The Press Box - Senator Chris Murphy on Trump's Iran Games, the Democrats’ 2026 Bumper Sticker, and Why He Loves ‘Andor’

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan is joined by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut! They start with Senator Murph’s breakdown of the events that led the Senate to approve a bill to fund DHS except for ICE. Then they discuss a bunch of other current events including the war in Iran (16:29), whether he’s running for president in 2028 (28:18), prediction markets (29:37), and much more. Host: Bryan CurtisGuest: Chris MurphyProducers: Abou Kamara, Isaiah Blakely, Jacob Cornett, and Kevin Cureghian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to a bonus edition of the press box. It's Brian Curtis, along with producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. The press box primary is rolling along. Another special guest here in our L.A. studio. He is Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut. Now, when I talked to Murphy today, he had just flown in from Washington, D.C., which is something of a miracle since Democrats and Republicans were

facing off over funding the Department of Homeland Security into the wee hours on Friday morning. Chris Murphy's an interesting political animal. When he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, he was that body's youngest member. Now Murphy's 52 and in his third term, and you can read his name, maybe somewhere on the second column, on the list of Democrats who might run for president in 2028. We talked about that, along with subjects ranging from Iran to ICE, from Bob Kerow, to Burger King from Paramount to prediction markets. Here's Chris Murphy.

Senator, congratulations on making it out of Washington. Yeah, by the skin of our teeth, but glad to be here with you in person. Thanks for having me. In the intro, I mentioned the standoff over DHS funding last night. For those who do not have a Punch Bowl news subscription, can you explain what happened in the Senate yesterday? Yeah, those are the well-adjusted human beings that don't subscribe to the D.C. daily rags. So as folks probably know, we haven't been able to fund the Department of Homeland Security because Democrats have basically said so long as ICE is out of control, you know, terrorizing communities, locking up legal residents, tear gassing schools. We can't morally and legally fund the department.

But we've said we have no beef with TSA, with the Coast Guard, with FEMA. Let's just fund those. We've been saying that for weeks. And Republicans have been reluctant to take us up on that offer because they have wanted to use those agencies as leverage to get Democratic votes to fund ICE. And we said we're willing to fund ICE, but it's got to be different than the one we're watching on television today. Late last night, the leader of the Senate, John Thune, just sort of gave in and said, okay, you know, Easter's coming up. TSA has been shut down for too long. let's just vote to open up everything in the Department of Homeland Security other than ICE, basically. And that's what we voted on at about two in the morning. It was 100 to zero vote. We sent that over to the House.

Now, as we're speaking, the House hasn't decided what to do with that bill. But the Senate came together last night and said, we'll continue to fight over ICE. Let's just reopen the rest of the Department of Homeland Security. And this is after Donald Trump appeared and said, I'm going to fund TSA myself. So Trump says, I'm going to fund TSA myself. There's a couple problems with that. A, that's wildly illegal. The president can't actually just decide to fund things that Congress hasn't passed a bill on. That's not actually how the Constitution works. The Constitution says Congress decides what gets funded and what doesn't. But the other problem is, I think he was probably going to fund it out of kind of the slush fund that he has called the Big Beautiful Bill. This is the piece of legislation they passed last year that funds a lot of different things, defense, ICE, border patrol.

And, you know, that was going to diminish the funds in that bill available for other things. And I'm not sure Republicans like that either. So the Senate figured it out last night, late last night, and hopefully the House will figure it out sometime well we're speaking here. So the downside for Democrats is, as you said, all along, you said, we'll fund ICE, provided that federal agents be forced to take off the masks. and display identification and so forth. When is that going to happen if it's not a part of a bargain on larger DHS funding? We were negotiating up until 8 o'clock last night on those reforms. And what we've basically said is that we have to stop these roving patrols, right?

It just feels really icky and un-American to have ICE officers wandering around streets saying, show me your papers, prove to me you're an American citizen. That has to end. Second, take off the masks. Like we just don't in this country allow law enforcement to walk around with masks. You've got to identify yourself. And then third, we have to have accountability for the bad stuff that's happened. Two American citizens have been killed.

Let's have a independent investigation. So we were still negotiating over that last night until the Senate Republicans said, let's just stop those negotiations and open up everything else. I think we'll continue those negotiations. I mean, the bill we passed last night still doesn't have funding for ICE. and so Republicans still want funding for ICE. So we'll continue those negotiations and hopefully, you know, in the next few weeks we'll be able to come together and find a path forward. If not, ICE is going to stay unfunded because I really do believe I have a constitutional obligation to not fund an agency that is violating the law.

And in most Americans' eyes right now, ICE is violating the law pretty brazenly. And the GOP theory of the cases, they're going to get that money through one big beautiful bill, said, or perhaps through reconciliation where they just need 51 votes. Yeah, it's so complicated because last year they passed this bill with just 50 votes. They called the big, beautiful bill, and it had a bunch of funding in there for ICE. But they're spending that money really, really fast. It's kind of hard to understand how they're spending that money as fast as they are. They had $75 billion in there for ICE, and the bill they passed last year.

