Chris Murphy is the junior United States Senator for Connecticut. In 2024, The Guardian newspaper named him one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars, active in several policy areas, particularly healthcare, foreign policy and gun safety legislation. He delivered a scathing speech in the U.S. Senate about unprecedented corruption in the current administration.

Canadians should pay attention to Senator Murphy. Trump has no desire for the continued independence of Canada. He views this country as a home for hewers of wood and drawers of water. It doesn’t matter that the phrase became outdated about 70 years ago. Canada has its own plutocrats waiting to steal from the common people. They may be inspired by the easy success of the Trump/Musk crime family.

I planned to provide a YouTube video of the full speech with a list of the Senator’s main points. However, it is difficult to shorten a speech that is packed with incriminating detail. Excerpts follow the separator line. Caution: reading these or listening to the Senator will elevate your level of anger or your level of depression. Truly, we are living in dangerous times.

When bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior… The things that have happened over the last six weeks are unprecedented. This White House is on its way to being the most corrupt in the history of the country. These are examples of corrupt behavior in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency.

• On January 17, Trump launched the meme coin. This is maybe the most corrupt of all of the acts, because the meme coin is essentially a mechanism by which Russian oligarchs or corporate CEO’s can literally send money privately directly to Donald Trump. Nobody knows who buys the meme coin, but Trump makes money when people buy it. And so it is just an open sewer valve that allows for anybody who is trying to influence the Trump administration to be able to secretly funnel money to Donald Trump.

• On January 20, when he’s sworn in, he institutes his new energy agenda. During the campaign, he met with the oil and gas industry, and they cut a deal in which the oil and gas industry would give him a billion dollars of campaign contributions to receive favorable treatment. And guess what happens on January 20? Trump unveils his energy strategy, and what does it do? It preferences oil and gas, and it punishes oil and gas competitors. It freezes all permits on wind projects. It undercuts permitting processes, not for oil and gas but for oil and gas competitors. Oil and gas got exactly what they asked for. They gave a campaign contribution, and they got the favorable treatment.

• Five days later, Trump fired 17 inspectors general. What do inspectors general do? They look for corruption inside of these agencies. What do you do if you are trying to engage in corruption, if you are trying to steal from the American people? You fire the inspectors general. 

• Two days later, on January 27, Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox from the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board. When she’s fired, the National Labor Relations Board cannot function because the person in charge of reviewing the hirings and firings of these agencies is Elon Musk, who, by the way, has lots of cases before the NLRB. So do the people that are standing behind Trump during the inauguration. Almost all of them have active cases before the NLRB. The billionaires supporting Donald Trump now don’t have to worry about the NLRB because on January 27, the NLRB is rendered powerless. 

• Three days later, on January 30, Trump awarded more than $800,000 worth of stock to several of the board members of the Trump Media and Technology Group. This is the publicly traded company behind his social media platform. So now his Cabinet members – people like Kash Patel and Linda Mcmahon – are owning equity in Trump’s media platform; equity that can be cashed out, sold to people who want to buy them out of their interest at any time. Those people who might want to buy them out, Cabinet members, could be individuals with issues before the Department of Education, before the FBI. Yet another avenue in which people who have influence, who want to gain influence inside the Trump administration, have a conduit to be able to move cash from their pocketbooks, from their treasury, from their bank accounts, into the bank accounts of Trump cabinet members. 

• Shortly thereafter, we saw the weaponization of the DOJ. On February 23, a civil complaint from DOJ that had been pending against SpaceX– Elon Musk’s signature company – is dropped. Eight days later, the DOJ drops a case against a Republican Congressman.

• On February 19, the DOJ opened up Operation Whirlwind, which threatens anyone who dares to criticize the work of Elon Musk and DOGE. The DOJ is turned into an entity that drops cases against those who are loyal to Donald Trump and pursues aggressive investigations against those who are trying to criticize Donald Trump. 

• On February 1, Trump fired the director of the CFPB and announced plans to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Board. Again, very much like the NLRB, this is an agency that was, at the moment that it was rendered powerless, investigating Elon Musk and many of the biggest financial backers of Donald Trump. So once again, those that have access to Donald Trump, the billionaires that are close to him, now don’t have to worry about labor violations being investigated by the NLRB, now they don’t have to worry about consumer protection actions being taken against them by the CFPB.

• The Saudi Golf League plays tournaments at Trump’s courses in the United States, so if the White House is using its official power to negotiate a settlement between those two [professional golf] groups, Trump stands to make money. 

• On February 6, something absolutely stunning happened. Pam Bondi, the AG, issues a memorandum in which she proposes to dull the criminal enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In the prior Trump administration, Trump officials got in big trouble for secretly working for and getting paid by foreign governments without registering. Well, what did Trump announce? That they are going to limit the applicability of the enforcement of that statute, making it much easier for Trump’s friends – for his MAGA crowd, for the people who show up to Mar-a-Lago – to get paid quietly by foreign governments to influence Donald Trump.

