than me trying to raise money, talking to donors, talking to big democratic interest groups. Are people being intimidated into not participating,

into not donating at this point? Do you think that that is happening, that there are going to be people that are worried about retribution, and so they're not supporting Democrats, although they might have otherwise? Well, I absolutely think that's happening. And I'm not necessarily saying that there are sort of active threats of retribution

against specific Democratic donors. I think they are watching the way that Trump targets his political enemies and they would rather just, for this cycle, stand out and stay out of the fray. So it's the sort of threat of retribution that's causing some, not all, Democratic donors to step back and just sit this one out. I just think that's true. I think that's happening.

It's interesting you said that because it calls to mind. Obama had some really tough talk for Democratic elites, basically, recently, which was like, basically, you know, I don't know the exact quote in front of me, but toughen up, like, pull your shit together. Like, it's time to get into the fight. You guys aren't the ones that are really a threat here. It's more vulnerable groups. Do you think that came from, like, this notion that he is also kind of seeing and hearing that, that a lot of these groups are, a lot of these individuals and groups are not stepping up?

Yeah, I think so. And when you listen to some of these individuals who have thus far held back and not invested, they're obviously not often going to offer their fear of retribution from Trump as the primary reason. They will say, well, the Democratic Party doesn't have his act together.

I don't see a strategy. I don't support the you know, the Democratic Party doesn't have his act together, I don't see a strategy, you know, I don't support the DNC, the left wing of the Democratic Party is too wild and out of control, mandami, mandami, mandami, right? So they come up with all sorts of reasons to sit out, but if you really scratch the surface, a lot of it is that they, you know, have real big equities in this economy.

And when you have a president who's sort of willing to pick and dictate winners and losers, and you feel like you have a lot to lose, that's a good enough reason to stay out and just come up with other reasons to articulate. People are so pathetic. So hard to process this center.

Yeah, and listen to the extent that people sort of believe what you may believe that, yeah, this is really dangerous, but there's not actually a danger to the 2026 elections coming off. That makes it pretty easy to just decide to check out because you sort of feel like even without you, the momentum will still head in the direction of a correction. But if everybody makes that decision, right, well, I can just stay out. I just have seen this play before Republicans

are going to have their comeuppance in the midterms. If everybody hangs back, then that momentum doesn't get created by itself. That's a good caution. And that might have, I think that was a key reason why Hillary actually lost in 2016, but we're not going to go relive the 2016. President, just like, okay, one more thing that you said is on the redistricting. Because we're already seeing this. There are two things. There was, my colleague, Lauren Egan, was talking to some of the California state legislators

who were like, we're better than this. We care about democracy. You know, I'm not going to be for the Newsome plan if they try to push through a redistricting California mesh Texas. You know, Wisconsin, you know, the Democrats wanted to redistrict, but there's now a liberal majority on the Supreme Court, but they're saying, well, you know, we're not going to – we're going to wait until the normal term. How worried are you about that kind of a sense of goody two shoes, Democrats not fighting, you know,

some really dramatic changes potentially in Texas and that being decisive. More broadly, Tim, I am concerned about this world in which the regime operates outside of the box and the opposition stays inside of the box, right? We respect these norms because we believe in the norms and we think it's the right thing to sort of stay true to them. But history tells us that's how democracies die. Democracies

die when the opposition doesn't realize that the rules have changed and does not adapt, refuses to adapt. And so this is a perfect test case. They are going to violate a basic norm. You wait 10 years to redraw the districts, we are going to say that we're better than that, and we will potentially lose the House in 2026. You're seeing that happen inside the Senate on the appropriations process. They've changed the rules. They now expect us to sit at the table and pass bipartisan budgets, and then they stab us in the back and pass these rescissions bills, which just cancel out all the Democratic

spending. And then guess what? We go right back into the room with them to write the next bipartisan budget bill, because that's the norm, that we're supposed to write bipartisan budget bills, knowing that they're gonna do the exact same thing six months from now. They're just gonna cancel all of our projects,

all the things that matter to Democratic constituencies and poor families and middle-class families. But the norm of bipartisan appropriations is so important that we stick to it. I just think if that's the world in which we live in, if we decide to continue to be polite and norm observant, that's how the democracy fades away. Okay. Let me be the norms defender for a second. Do you worry about the other side where the democracy fades away because the opposition decides they don't actually care about the

rules either and so these rules were fake from the first place, and then it just becomes kind of a zero-sum fight of people who don't actually care about liberal democracy anymore? But we do believe in the norms, and so I think we can be nimble enough to say, at this moment, we need to adjust to their tactics so that we can get back to a world in which we treat each other fairly.