By the fall, they will probably have spent 75% of that money already. Like, don't ask me where that money went. but they are spending it very, very fast. So, yes, their theory is that even if we don't get ICE funded in the regular budget, we've still got this big slush fund that we passed last year, but that won't hold them over for much longer. Yesterday was described as a day of haggling in the Senate. What actually happens when you're haggling in the Senate?

Yeah, it's interesting. I was in the middle of the haggling yesterday. I tend to be one of the people on the Democratic side who knows a lot about immigration law, and so I get stuck into these rooms. a lot of that happens at the staff level, right? So you have conversations between, you know, senators where you sort of iron out the sort of basics of the parameters, right? So I had a series of conversations yesterday with the Republican senators. And we said, okay, could we agree on X and Y? And then staff go into a room for a couple hours to work on the language. And then they bring that language back. And we see if we're at a meeting at the minds. It's different now because the Republican Party can't sign off. on anything that Stephen Miller hasn't signed off on. So there's this extra layer that happens. The staff work out the agreement. Then they bring it back to Democratic senators, but they can't just bring it back to Republican senators. They have to bring it to Stephen Miller on immigration.

Anything on immigration has to be signed off by Stephen Miller. So that was the roadblock yesterday. We were working on reforms, but every time it would get to Stephen Miller, he'd say, no, we can't sign off on any reforms. The Republican Party right now just can't move without sign off from the White House, and that makes these agreements a lot harder. Before we dive into the next crisis, I want to ask you about your background. When did you first think I want to be a politician? I was pretty young. I mean, I was.

I grew up in a house where my mother kind of taught us that we were really lucky to grow up the way that we did. She grew up really poor in public housing in New Britain, Connecticut. And she was like, listen, you guys should not take for granted the fact that you don't have to worry about a roof over your head or food on the table. and live your life in some way that gives back, right? And then I was kind of by birth an organizer, right? Like I organized the touch football games in the neighborhood. I organized like the protests at the high school when they had a dress code we didn't like. And at some point in high school, I discovered, I didn't grow up in a political family necessarily.

I discovered that there was this thing you could do where you organized for a living and you made your community or your state or your country better politics. And I was like, well, that's what I like to do. And that's what my mother says I should do. And so when I was about 16 or 17, I jumped into politics. I started volunteering for candidates that I believed in. And these were candidates that wanted to invest in my school, that cared about the environment, something that I cared about as a kid. So I tended to work for Democrats as a young person. But I really got addicted to the idea that you could make change through politics. And young people could make a lot of change through politics. So I volunteered and worked on campaigns. And then when I was about 24, 25 years old, I ran for my first office and won. And I was off and running. So my story is a little unique in that I've been attracted to politics as what I think is a noble profession since I was young. But I've been able to make some, I think, pretty important change in the time that I've been doing it.

The Washington Post said you once predicted you'd be in the U.S. Senate by age 37. Where did you come up with that number? So my mother found a crumpled up piece of paper in like, it must have been lying next to my desk as a kid in which I had like written out my life, right, age 20, I'll do this, age 30, I'll do this. And yeah, on that piece of paper, I guess, I must have done this when I was in middle school or something. But on that piece of paper, apparently I wrote that I would be United States Senator when I was 37. It's super embarrassing. But I was pretty close. I also think that I wrote on a piece of paper that I would be dead at age 64, which is a very, very macabre thing to be thinking when you're 11 or 12 years old. So as much as it's interesting that that piece of paper has somewhat accurately predicted my life. I hope that it's not entirely accurate. People should know you made the Senate at age 39. So pretty close. I was the youngest member of the Senate when I got there at 39.

I'm no longer the youngest. You won your three Senate races by pretty big margins. What was your toughest race? That's a good question. I mean, my toughest race was probably my first race for federal office. So I was still pretty young, 33 years old, and the Iraq war was happening, which I thought was a disaster. I was also in the state legislature part time. I was being a lawyer part time. I didn't feel like I was doing either job particularly well. And I kind of knew that I either needed to do this political thing full time or I needed to go be a lawyer full time. I also thought the Iraq war needed the end. And so I decided to run for Congress. I was a super long shot candidate. I was running against the longest serving member of Congress in Connecticut's history. This is Nancy Johnson. Nancy Johnson, kind of a moderate Republican who had been there again for a quarter century. The night before I announced, two of my best friends called me and begged me not to do it. They were like you're throwing your political career away. Just wait until she retires. Why are you running against her? It was a hard race because I was very young. I had to raise millions of dollars. She had unlimited resources, so she tore me to shreds on TV.

