Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) discussed the influence of money on the political system in the U.S., implicating his own party in the corruption he said it causes.
“I think the entire American political system is corrupted by money,” Murphy said on a Wednesday episode of the “Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know” podcast.
Murphy also told comedian Hasan Minhaj that his party isn’t exempt.
“I think Democrats have been corrupted by money as well, much less than Republicans have been, [and] in a much less overt way, but I’d think it’d be silly to pretend as if Democrats, not everyone, but some Democrats … ultimately, are impacted by the fact that they’re spending a lot of time with donors.”
“But is that a real message, ‘Hey, we’re less corrupt than the other guys?’” Minhaj questioned.
“No, you have … to show how you’re gonna fix the problem,” Murphy responded.
In the wake of the 2024 elections, Murphy offered his thoughts on Democrats’ losses in a thread on the social platform X.
“We don’t listen enough; we tell people what’s good for them,” Murphy said at the time about the American left on social media.
“And when progressives like [Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)] aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base,” he added.
Sanders also alleged around the same time that Democrats had mostly ignored working-class priorities, saying that ignorance was a major factor in costing them the White House and Senate in the recent elections.
“The country is in a revolutionary mood today because they see that the whole game is rigged, that if you have money and power, you are in a position to just get more and more of it, and everybody else is left treading water,” Murphy told Minhaj.
The Hill has reached out to the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee for comment.