You know, yes, we should probably, you know, all do redistricting at the same time. But the way that we protect that norm is by being nimble enough and bold enough to say, right now, we need to suspend our fealty to norms in order to protect them in the long run. It's interesting you're saying all this. I had a little note down here that I was like, in the first few months of the administration, I was hearing a lot, you know, behind the scenes from Democratic strategists and from regular people, Democrats are wusses.

Nobody gets it. Nobody's fighting hard enough. They don't understand, except Chris Murphy. He does get it. I'm hearing a little less of that lately, though. Do you think that's because, like, colleagues looking to this next budget fight, are your colleagues changing tactics? Are they evolving or are all of us just getting complacent?

I don't know, how do you assess the state of play? No, I think that's the question, right? I mean, if people just accepted the idea that there's not going to be this fight that they had hoped to see and they're channeling their energies into other avenues. I think that's probably part of what's happening. But yes, my hope is that Democrats decide to fight for something this fall. We are once again at a moment where we need a bipartisan budget in order to keep the government

open and operating. We should fight for something that is important to this country, whether that be trying to stop the size of gravity of these healthcare cuts that are happening or perhaps just requiring the Trump administration to stop behaving so illegally, require them to spend the money

that is appropriated in these bills and show that this matters enough that we're willing to engage in some risk tolerant behavior to get it done. Republicans are always willing to shut down the government over something that they care about. We should too. I agree with that.

So that you think that's it, the healthcare cuts? I mean, it helps if the thing you're fighting over is something tangible that people get. I think that's sometimes the problem with this where it's like, well, we're going to fight over just the principle that there shouldn't be rescissions. And it's like, people are like, what the fuck are you talking about? You know, like, is there something tangible to fight about in the budget?

Yeah, a colleague of mine said to me a late last night on the phone, you know, maybe you don't fight totalitarianism by talking about totalitarianism all the time. Right? Maybe you fight totalitarianism by talking about totalitarianism all the time, right? Right. Maybe you fight totalitarianism by talking about the real world consequences of fascism. And one of the real world consequences is right now is that millions of people are about to lose their health care in order to pad the pockets of the super wealthy. And that's worth fighting over in this budget. Listen, they did their reconciliation thing.

They stripped health care from 17 million people and the rules allowed them to do that with 50 votes now They have to pass a bipartisan budget the rules say they've got to do that with Democratic votes And so it's not you know Unfair play for Democrats to say you know what if you want our votes this fall Then you have to blunt the rough edges of what you just did. We want to make sure that this doesn't result in hundreds of hospital closures. We want folks with Obamacare to not see massive premium increases.

That's a fight we would win, and it is connected to the threat to democracy because it's a consequence of what happens when the people aren't in charge and just a handful of elites are in charge. These really terrible decisions get made, like the erasure of healthcare for 17 million Americans. Right now, the headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks making us all vulnerable, but you can do something about it. Delete Me is here to make it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online.

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I just, before I got on with you, I saw that she just did a media interview in which she, I saw the headline that she explains what the fight was about. So I should really listen to what she says before I tell you what the fight was. No, listen, this was happening. This was a conversation she and I were having

right after the Republicans passed the rescissions bill. She and I write the Department of Homeland Security budget together. She's the chairman, I'm the top ranking Democrat. And I was saying to her, how on earth are we gonna write a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security when the president is engaged every single day in illegal activity?

He is ignoring the funds that we have appropriated to protect people. He is not observing the asylum laws of this nation. And you guys have telegraphed us that even if I sit down and write a bipartisan bill with you and get something in there that's really important to, you know, my state or, you know, the people that I care about, you'll just use the rescissions tactic

to cancel my spending afterwards. Like, you know, why would I trade baseball cards with my friend if he tells me, I'm gonna break into your house tomorrow night and steal my cards back? So that was the nature of the argument that I was making. She can speak for herself as to the argument that she was making with me. Do you feel like you made any ground? Well, I mean, I do think Republicans understand the mess that they have created.