It's hard for the first time in your life to have negative ads be run against you every night on TV. But it was a really good year. It was a year that Democrats sort of swept races all across the country. I was lucky to run in a good year. I ran a good campaign. I won. But it was hard at that young age running against the odds. having to raise all that money, having your life out there for all your friends and family to

consume, that's probably my toughest race. It's a midterm kind of like this one. You had an unpopular Republican president prosecuting a war in the Middle East. Yeah. And life and politics really is about luck, right? I don't think anybody gets to the United States Senate without having worked really hard and also been really lucky. So my, you know, two big races for federal office were that first race for Congress in 2006, a year where Democrats sweep.

And then I ran for the Senate in 2012 when Obama won re-election fairly handled in Connecticut. So you kind of have to be the right place at the right time. Like you should never get too full of yourself in these big jobs. Like you're a creature of your hard work, but you're also a creature of luck. That was against Linda McMahon in 2012, I remember correctly. Linda McMahon, yes. Whatever happened to Linda McMahon? She is, yeah, now the Secretary of Education.

But at the time, the CEO of the WWE that I grew up knowing as the WWF, and she spent $50 million in that campaign. So as bad as Nancy Johnson was, Nancy Johnson only spent $3 million against me. Linda McMahon spent $50 million, tearing me to shreds in that race. How did your tradition of eating at Burger King on Election Day start? Oh, how did it start? Oh, I think it was just where I was on, so I had a schedule that first election day against Nancy Johnson. And I was scheduled to be, you know, standing outside a polling place and Torrington shaking hands.

And we didn't have lunch built into the schedule. So like, okay, we're going to go get lunch at this Burger King. And I ordered, I ordered chicken fries, you know, you know, the Burger King chicken fries. It comes a little beak in the eyes on the box when you get it. Yeah, like this is a picture of the chicken. But yeah, those chicken fries are still offered at Burger King. And since I'm definitely superstitious on election days. And so since that day, I have on every election day gone for lunch at the Torrington, Connecticut, Burger King.

That is kind of out of the way, as you know. So not on the way to anything. And I have the same meal at chicken fries. The day that Burger King suspends the chicken fries might be the last day of the last day of my political career. Look out. I don't think I can run if I can't have the chicken price. Would you learn about politics from reading Bob Carrow's books about Lyndon Johnson? That I'm not Lyndon Johnson. In what sense? Well, in the sense that I am a big believer in sort of the great man and

great woman theory of history, that there are just some people that are operating at an energy level that is fundamentally different than everybody else's. And I just am fascinated by those human beings. I think, you know, in our day, Donald Trump is one of those human beings. He is, he is his motor runs at a different level than other people. I think Bill Clinton was one of those people, motor running at a different level. LBJ was one of those people. And so, you know, you get to this point in the Senate, you've been there for a few, for a few terms. People say, are you running for president, right? And, you know, I, my motor runs pretty fast, but I don't know that it runs as fast as LBJs.

And I wonder whether if to be president at the highest level, you have to have, you know, one of those exceptional brains and exceptional, exceptional stamina. That's what I learned from those books. Last year, the Washington Post described you in a profile as giving off an articulate, angry dad vibe. Do you accept that description? I don't know. Is that a compliment?

You're not sure. Purely is a description. You're not sure. Well, it depends on what you're going for. Are you going for angry dad? I mean, I'm a dad. I'm angry. I hope I'm articulate. So I guess that's, I guess that's all, all accurate. So, yeah, I mean, I don't try to be cooler than I am. I mean, I'm definitely a dad. And I am super angry about what's happening to this country. And I guess what I do, what I do try to be in all the videos that I put out is just authentic. And so I think that you should be furious at what's happening to this country. I think the level of crumption in the White House, is just unforgivable. And I really do worry that it becomes normalized, that we just accept it, that we think that this is how politics has to be. And I don't want people to accept it.

So I do and can come across as maybe a little angry because that's how I am. And that's how I think most people should be given where we are in this country right now. Let's talk about Iran. Monday morning, Trump comes out and says, we're negotiating to end the war. And the Iranian said, actually we're not negotiating to end the war. Do you believe meaningful negotiations are happening to end the war? I don't believe that meaningful negotiations are happening. I think Trump kind of makes statements on Iran for the markets. He cares about his Mar-a-Lago billionaire friends, all their money is in the market, about his money is in the market. So he tries to pretend that we're negotiating. And by the way, he said this, I think on a Monday, right? So he was trying to kind of

set the vibe for the markets for the week. in order to try to stop the markets from tanking, he's been unsuccessful in that endeavor, because I do think people understand what has happened. He has set the world on fire because he didn't think through what happens to the world when you bomb Iran and Iran closes the straight of war moves. So I don't think we're negotiating. I think Iran feels like it's winning this war right now and doesn't have any interest in negotiating on Trump's terms. Who knows what? what Trump's terms are, but they will probably become more and more minimalist as time goes on. It is probably true that Trump would settle for Iran opening up the Strait of Ramos and nothing else.