• On February 10, maybe aside from the meme coin, the most stunning act of corruption: the Eric Adams quid pro quo, in which [New York Mayor] Eric Adams, indicted for corruption, is let off the hook. His charges are dismissed in exchange for the mayor’s pledge of political loyalty to Donald Trump. That was so corrupt that six or seven DOJ officials resigned because they refused to withdraw those charges, but the deal went through because the seventh, or the eighth, or the ninth official finally filed the withdrawal. 

• On February 10, Donald Trump directed the DOJ to pause enforcement of U.S. laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas. Here’s an example: Goldman Sachs was engaged in outright bribery–they were paying bribes to Malaysian officials so that they could get a contract to manage the resources of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. This is what you do if you want to normalize corruption.

• On February 12, the announcement comes out that the State Department is going to buy $400 million of armored Teslas. Okay, so now it’s getting even more blatant. It’s getting even more brazen. The State Department is just going to buy products from Elon Musk they were not previously scheduled to buy.

• That same day, Elon Musk’s people infiltrate the Department of Labor. Elon Musk’s personal representatives get access to enforcement information at OSHA, not only against Elon Musk’s companies–and by the way, SpaceX has an employee injury rate that is nine times higher than the industry average–but also workplace safety violations against Elon Musk’s competitors. Here’s the message: if you are close to Donald Trump personally, if you support him politically, you can get secret access to enforcement data against your companies and your companies’ competitors.

• Three days later, suspicious firings at the FDA. Again, related to Elon Musk’s personal financial interests. Elon Musk owns a medical device company called Neuralink. It is currently being reviewed by the FDA. And guess what? On February 15 and 16, 20 people were fired from the FDA’s Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices. Fired by DOGE, run by Elon Musk. Clear message: you’re going to get fired if you aren’t on the right side of Elon Musk’s application. Never before in American history have we allowed someone who has a pending application for approval of a medicine or a medical device to be able to personally decide who gets hired and who gets fired at the regulatory agency making the decision over that medical device.

• That same weekend, there’s an announcement that the FDA cuts are going to be even deeper, perhaps as big as 50%. That means that hundreds of drugs and devices won’t get approved at the FDA. And you know who benefits from that? The folks that are selling the snake oil products. And guess who’s selling the snake oil products? The people who work for Donald Trump, selling vita-gummy scams. The Director of the FBI is selling vaccine reversal pills. When the FDA gets gutted, it’s the people who sell those unregulated products who stand to gain.

• On February 19, we found out that the IRS is going to be cut by 7,000 people. These are people who audit billionaires, millionaires, and corporations. Once again, Elon Musk and the people standing behind Donald Trump on Inauguration Day are going to get off because the IRS just had its enforcement powers–its audit powers–absolutely gutted.

• That same day, on February 19, you start to receive word that advertising on Elon Musk’s platform is starting to grow again. The reporting on February 19 indicates that American companies have come to the collective decision to keep advertising on Elon Musk’s X platform because Musk has so much regulatory power inside the federal government. They need to make sure they’re paying Musk so that if they ultimately need something from the federal government, they can get it.

• The next day, on February 20, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’s monthly meeting is canceled and not rescheduled…And so when the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is canceled, it is a clear indication that yes, this campaign of assault on vaccines is going to continue, which, not surprisingly, is likely to make RFK Jr. even more money.

• On February 26, we saw Trump’s MAGA hats that are for sale on his website displayed in the Oval Office. And it’s just a reminder that so many people inside Trump’s universe continue to sell merchandise on the side to make money. Trump has always done this, and we’ve just accepted it, even though it is a kind of corruption in and of itself. But Kash Patel, the Director of the FBI, is still selling Kash-branded merchandise even while he’s going to run the FBI. Elon Musk and others are selling DOGE merchandise. So as they trumpet their brand inside the government, they’re making money off their brand outside of the government.

• On February 26, maybe the third-most significant instance of brazen corruption happened. News breaks that Elon Musk is going to have the FAA cancel a contract with Verizon that has been in the works for years and instead substitute in Starlink for Verizon. Just extraordinary that this is happening in plain view of everybody. Elon Musk takes his private company, uses his access to the government to just shove out of the way his competitors, and instead insert himself and his company. Again, we’ve never seen this in American history, and now it’s happening daily.

• This week, Wired reports that guests are paying millions of dollars to dine with Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago, and business leaders are being targeted with advertisements that sell access to a one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States for $5 million.

• Donald Trump and Elon Musk believe that because they have arranged this dizzying pace of corruption, in which not a day goes by in which something doesn’t happen inside our government in which Elon Musk or Donald Trump use their power to rig the rules to enrich themselves, that we are all going to feel that it’s normal. This is how democracies die. Democracies die when the very powerful people steal from us so regularly, so openly, so unapologetically, that we come to believe that it’s normal.

• The Trump meme coin is not okay. It’s not okay for people who have an interest before the federal government to be able to anonymously funnel money to the president of the United States. It’s not okay for Elon Musk to have access to Department of Labor enforcement data, against him or his competitors, that nobody else gets access to. It’s not okay to just cancel contracts that were going to Musk’s competitors and substitute in his own business just because he can do it as a friend of Donald Trump.

• The rule of law matters. Doing things by the rules matters.

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Hat tip to Dan. His comment on the preceding article Patrimonialism drew my attention to Senator Murphy’s speech.