I don't know that they're willing to solve it, but it is true that you can't really come to a bipartisan agreement on a budget if you're staring your partner in the eye and telling them that you're gonna use this dirty trick, rescissions, in order to cancel out the deal within months. Yeah, I guess that is being, part of the reason why people liked it,

and I think why people liked it, we didn't even know what y'all were saying, but responded to it was, like, a lot of us are pissed. And we hear a lot from Democrats who are like, oh, you know, behind the scenes, like my Republicans understand that some of the stuff they've really gone overboard on, but they can't really say anything because of their voters. And like, it's sort of like, aren't we, like we're in year nine of this.

Aren't we past this? I mean, you know, I understand that you want to have comity with your colleagues, but I don't know. Isn't there a moment for getting in their grill and being like, you guys have masked agents of the government snatching people off the street and you're putting them into deportation camps. What are you doing? And you want me to do a bipartisan bill with you about whatever, a bridge fix? This is crazy. Listen, I think there was nobody here who sort of did more bipartisan work over the bipartisan bill with you about whatever a bridge bridge fix. This is crazy. Listen, I think there was nobody here who sort of did more bipartisan work over the last four years than I did the gun bill, the immigration bill, the electoral account reform act. So I've been willing to be in the room with these guys, but

not right now. Because I think right now, they have all decided that they are sort of up for the destruction of our democracy. And, you know, right now they have all decided that they are sort of up for the destruction of our democracy. And right now this is a moment for fights, for making them uncomfortable, not for providing them kind of a veneer of bipartisan agreement and legitimacy over a regime that is wildly illegal, unconstitutional,

and stealing from the American people on a daily basis. I want to ask you about a couple of those fights that are a little bit harder. Like the healthcare fight at some level, I mean, it's very serious and very important, but it's also easy, like it falls on partisan lines. American people are upset with them over that. If you look at the polls, right,

so it's a safe place to argue. Here are a couple other things in the rescissions, Bill. And you're talking with Katie Britt, who's the Homeland Security Chair. Should there be a fight picked over the way that they are handling domestic detention of migrants, in some cases citizens, green card holders, and there's the American, the veteran that was held for three days? Some Democrats are afraid to fight on the immigration thing. But to me, it's like, why would we work with you on a budget that is being used to house like an Everglades prison where people are being held there even though they haven't committed any crimes?

Yeah, it's even worse than that. I mean, these prison camps that they are creating are also just a means to enrich their donors. People are getting absolutely filthy rich off of the construction of these camps in Texas and in Florida and other parts of the country. It is fundamentally corrupt, not just in terms of how they are treating human beings as if they are subhuman, as if they are animals, but also in the way in which they are using

taxpayer dollars to just pad the pockets of their wealthy donors. Yes, I think we can run in a way that I don't think we thought was going to be possible six months ago against Trump on immigration. He has crossed the Rubicon, the way in which he is dehumanizing these families who have come to the United States to seek a better life, the way in which he is so deliberately not focused on criminals that he is going after folks who are just gardening and staffing our farms, I think has flipped the script for us. This country, this country, you know, there are mean people, there are spiteful people in this country, but most people still believe in the dignity of human life

and the way in which he is treating these immigrants as if they are animals, as if every single one of them is a threat to the United States, I think has really sort of turned the conversation in a way that allows us to win a whole bunch of swing votes. Now, only if people agree that we're gonna fix the problem the right way, right?

I mean, they're only gonna support us if we actually are serious about border security, if we're gonna fundamentally reform the asylum law so that only the right people get in. If we are willing to say, you know what, there is a limit to how many people we can take through the southern border on a weekly or monthly basis. If we have a credible plan for how we're going to be better in border security, the way in which he has animalized the immigrant community provides

us a real political opening. This was a Human Rights Watch report from, I think, yesterday or Sunday. Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to deal to eat food from styrofoam plates like dogs. The prisons are so overcrowded, the detainees are not getting access to, you know, food, cleanliness. There's conversations about how it kind of smells like shit in these detention centers. A lot of these people didn't even commit any crimes. Is there any hope that there can be any oversight put over the treatment at these facilities domestically? Well, listen, of all of the things you could bring to a negotiation over a budget this

fall, one of them could easily be that you improve the conditions at these facilities, that you have an actual vetting process to make sure that the individuals there are either who you say they are, people who have committed crimes, or at the very least aren't American citizens. As you heard, when Democrats went through alligator alcatraz, there were people shouting at them from the cells that they were American citizens, that they were there without any legal from the cells that they were American citizens, that