And if that's what we are spending billions of dollars on, if that's what 13 Americans died for to just go back to where we were, the Strait of Ramos open, that's unacceptable. We're talking just after the Senate started a two-week break. What if Trump puts American boots on the ground in Iran in the meantime? I mean, this was an enormous world-changing mistake. That would be a permanent world-changing mistake if we put boots on the ground because how do we get them out? We made this huge mistake in Iraq. We should have never gone into Iraq and we lost thousands of Americans there.

And we set the region on fire. We created an insurgency movement that were frankly. still grappling with. In Afghanistan, that was a just war. We needed to take Al Qaeda out, but we should have been out of there in two years. And we stayed for 20 years. Again, thousands of Americans died. We spent trillions of dollars. That's what would happen in Iran. You couldn't just surgically go into Iran and come out. Once you put American boots there, you're talking about potentially millions of American soldiers there for decades. And it would be a stain on Donald Trump and anybody who had anything to do with it. There been a handful of war powers

resolutions that haven't really gone anywhere. If there are troops on the ground, do you think Republicans could be persuaded to sign on? I mean, this war is getting less and less popular every single day. And right now, Republicans are sticking with him. But what's going to happen very quickly is the price of everything is going to skyrocket. Because once gas and oil are really expensive, everything then gets more expensive because it's more expensive to produce plastic, more expensive to remove things from place to place. So we're going to see inflation. that could be close to double digits pretty soon. And if that's the case, Republicans are going to be under a lot of pressure to wind down this war. Yes, I think eventually, if we keep on putting votes

in front of the Senate to stop the war, Republicans will join us, but probably not immediately. That sort of cult that exists in the Republican Party where they just all do what Donald Trump says is pretty strong and pretty hard to break. But this war is one of the few things that could break it. Let me ask you about the Democrats. I talked about this with Hame Jeffries when he was on the show recently. Trump is really good at coming up with bumper stickers. Concise, memorable campaign slogans. What's the Democrats bumper sticker for 2026? I mean, if I was writing it, I don't know that I've convinced my colleagues of this. I think our bumper stickers should be unrig the economy and unrig the democracy. I think people think that both our democracy and our economy is corrupted, that

billionaires and corporations get whatever they want from government, and they also get whatever they want from our economy. And I think that the Democratic Party should be really focused on getting billionaire influence out of our politics that might take a constitutional amendment and getting corporate power. You can't get it out of the economy, but give workers more power. Raise the minimum wage to $20. Give everybody the chance to join a union. Stop all these bullshit ways that corporations and companies try to abuse consumers. I think over time, the Democratic Party has taken on a lot of other really important issues, like things I care about guns, things that I care about, like climate and civil rights.

And I want us to still care about those things. But I'd like us to spend 75% of our time talking about unrigging the economy and unrigging the democracy. Let's talk about the democracy part of that. How do you make that work as a campaign issue? Because we saw Joe Biden try that at various times. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it worked less well. How do you make that point salient in an election? Great question. I think the reason it didn't work as well as Biden thought it would is because he was sort of arguing to save democracy. But people are like, I don't want to save this version of democracy. This version of democracy is corrupt. So don't sign me up for that process. And I think that was kind of what Harris was running on, too, was like Donald Trump is trying to destroy democracy, save it. And people were like, I kind of actually think we should break down our democracy to the studs and rebuild it. So we have to tell people, like, what would we do to change democracy if you elected us? I think we should run on a constitutional amendment that if you elect Democrats, our top priority, one of our top priorities will be to amend the Constitution so that we, can get billionaire and corporate money totally out of politics. I think we should run on banning members

of Congress from trading stock. I think we should run on closing the revolving door between the private sector, lobbying, and public service. I think if we told people a really specific set of things that would be like our number one priority if we got elected, we'd be believable. I don't think they hear that from us much. Like how often do we talk about cleaning up our election not much as a party. We used to talk about it a lot, but we don't talk about it a lot anymore. So the misunderstanding was people thought Democrats were talking about save the current system of government rather than save democracy writ large. Right.

I think that's right. I think it made it look like we were defending this version of democracy that is just fundamentally not working for people. And I think we've got to show in really transparent ways how we're going to fix what's wrong with democracy. I did want to escape by gun control because you've done so much work. on that. An issue that, as you say, has been pushed aside because of a few dozen other crises. Can gun control be a winning issue for Democrats as fall? It is a winning issue. And when I say that I want to spend the majority of our time talking about the economy and reform of our democracy, I don't mean that we should withdraw our commitment or our fervor for other issues, like cleaning up our gun laws,

I just think that if you want to win and build a coalition that can pass a universal back background checks bill, then you have to be a little bit more disciplined about talking about those two issues, unrigging the economy, unrigging the democracy. But yes, running on universal background checks or running on an assault weapons ban is a winning issue. And it's a winning issue everywhere these days. When I started in politics, you know, banning assault weapons was kind of like a 50-50 issue. Now it's more like a two-to-one issue. I get that it's like a problem for the Republican Party because in a Republican primary, that electorate doesn't yet fully support these measures to tighten our gun laws. But the broad public does. So if Democrats in general

elections are running really strongly on cleaning up our gun laws, you win. It's also a really important way to signal your moral core, like to parents out there who are having to listen to their kids come home and explain what it felt like to go through another active shooter drill. and I remember that. I remember when my kindergartner came home and was like, Daddy, my teacher shoved us all into the bathroom and turned the lights off.

