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Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told Punchbowl News in an interview yesterday that Tuesday's election results were "no doubt" a referendum on Trump, blaming him for "rising costs" and "inhumane" immigration raids and his overall "level of corruption" -- in short, "democracy was on the ballot."

Murphy thinks the secondary take-away, however, was that the Democrat party looked "powerful for the first time all year."

"We looked pretty damn weak for most of 2025. Trump was running over us and we weren't showing the willingness to stand up and fight," Murphy said, boasting that the Democrat-led shutdown was what drove people to the polls. "I think it'd be a real mistake to not read this election as an endorsement of Democrats' decision for the first time to fight in the last four weeks."

Murphy thinks that Democrats turned out on election day because they were energized by "seeing a party fight" and are hopeful they can help "save democracy."

"I think they see us right now in this fight over the shutdown being able to meet the the moral moment," claimed Murphy. "My sense is the broad Democratic caucus is looking at the Tuesday night election as a message to Democrats to keep fighting."

"And they also listen to Donald Trump the next morning say, "Oh, we're losing the shutdown. I want the shutdown to end." And it certainly makes sense tactically that you would at least force a little bit of time to examine the different ways to end the shutdown," continued Murphy, blaming the shutdown on the Republicans refusing to negotiate with Democrats.

He said that he believed the public told Democrats on Tuesday to keep fighting.

"And there's logic here because most people, even though open enrollment has started, haven't even checked what their new premium is. They're going to be doing that for the first time perhaps this weekend," said Murphy, almost gloating. "The pressure is going to mount on Republicans to forestall these premium increases day by day as more and more Americans realize that they are about to go bankrupt or forced to cancel their insurance."

Murphy thinks it would be a "very strange time to give up the fight at the exact moment that... the president is declaring to the world that he wants to sue for peace and people are getting these premium increase notices and are just beginning to call members of the Senate on the Republican side to tell them to do something about it."

"Listen, there is there is life and death damage if the shutdown continues," said Murphy. "But there is life and death damage if we reopen the government without any changes to the trajectory of our health care system."

"But Trump has made it clear and increasingly clear that he's not interested in spending money in Democratic states," said Murphy before he proposed another "danger" of ending the shutdown. "The other danger here is the Democrats provide our votes to reopen the government, but then it effectively only reopens in Republican states. And Donald Trump, emboldened by Democrats giving him this blank check with effectively no restraints on how he spends money, just spends money only in Alabama and Mississippi and cancels all the projects in Connecticut."

"We'd be suckers to enter into, I would argue, a short-term or a long-term budget that doesn't have some additional protections to make sure that Trump is spending the money we are appropriating everywhere, not just in his friends' states," argued Murphy.

What Murphy wants, ideally, would be a long-term 2-3 year extension of the existing health care subsidies. He would settle for something less, but would want to add language that removes the president's "power to do recisions" and contracts his "empowerment powers."

He thinks it would be a mistake to reopen the government on a promise to have negotiations.

"I think the Republican party has signed up to destroy our democracy," asserted Murphy, as he claimed Republicans are no longer "good faith partners" for creating "bipartisan legislation" to protect his constituents in Connecticut.

He further admits that the "core project" right now is "to stand up 10 million Americans on a regular basis" in protest to "throw just enough sand in the gears to stop Trump from destroying our democracy before November of next year."

He admits he has shifted gears from working on developing legislation to organizing the protest movement against Trump.

He also says that if they surrender the shutdown fight without getting something, they will be screwed for midterms in 2026.

The conversation shifted to Trump's attacks on alleged narcoterrorists.

Murphy said the strikes are evidence that Trump "doesn't believe that he's bound by law" or "that the Constitution or the statutes apply to him."

He further called the strikes an "ineffective counternarcotic strategy" and suggested that the drugs arriving to the US on such boats aren't the ones killing people -- and that by using resources to blow up the narcoterrorist boats Trump was effectively allowing cartels to smuggle more fentanyl through land routes.

"It's an absolute security disaster. It's a counternarcotics disaster. It's a Constitutional disaster," said Murphy. "And you know, we should be focusing more attention on it."

Murphy also blamed Trump for taking a "premature victory lap" on Gaza.

Then he was asked how to combat Republican attacks on Zohran Mamdani being a socialist.

"I think the future of the party is Zohran [Mamdani] and Abigail [Spanberger] and Mikie [Sherrill]" said Murphy, describing the democrat party as "the big tent" party.

"If you look at what Mikie Sherrill ran on -- a statewide emergency to address costs using antirust powers to break up landlords -- that's a pretty aggressive and in some ways maybe economically populist economic message," said Murphy. "Ask Zohran any question and he answered it by talking about the cost of living in New York. That's the kind of party that wins whether you are a populist, a moderate, a socialist, a conservative."

Murphy thinks that maybe another part of the message from Tuesday is that Democrats are on their way back to having "massive majorities" in the House and Senate once again... but they must open the tent to people who may not line up with Democrats on all of the social and cultural issues.

"Once those folks are inside the tent, at least you have an opportunity to try to convince them that they're wrong about the way that they view trans kids or that universal background checks is not really a, you know, affront to gun rights," he said.

"But when you leave them sitting in the Fox News closed information ecosystem, not only do you not win enough seats so that you can change policy," explained Murphy. "You also don't get in an environment where you can actually engage in persuasion with people who you know have been consuming right-wing propaganda without... any counter from our side."

The interview closed with a few "lightning round" questions:

• What's your future? — Murphy pretty much said it was raising money and funding protest organizations all around the country, which he has done to the tune of $1 million; he said it's the only thing that matters right now.
• Are you running in 2028? — He's not planning on it right now because he's not even sure "we're going to have a free and fair election in 2028"... which sounds like "ask me again later."
• What's your favorite pizza in Connecticut? — Not that it matters, but Modern.

Apparently, Senator Richard "Danang Dick" Blumenthal got pretty much the same message on the shutdown that Murphy did.

He agrees with Murphy that, "there is no reason to surrender now."

Really?

No reason to surrender?

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