they were there without any legal justification. So that could certainly be... Pete Don't you worry, here's what the other side will say about that fight though. If you have that fight, then the Republicans will be like, look at the Democrats, they only care about the gangsters, and they only care about the Guatemalans that are, you know, who came here illegally and didn't come the right way. And that, you know, they care about the people that the rapists that we have in these prisons, they care about them, while they care about you. So, right. So I'm saying an option is to make that one of the things you fight for in the

budget. But what we also know is that the American public is turning against the president on this. This, this, the way in which they are treating immigrants is just so distasteful. But by and large, the only way that those stories are getting out right now is through the press. The party, the Democratic Party, the left, is so conditioned to believing that this is a losing issue that we really haven't been running any kind of substantial public relations campaign

to shame them for the way that they are treating immigrants. So we can heighten the political problem for them by simply being louder about the unacceptability of these conditions. Well saying that, listen, yes, we do believe that there's a universe of people who shouldn't be here in the United States. If you've committed a crime,

if you are an actual threat to the safety of a community, you should be turned around and deported, but that's not what they're doing. The people that are subject to these conditions, by and large, have no criminal history and are no threat of violence to these communities. Pete What about the masks? Should the ICE agents be allowed to wear masks? Joe No, no, absolutely not. There's legislation, you know, right now that we've introduced, and I think people largely get this, right? People want their police officers

and their community to identify themselves. You don't want the judges who are adjudicating your cases to be secrets. What the mask becomes is just a cover for illegality and for brutality, because if nobody can identify the law enforcement officer that's beating the hell out of an immigrant, then everybody can get away with it. And I think this is increasingly important as we staff up ICE.

Let's just be honest. There is an element of folks who are going to be drawn to these jobs that see it as a bonus that they can get away with masked vigilantism. As you hire into ICE so so quickly the standard for who you hire is gonna go down and down and down the Border Patrol can't hire more than a thousand people a year because we just can't find more than a thousand people a year who actually satisfy the criteria if ice decides to hire ten thousand

people this year man there are gonna be some pretty unsavory people who get hired and the masks allow them to sort of get away with a level of depravity that none of us should accept. Pete Slauson Also, it feels pretty risky in a heavily armed country, you know? A lot of these states, you have people with concealed carry and you got unidentified masked men jumping out of a van and grabbing people. I mean, I just, I think that's going to lead to some pretty concerning situations. Even for that, I mean, like honestly, for the safety of the ICE officials.

I'm not, and again, not because I want, please, like, do not misunderstand me. I want everyone to treat, you know, federal agents with respect. I'm just saying, if masked people come out of a van and start grabbing people in a country where there are a lot of folks with concealed weapons, that's going to lead to violence at some point. One of my colleagues was speculating that the reason that these, you know, very high-profile raids are happening in a place like California, not happening at least as visibly in places like Arizona, is because of the worry that in a community with, you know, folks who have a, who have concealed weapons, it's going to lead to a shootout. And that shouldn't be ever be the reason why you aren't enforcing the law that

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bill and these rescissions. And it's just horrific that this party, these guys who ostensibly are Christians, are just cutting the bill that feeds the poorest people in the world. They've cut the funding for UNICEF in the last bill, you know, huge amounts of cuts to USAID, obviously. Again, this is a tough one because it's like, do you want to pick this fight with them and have them be able to say, oh, well, they care more about people in Africa than Americans? Or do you pick it because it's the right thing to do? You did an interview recently with Ross Douthat, who was really on his high horse about how the Republicans are the real God-fearing party.

Maybe the God-fearing party should hear about what they're doing to the most vulnerable people in the world. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, listen, I think you're making a mistake as a political figure when you're sort of involved in way too much gamesmanship. Authenticity is the coin of the realm in this business right now. And so if you care, as I do, about using the power of America

in order to try to relieve the kind of death and suffering that happens in super poor places across the world, and also to enjoy a bit of advantage to American reputation by helping to save those lives, then just say it. I think we are building a moral case, right? We are showing the country that we care much more deeply about humanity and human life than Republicans do. And we express that by caring and talking

about the treatment of immigrants. We express that by talking about the decision to pass along a brand new tax cut for billionaires at the cost of millions of people dying overseas. And so yeah, we can really finally sift through the polls and find the one thing that connects with the largest group of people.