And we asked why, and she told us that we were practicing for what happens when a bad man comes into the building. And he said, Daddy, I don't, I didn't really understand it, but I really, it was really scary. I really didn't like it. Like parents listen to their kids come home, explaining that.

And then they don't understand when politicians aren't like crazy. about doing something to stop the threat of school shootings. Like they really feel like you're not a human being if you aren't like loudly talking about universal background checks and vans on assault weapons. So it's a really important way to just translate your humanity to people. And that is consequently a winning political strategy too,

translating your humanity. Julianne Stratton just won the Democratic Senate primary in Illinois. She says she won't support Chuck Schumer for Democratic leader. Do you think Chuck Schumer will ever be majority leader again in the Senate? Yeah, I think that he can still be a majority leader, and I don't know whether his plans are to run again. I think that that's not the most important question right now. The most important question is how to stop this war, how to stop Donald Trump's destruction of democracy. But Chuck Schumer and Hakeememies, they both have really hard jobs right now.

It's hard to keep the Democratic Party unified when I disagree with Chuck and I have. I have those disagreements with him privately and I have them publicly. and I have them publicly, but I acknowledge that those are difficult jobs and Trump's very unique threat that he poses to democracy makes those jobs even harder. Okay. But what's the case for Schumer that he's the right person to lead the Democrats right now? Well, I think that work behind the scenes of trying to keep Democrats united is really hard work. I understand the critiques people make of Chuck and of Hakeem. But I will just say we just came out of a fight over the Department of Homeland Security budget that resulted, at least for now, in the department not being funded to do this hateful illegal work of rounding up people who are actually not in the United States illegally. And the Democratic Party held together during that fight. Now, I mean, who knows whether Chuck Schumer is essential to that task or not, but the evidence is right in front of you that the Democratic Party.

party did hold together in that fight. Has Trump done anything in his second term that you agree with? I mean, I'd have to really strain to think about what that is. There were things that he did in his first term that I agreed with. I did think it was the right decision broadly to pull out of Afghanistan. I thought that some of his work to build like an industrial policy made sense. I guess the place where I do tend to still broadly agree with him on is that, you know, we should use tariffs as a means to regrow manufacturing in the United States. So I agree with him on the use of tariffs. I just think he's done it in a completely boneheaded manner. Like he seems to use tariffs to punish other countries instead of using them strategically on an industry by industry basis to bring manufacturing back. So that's a place where I, you know, I understand why he's doing it.

I just think he's doing it really badly. Even if you don't have LBJ's motor, are you interested in running for president in 20208? I just think that job number one right now is saving the democracy. And I think it's kind of silly for anybody to be thinking about or planning running for president in 2020, when our democracy might not be around by then. So that sounds like a line, right? It sounds like a kind of convenient way to get around. around answering the question, are you running for president? But I actually think that in 2008, the question most voters will likely ask is, like, where were you? Like, what did you do

when the democracy was under threat? And if you were using that time to go around the country and campaign for president, I don't think people will be really interested in you. I think they're going to want candidates who actually kept their nose down and focused on the threat that Trump is opposing to the country. So I guess I'm not sure whether I'm going to be running for president, but if anybody's interested in that job, they should probably think right now less about running for president and more about stopping Donald Trump. There wasn't an age written down on that piece of paper from middle school about when you would become president? Oh, I think there might have been. We need to get some more information on that. I think there might have been. This month,

you introduced new legislation about prediction markets. What got you interested in prediction markets? I mean, I am broadly worried about the gamification of American life. So I just wrote a book that's coming out in May, and it's called Crisis of the Common Good. And the book is about kind of what has happened to us spiritually in this country when we have kind of removed virtue and morality from our economy and everything is just a game. Everything is just a way to make money. I worry that we worry that we worry. worship this cult of profit in our economy. We're like the only thing that matters is, are you making money and that a company is good and righteous if it makes a profit, even if it's destroying families and abusing workers and closing factories. And I really worry that the prediction market game exacerbates that world in which morality and virtue don't matter anymore.