Or we could just talk about what we care about. Do you get your sense that any of your colleagues actually care about the death that we have wrought upon the poorest children in Africa? Have any of them mentioned that worry? Something they could work with you on? Hey, Chris, maybe I could work with you on the fact that we should not let three-year-olds in Africa die because they can't eat while food goes to rot in a warehouse in Dubai.

Anybody mention that to you? Well, yes, they do mention it, and then they vote to cut the money because what they really care about is their job. I guess what I was sitting on the floor that night is they were passing $4 billion of cuts to UNICEF and programs that keep poor malnourished kids alive overseas. They were just so cavalier about it. They were just sort of watching their watches to see when they could get out of town to head back to their vacation house. And it just struck me, why is this job so good? Why do people care so much about being United States Senator that they would abandon their

principles and just sign up to be an employee for Donald Trump? Because no, there were a bunch of senators who know that it's the wrong thing, know that it's not necessary to balance the federal budget to kick kids overseas off of malnutrition assistance. But right now, they're just employees of Donald Trump, and they are so worried about losing their job. They're so worried about a life that doesn't involve being a United States senator that they're willing to check their morals at the door. So, I don't know. It's a famous biblical story, actually, how you just kind of do that. You care so deeply

that you let people die and suffer because you want to hold your job alongside the other elites. Wasn't that one of those stories? I don't think I didn't, I don't actually think that's what's in there. Love to ask Ross about that. But it's like, you know, so are we gonna live in a world in which we believe that they're sincere and we just sort of hold out hope

that eventually we'll get Republicans to cross the aisle and work with us on making sure that more people in America have health care or making sure that more people overseas don't die of starvation or do we, you know, confront them and just fight the fuckers? Here's another thing to fight them on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Do you think that they're and it seems like they're covering up information that they have about Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. I think just that simple sentence feels true at this point. Well, they're covering up something.

They're either covering up information that they know is true related to Trump's connection to Epstein, or they're covering up the fact that there was never any secret dossier, and they told a lie for years and years. If you believe what Dick Durbin wrote in that letter, though, if you believe what you're calling Durbin wrote in that letter, they had FBI officials going through these documents, then there has to be something in those documents. I mean, 20 years of Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia, like there's not, they don't have anything. The DOJ doesn't have anything.

I find that hard to believe. Right. And you also have voluminous video evidence of the deep connection and friendship between these two individuals. So yes, the much more likely story here is that they've got really damaging or embarrassing information either about Trump or Trump and some of his close associates, or this file in the way that they claimed does not exist. And it kind of unmasks the fact that many of their conspiracy theories have, you know, very little there.

It's a bad, bad story for them either way. And I don't think it's going away. Yeah, so if the Democrats do take back control of Congress, either body, next year you think that there should be investigations into this, investigation into the coverup. Should that be a priority for oversight or whatever? Yeah, we'll be able to find out what what's going on. You know, absolutely this is an important story to tell. Like subpoenaing, cache Patel, subpoena, you know, right? Like that's that should be a

worthwhile endeavor you would think or is that the distraction? Well, I think, you know, that might be a worthwhile endeavor for many, many reasons, not just to get to the bottom of the Epstein files. So do you think Epstein killed himself? I have no idea. I have no idea. That's a legitimate answer though, but having no idea is a legitimate answer. It is. I don't know.

I've been kind of left to wonder. I don't know. Maybe I'm a pod bro conspiracy theorist now, but I've been spending a lot of time reading Epstein stuff and it's like, it's insane to think that Jeffrey Epstein and Julian Maxwell are the only people that have been indicted for his behavior over multiple decades. Like there are other people involved. That's not to say he was murdered, but there were other people involved that have been protected, I think pretty clearly. Yeah, listen, I will admit that I have just conditioned myself over the years to be really

skeptical of these conspiracy theories. And obviously, monkeys will write something coherent if you put them in front of a typewriter long enough. So one of these conspiracies is probably true. So I gotta go vote. There are these pesky little things on the Senate floor called votes. I gotta go vote. I gotta go vote.

Now see this, now this will be part of the Epstein conspiracy. As soon as we start getting into the murder, Chris Murphy's like, sorry guys, sorry guys, I gotta go vote. Okay, just really quick, can you just give me 30 second rant on crypto and on the Genius Act? Because I really wanted to ask you about that. Just give me a rant about this crypto bill, the one through, because I haven't covered it yet on the pod.

Yeah, so Congress just passed with bipartisan votes, a bill that essentially legalizes Donald Trump's crypto corruption. So it's a bill that regulates stable coin, which is a pretty small segment of the crypto economy, but a really important and growing segment of the economy. And regulating stable coin is not in and of itself a bad thing, but there's a provision of the bill that says, if you are an elected official,

or if you are a high ranking federal government official, you can't issue a stablecoin. Like if you're in government, if you're regulating stablecoin, you can't issue and market a stablecoin. But the bill provides one specific exception for one individual, Donald Trump. The bill literally says, I can't issue a stablecoin, Marco Rubio can't issue a stablecoin, but

Donald Trump can. And the idea that we just legalized his corruption, we put him in charge, we just gave Donald Trump all these new tools to regulate stablecoin, to decide winners and losers, to prosecute or investigate certain actors in the industry, and then also said that it's okay for him to be the biggest player in the industry. What the fuck? What are we doing in Congress as Democrats, if not to draw a line and say, at the very least we are not going to enable the corruption? doing in Congress as Democrats, if not to draw a line and say, at the very least, we're

not going to enable the corruption. Maybe we can't stop all of it. But the idea that Democrats provided votes to pass this bill, it just is head shaking to me. I'm going to bring some of your colleagues in to ask them about that. All right. Thanks so much, Chris Murphy. We didn't get to AI stuff to do.

We didn't get to bro talk. Which by the way, AI is maybe the most important thing happening in this country today. So have me back. So let's go. We'll do a bonus segment for Buller pods, folks. AI and bro talk. All right. You just let me know when you're available.

See you guys. All right. Thanks so much to Senator Chris Murphy. Guys out there fighting at least. And I appreciate it. I did have here on my outline, we're going to talk about Shane Gillis and golf. I know some of our eight bro listeners are upset that we did not get to the bro talk segment. So we'll have a bonus segment with Chris Murphy sometime soon. Up next, I got

to get some Hunter Biden shit off my chest. If you don't want to hear about that, that's fine. This is perfect. I'll see you back here tomorrow. You can just come check out tomorrow's pod. But if you want my thoughts on his three hour podcast, stick around. They're going to be spicy. All right. I've got one other thing I've got to get off my chest. I don't know if many of you saw that Hunter Biden re-emerged yesterday. He had a three-hour interview with some Green Point Brooklyn-looking guy in a mustache where he vented all of his grievances about the

2024 election. He also did an interview with Jamie Harrison, former DNC chair. Unclear why he decided that this was kind of the moment for him to reemerge. But the crux of his anger that he got out on these interviews was an extended rant about how awful James Carville and David Axelrod and the Pod Save America guys and Nancy Pelosi and George Clooney

were for pushing his dad out of the race and how, I guess, his dad had no agency and how his dad was treated so poorly, et cetera, et cetera, and how he would have won if he had stayed in. I'm unclear how somebody that couldn't talk could win, but I think a lot of times where we look at this through the political lens and I mean, everybody here knows my view. I do not think the every single piece of data that we have indicates to me that Joe Biden was not going to win. But even if you granted Hunter's argument that this was all a mistake

and that had Joe Biden stayed in, he would have had a miraculous comeback in the next debate or the people wouldn't have cared about his performance and they would have voted for him because there was this groundswell of support that didn't show up in any polls or focus groups or anecdotal conversations you had with people at the ballpark. Okay, even if that was true.

Here's my issue with all this and here's why I feel like it needed to be addressed. James Carville, David Axelrod, George Clooney, Five Guys, Pelosi, everybody, all those people were trying to advocate for what they thought was best for the country in a very fraught fucking moment. They were making a good faith argument that they thought that the risk was too high to have Joe Biden at his age stay in the race. None of them benefited from telling Joe Biden to move on.

You don't gain power in a political party in these days by shitting on the incumbent president. He didn't get extra views or invites to glittery parties. So I think that George Clooney had plenty of those. If anything, you get ostracized. I mean, for Carville in particular, I mean, he was really lost some like long time friendships over this. People whose weddings he was in. So like you don't gain anything from speaking out against the president of your party or the leader of your party. I can tell you about that. So this notion that this was like all about, you know, people's egos or their selfishness

or their access is just insulting and wrong. And maybe, you know, maybe their opinion was wrong. I tend to think that they were very correct, but they weren't doing this for some personal gain. Like these people wanted to beat Donald Trump at a deep, deep level. That's what motivated them. And they're also reflecting what voters wanted, which is not to have to choose between these two old men. So that is what I am attracted to. That's what I'm attracted to in this moment.