Because you can now bet on whether and when Iran is going to strike. a neighbor with a missile. You can bet on if and when America is going to launch a ground invasion. You can bet on famine when it's going to happen, if it's going to happen. And when all these big moral questions just become opportunities for people to make money and that people can actually make money when people die in war, I just think something dies in our soul. Like, I don't think that will make us healthier human beings in the end. And so that's actually probably the primary reason why I care about these prediction markets is that I think it'll end up with our insides rotting a little bit. But they're also wildly corrupt.

And the idea that there were people clearly inside the White House or closely connected to the White House placing bets that war would begin with Iran on a Saturday on Friday and that our national security decision making is maybe being influenced by people inside the situation room who have placed. Polymarket and Cal She bets. That's like bone chilling. But the reason I articulated to start is probably the reason that I care most about it. Okay. So pull apart that nightmare scenario for me. Someone in government knows we're about to occupy Harg Island, let's say, and runs to Polymarket and makes a bet or someone places a bet and then engineers an outcome in war. The second is the nightmare scenario. So the first scenario is just corrupt. And again, the public knows that everything is rigged to favor the powerful. The prediction markets are rigged to favor the powerful.

Even if it's just a bet on whether Shakira is going to, you know, perform at the Super Bowl, the only people who know the answer to that question are powerful people, right? Are people in the entertainment industry? And they were definitely making those bets. Like, I mean, I've heard from friends conversations that happened at the Super Bowl of people saying, you know, Shakira's performing you should. to put a place a bet right now on one of these prediction markets. So whether the bets on politics or on entertainment, those prediction markets are just a way

for powerful people to make money. Everybody else is in the dark. But the nightmare scenario is the other one, right? That somebody in the situation room has already made a bet that we should put American troops on the ground on this specific day in Iran. And maybe it's a really powerful person, right? Maybe it's the Secretary of Defense. maybe it's a relative of the secretary of defense, and that the whole decision to go to war

is being made in order for somebody really powerful to cash in on a bet. I'm not saying that Pete Hagseth has made these bets. I'm just saying that you shouldn't assume that people close to Donald Trump aren't just as corrupt as Donald Trump. And that's what I really worry about. We talked a lot on this podcast about the fact that Paramount, after buying Warner Brothers, is going to own CBS News and they're going to own CNN. What do you make of that? I mean, I think you're watching the development of a censorship state. I think it's absolutely clear that Trump approves these mergers with strings attached.

And the basic string is you suppress criticism of me and you propagate the party line. That is definitely what happened when Paramount took over CBS, right? Trump said to them, you got to put Barry Weiss, this conservative ally, in charge of news. You've got to take Colbert off the air. That's what is now going to happen to CNN. CNN is going to be engineered, just like CBS, to be a mouthpiece for Donald Trump. This is what happens in totalitarian regimes. That's why I say, we're not on the verge of a totalitarian takeover.

We're like in the middle of it right now because you are going to have a world. and this is what's happening on our social media platforms too. I'm, you know, still robustly on Twitter. I don't give a crap. I'm still calling it Twitter. We know from, you know, from analysis that that everything on Twitter is skewed towards a conservative bent, that you are just much less likely to get your voice elevated on that platform if you're criticizing the president. That's true on X. It's true to an extent on TikTok. It's true at C-B-B. It's going to be true at CNN. Pretty soon there won't be anywhere to go in which you operate on a level playing field, critics of the president and defenders of the president. That is how democracies die. You talked about breaking up Paramount when Democrats get back in power. So let's imagine 2029, a Democrats in the White House, Democrats control both houses of Congress. What are the mechanisms the party would use to actually break up Paramount?

Yeah, so I think we should be really strong on this. Like, I don't think that we should just create. criticize these mergers, I think we should promise that if we are back in charge, we are going to not just break up the big conventional media monopolies, but break up the online media monopolies as well. You know, one company should not be able to control, you know, as much as meta controls, right, to be able to control Instagram and to be able to control Facebook. Google should not have as much power as it has on so many different platforms. I just think we should say, we're breaking up Facebook, we're breaking up Google, we're breaking up Paramount, we're going to breathe life back into local journalism, we're never, ever going to give one oligarch like Mark Zuckerberg or the Ellison family as much power over the information that you read and see as they have now.

Now, how would we do that? Some of that can be done through existing antitrust power. So the next Department of Justice could probably just go in and file a lawsuit to break up a lot of these companies. A lot of them are probably illegal. But if we need new law, we should pass new law that limits the size of any company's ability to control online news platforms, TV stations, radio stations. Another issue you got interested in is the loneliness epidemic. What got you interested in that? I mean, I think a lot of it is being a parent. So, you know, I have two teenagers and, you know, I've seen what's going on with kids right now, how they are withdrawing into their phones. And I'm, you know, obviously seeing what every other parent is seeing, which is a rise in severe mental illness and kids who are thinking about suicide or self-harm. You know, I think all of us feel it, you know, often ourselves. And so I think as I've gotten further along in my political career,

I can sometimes feel a little bit more isolated, even though I'm surrounded by people all of the time. And then I've just seen it leach into our politics. I mean, I don't think you get that mob on January 6th without a lot of people feeling really lonely and angry and searching for solutions as to why their life is spun out of control. So I think loneliness is a political problem. It's definitely a health problem. The studies show that if you're lonely, you're much more likely to have heart disease and dementia. but I think it's a political problem as well. People are really unhappy in part because they're lonely. And there's a lot of solutions to loneliness in America.

Some of them are not government solutions. But the biggest problem creating loneliness in America is these poisonous boxes in our pockets. And the fact that like we have chosen not to protect our kids from these poisons, these addictive algorithms, and we've created a whole generation of lonely kids that then makes it more likely that they become lonely adults, I think that'll go down as maybe one of the greatest failures of government in the last 100 years. And so we should keep kids off of these algorithms. And it's just heartbreaking to me that we haven't done that. That's government's role to pass a law, keeping kids off. Yeah, I just think it's really hard to ask parents to do this

alone. You know, if my kid's on his phone texting with friends, okay, I'd rather have him be in person with friends, but I'm not like hair on fire if he's actually talking to friends online. But if he's on an algorithm, well, then I'm more worried. And if he's on an algorithm that's taking him into dark places, I'm even more worried. But I can't see what he's doing on that phone all the time. I think it's hard to ask parents to, you know, be the only people in charge of keeping kids away from dangerous content. So I think that kids under 13 should be banned from social media and there should be strict age verification. I think that parents should have to consent to any teenager getting access to those applications.

And I think even if they give consent, the algorithm should not turn on until you are 18 years old. Now, that would fundamentally change social media for teenagers. There'd be a riot in my house, right, if they lost control, if my kids lost access to, you know, the YouTube Shorts algorithm, which they have assiduously perfected for the things that they like over their teenage years. But I think those rules would give parents a fighting chance at keeping their kids, you know, away from those dangerous places on the Internet. You mentioned Twitter. I was on Capitol Hill a few weeks ago when I was asking around to find out which senators actually tweet instead of just throwing staff written tweets out there. This is the list I got.

Brian Schatz from Hawaii. Yeah. Ruben Gallego from Arizona. Yeah. And you. Well, I think Can you add to that? I think Chuck Grassley

Maybe still Tweet. Assume Dear Dead felt like an authentic Chuck Grassley tweet, but there have been some mixed reports. Since then it has been less authentic. Yeah, I think it's a really short list. So, yeah, I do, and I've always controlled my Twitter feed,

and it's one of the reasons why my Twitter feed is one of the biggest in the Senate. I think I have over a million people who follow me. And that stuff that I write then gets repackaged on, you know, a lot of the other social sites that I have. And I think it's like what people want. I think people like want to see the real you. I don't vet any of those tweets through any of my communications personnel. They find out what I say when everybody else finds out what I say.

I make lots of mistakes. There are definitely tweets that I regret. There's lots of typos in my tweets. but it's like I think what voters deserve to like see the real person these days. What's a tweet you regret? What's a tweet that I regret? I mean, I probably did back in the day like too many cringy Justin Bieber like 98 degrees. McDonald's McFlurry tweets.

I don't tweet as much about like my personal life in part because like I'm a little bit busier than I used to be. But back in the day, I did a lot of content on some of my cringy pop culture obsessions. And maybe I'd take a few of those back. You'll never outlive those McFlurry tweets. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I really like McFlurys.

So, yeah, I did. One campaign I took on on social media was the Klondike, the ice cream company, just discontinued the chaco taco. Have you ever had a chaco taco taco? I believe so. Yeah. They're really good. And so I did use my 1 million followers social media campaign to put pressure on Klandaq to restart manufacture of the Taco Taco. And for a brief period of time, it worked.

And they started making the Chaco Taco Taco again. So, yeah, I'm not beyond like using my social media to try to do non-political good for the country. All right. Since you're here at the ringer, we have to have some ringer questions. Yeah. Not just cover the serious issues like a run. Ron and Chaco Taco. First off, I read that you're a Boston Red Sox fan. Die hard. On a scale of zero to Bill Simmons, what kind of Red Sox fan are you?

Oh, I mean, I might be like a Bill Simmons plus two. Is that possible? Red Sox fan. I know it's, but I mean, he has to spend so much time following the NBA, right? And following other teams. Like, I don't have to worry about other teams. Like, I can just go, like, you know, deep into the Red Soxie. Sox, right? Like, I follow, like, I'm watching Brian Mata in the, you know, Japanese league, right? Because he once played for the Red Sox. Like, I still want to know where Rustney Castillo is, right? Like, why didn't we bring him up to the big league team when he was kicking ass at, you know, in the minor league? So I'm like, I'm deep into every corner of the Red Sox universe. All right. Here's the only suspicion. Which is why I listened to, you know, off the pike. Well, there you go. So like I, I, I listened to the Boston. based ringer podcast as a religion.