That's what I'm attracted to about Chris Murphy. I want to hear from people that want to save this country and beat Donald Trump and that they care about that with a passion in their heart. And they put themselves on the line to do it. And they're willing to piss people off if they have to do it. Because saying what is true and saying what is right

and fighting against this authoritarian nightmare is what matters in this moment and that's what I care about and that is my issue with Hunter Biden in this thing because you know who did not have the country's best interests in their heart this whole time? Hunter Biden. Hunter was a millstone around his father from day one. Sure, he was smeared unfairly at times, and I understand that he'd be mad about that. And if you wanted to lash out at the people that smeared him, I'm fine with that. But he also was the cause of scandal after scandal, to line his own pockets and to pay to get money to help pay for like the legal needs that he had for his various crimes and addictions.

He said in this interview that he was qualified to be on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian national gas company that was at the heart of all these controversies. Really? You seriously think a Ukrainian national gas company was going to put an unemployed crackhead on their board if their dad wasn't the vice president? It's crazy. I'm sorry if he's impjorative. I don't actually, I get the addiction part. I have friends who had dealt with addiction. I'm sensitive to it. And so like his choices during that period, whatever, they didn't help his dad or the country, but it's okay. I get it. But what about his behavior after he was clean? One of the things that he was

spending the money on, that he was getting from the paintings that he was selling, trading off his dad's name, was to pay for lawyers to try to prevent himself from having to recognize and pay alimony for his own child. That was sober hunter. Sober hunter didn't want to parent his kid. And so he was sending lawyers to Arkansas with money he got from selling access to his dad to try to avoid accountability for that. That's sober hunter. That was also in conservative media. Their attacks on him on that weren't a smear. That was true. That was his behavior. And then that takes us back to his behavior after the debate when apparently he was sober. At this fraught moment for democracy, Hunter

is in there agitating for his dad to stay in the race, not because of the polls, not because he's a political expert, because he needed the legal protection. So again, I don't know. Maybe Jill and Hunter are the only people that were correct. And if Joe Biden had stayed in the race, he would have muddled flu and won and won the white combo loss because people are racist and sexist. I don't know. I guess anything is possible in this world. We've elected Donald Trump twice.

But my issue with these guys and this family is just this woe is me concern about the Biden legacy and about Joe Biden and about their reputations and about this internecine fighting between Democrats. It's never about the country. It's never about what was best for the country. It's never about what was best for beating Donald Trump. It's never about having passion and energy and doing selfless things in order to ensure that we save the country. So we're here now in part because of their hubris, part because Hunter Biden, who had no right, was around his dad in these final days and centering his own legal issues and centering Joe Biden's ego and Joe Biden's legacy over centering

what would be best for the country in order to prevent this nightmare of a second Donald Trump term. So thanks for nothing, Donald Biden. He's out there doing the rounds. I think for most of this podcast, we're going to be focused on what's actually happening in this country. And we're going to focus our outrage at the people that are just perpetrating a horrific immigration and retribution regime on the American people that they don't deserve. And I think that is probably what I would recommend that the Bidens be focused on as well, if they wanted to do their best to rehab the family legacy. So that's that. We've got one of my faves on tomorrow.

She's even spunkier than me. So I look forward to it. If you stuck around for this, you're definitely going to stick around for tomorrow. So we'll see you all then. Peace. All alone, in the middle of Arkansas With a little rock left in that glass stick You used to date a blonde You used to hit it raw Cause she was and you are madly involved, madly involved

It's in stones, in glass homes You're smoking stones stones In abandoned homes, you hit them stones And broke your home Crack, rock, crack, rock Crack, rock, crack, rock Hitting stones In glass homes, you're smokin' stones In abandoned homes, you're hitin' stones And broke your home Ooh, I, ooh, ooh, ooh Crack, crack, crack, crack

Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack You're shucking and jiving, stealing and robbing To get the fix and that you're itching for Your family stopped inviting you to things Won't let you hold the infant You used to get a little high from time to time But the freaks ain't trying to sleep with cracking It's in stones and glass homes You're smoking stones in abandoned homes You hit them stones and you broke your home Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack

Cricket cap, dead cap How much dope can you push to me? Cricket cap, dead cap No good for community The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.