Here's the only suspicious thing. Your favorite NFL team is the New York Giants? Yeah. Not the Pats. What does it look like? Maybe I'm like trying to have it both ways. Kind of. Yeah.

So here's the reason. I root for whoever my dad root for like my dad was and still is my hero. And like my upbringing was like a traditional father dad upbringing. He goes to all my sports teams. We watched, you know, every sport together. So when my dad was growing up, the Patriots didn't exist, right? So if you were a kid growing up in Hartford, Connecticut, you rooted, well, I mean, some people rooted for the, I mean, the bad people rooted for the Yankees, but most people rooted for the Red Sox and the Celtics, but you had no choice but to root for the giants. And the giants, when my dad was young, were playing in the Yale Bowl. Because when the, when Rutherford was being, East Rutherford was being built, they played in Connecticut. So I just root for whoever he roots for. But yes, it does conveniently allow me to, you know, be able to talk to both sides of Connecticut. Number two, you're a hockey dad, and I read you say that you are not allowed to live stream your son's hockey games.

Yeah. So, yeah, my younger son is like one of these serious hockey players. He's a goalie, and it's the worst thing in the world to be a hockey goalie parents, right? He's just on edge the entire game. But, yeah, we play in one of these big travel leagues that is owned by a private equity-backed firm. not only is the league owned by that firm, but a lot of the rinks are owned by that firm. They've installed in the rinks a closed circuit television system. And so they ban parents from live streaming the games.

And like, I wasn't live streaming the games to make a profit, right? Like, I was live streaming the games so that, you know, their mom could watch, right, that my parents could watch. But we are now banned from live streaming the games because the private equity firm wants everybody to pay $25, $50 for the Clist Church circuit system. It's bananas, the commercialization of youth sports, and like it's happening everywhere. And that's like maybe the most egregious example of it. So you and I had the local insurance company on our Little League Jersey say, the sponsor. I had the local funeral home team and our arch, Dylan Baxter and our arch rival was the

other funeral home in town, DeSopo. I hope you did them, probably. You're corner proud. Yeah, that's great. We did. Finally, what can the show Andor tell us about the fate of democracy? Oh, can you talk about Andor? I have like a hard time getting into, so when I come home at the end of, you know, these super long days, like I'm either watching sports or, you know, watching a series, I'm, I have another gripe, which is that Sports Center, which used to be the show that I watched, has just become like a betting show. Like, that's the other thing I worry about the game. gamification of life and the fact that sports is now just something we make money off of. So the sports center is kind of like unwatchable now because it's just about people's bets. So I'm watching shows. And Andor was my favorite for a while. Andor was fascinating to me because, you know, one of the central characters in Andor is a senator.

And the senator is sent, I don't want to spoil it, but the senator essentially has to make a decision whether they stay in the mainstream, like stay in the Senate as the empire. as the empire is bearing down and taking dictatorial control of the galaxy, or they flee the Senate and run to the resistance, right? And I do think that too many in my, I mean, I don't need to make this moment like a direct comparison to the Star Wars universe, but I do think way too many of my colleagues are treating this as just another normal moment. This is not a normal moment. Like this guy is really trying to turn our country into a totalitarian state. And you have to act a little bit more like a real resistance.

Like, we shouldn't all be showing up to the State of the Union speech and pretending like, you know, this is just a little spicier version of the normal state of the union speech. No, we should like boycott that speech. We should act sometimes like a Star Wars like resistance. And so and or is just a fascinating meditation on like for how long can you just play by the old rules? At what point do you have to start, you know, acting in a different way? I'm not arguing for us to, you know, leave the Senate and begin a military resistance. That's not what I'm saying.

But it's an interesting show that forces you to ask questions about how, as a leader of the opposition party, you spend your time. You see a little bit of yourself in Mon Motha. No. The answer to the question is no. But you sympathize with her plate. I sympathize with her plate. We are not yet there. We can still protect our democracy.

democracy and our Senate through conventional methods, mobilization, protest, political organizations. So we do not have to flee to Yavin? Yavin. Very good. Yavin. How many members of the Senate could have gotten that one? Yeah, that might be one. I don't know. We should ask Brian. We should ask Brian Schatz if he might be able to do it. Corey Booker might know it as well. But yes, we're not ready to flee to often, but, you know, we should, we should not rule out the possibility. Senator Chris Murphy, thanks for coming on the press box.

Thanks for having me, man. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production magic by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Coming up on the old press box Monday, the March issue. Me and Joel talk about the campaign of Texas Senate candidate James Tala Rico. And then on Thursday, Joel Anderson is going to have a very special guest. He's actually going to have two special guests.

Check him out. I'm off for spring break. I'm back soon with more lukewarm takes about the media.