During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) spoke about the 'corruption' within the Trump administration.
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00:00My colleagues, you're going to hear a lot of stories about the first 100 days of Donald Trump's
00:06second presidency, and indeed there are a lot of stories. There's a story of incompetence.
00:13We are dealing with multiple measles outbreaks all across the country. There is a story of
00:18abdicating our responsibility to lead around the world. Vladimir Putin is laughing at us as Trump
00:24goes about the business of handing Ukraine to a brutal Kremlin dictator. There is a story of
00:33transferring wealth from the poor and the middle class through massive cuts to Medicaid to the very,
00:39very wealthy who are asking for another massive tax cut. But I would argue, Mr. President, that the
00:47most important story to tell is a story of corruption, a story of mind-blowing, massive,
00:55scalable corruption. That story is important because we are watching the theft of taxpayer money
01:05by the decision of the Republican Party to look the other way as Donald Trump essentially monetizes,
01:13at scale, the White House and the powers given to him by the Constitution of the American people in
01:19order to enrich himself and his friends. And if we don't tell this story, and if we don't mount
01:25a national, bipartisan, apolitical resistance to this thievery, to this corruption, and it becomes
01:35normalized as just a part of doing business in America, a normal facet of residents in the White
01:45House, then shame on us. Because our democracy will not survive this level of corruption, grift,
01:54and graft. So I'm going to try to tell this story really quickly. I've got two charts, and it's hard to
01:59read. These words are really small because over the course of 100 days, there are 40, 50, 60 different
02:08individual acts of precedent-breaking corruption. And that's intentional because what President Trump
02:16is trying to do is engage in so much public corruption that you just become normalized to it,
02:23that you stop paying attention to the corruption, because is it, can it be corruption if it's just
02:29playing out in public? He's trying to make you think that this stuff happens all the time behind
02:33the scenes, and now all that is different is that you are seeing it publicly. But that's not true.
02:38This is not actually how government works. And I refuse to accept that just because the corruption is
02:45happening in public, in front of the cameras, for everybody to see that we should accept it.
02:51Okay, I'm going to try to do this. I'm going to try to do this as quickly as possible. I'm just going
02:56to highlight for you maybe the 40 most egregious examples of corruption in the first 100 days, but
03:01this is just the tip of the iceberg. So on January 6th, this is before Trump is even sworn in, Amazon,
03:10which has a ton of business before the incoming Trump White House, pays $40 million to the Trump
03:17family to license a documentary in a series about Melania Trump, just a cash payment from a company
03:24that has huge interests before the incoming White House to the Trump family. On January 17th, a few
03:30days before, Trump is sworn in maybe the most corrupt act in the history of the White House.
03:37This is the creation of the Trump meme coin. This is just a backdoor way for anybody with business
03:43before the Trump administration to send him millions of dollars in total secret. Trump doesn't disclose
03:49who buys the coin. He launders his income from the coin through an unregulated Chinese exchange.
03:55He promotes the coin on his social media feeds. In the first minute of trading, one buyer, and what
04:01we know is that this was likely a Chinese individual, purchases six million coins, sending the price
04:07through the roof, and immediately making a ton of money for Trump, who makes money off of every
04:11transaction. Trump knows who this person is, no doubt, but American citizens do not. All right,
04:19January 20th, he's now sworn in, and he fulfills a campaign promise to the oil and gas industry.
04:25There's a report from the campaign that says they came down to Mar-a-Lago, I think, and said,
04:30we'll give you a billion dollars in campaign contributions. This is not me alleging this. This is an open
04:35report. Oil and gas industry say it will give you a billion dollars in campaign contributions if you
04:42do what we want when you are sworn in. And the day he's sworn in, Trump issues an executive order
04:49gutting environmental rules so that the oil and gas industry can start making bigger amounts of money.
04:58On January 25th, Trump eliminates the inspectors general, the ethics officials in government,
05:04government, and whistleblower offices. It's a late night purge, so you know it's fishy. On January 25th,
05:1117 inspector generals get fired, clearing the way for the president to engage in even more
05:16corruption, because that's what the inspectors general do. They sit in these agencies and they
05:20look for corruption. Now the inspectors general are gone. They're just gone. But that's not good
05:26enough, because on that same day, Trump fires the head of the office of special counsel.
05:31Why would you do that? Well, that office is an investigative and prosecutorial office that
05:37works to end government and political corruption and protects government employees who become
05:41whistleblowers. That office is gone. Now, along with all of the whistleblowers, two days later,
05:47Trump illegally fires NLRB member Gwynn Wilcox. This effectively shuts down illegally the NLRB for a
05:55period of time. Why is that important? Because the guys who are standing behind Donald Trump
05:59on inauguration day, people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, they are being investigated at the moment by
06:05the NLRB for massive workplace violations. And now the NLRB is shut down, a big gift to the people who
06:13financed Donald Trump's inauguration and stood behind him to give him political endorsement and cover on
06:20his inauguration day. On January 31st, a trend begins. Enforcement actions are paused against
06:30Trump loyalists. This is Representative Andy Ogles from Tennessee. He was being investigated for loans
06:36made to illegal or potentially illegal loans made to his 2022 campaign. But right after Rep. Ogles
06:43introduces a bill to amend the Constitution to allow Trump to serve for a third term, what happens?
06:49Trump makes the investigation go away. Because as you will see, Trump's justice system will often
06:56look the other way if you cheat or steal, but you are a friend of Donald Trump's. At the same time,
07:03another of Trump's friends, his IRS nominee, Billy Long, gets his donors. Almost all of them have
07:11direct interest before the IRS to pay off his six-figure campaign debt. It's a fabulously corrupt
07:20thing to do, but it's just all normal now. So when Trump is showing you the way, then the folks who
07:27work for him follow suit. All right, we'll jump to February now. February 4th, we're into what? Week two
07:34of the Trump White House. Trump hauls the PGA and the Saudi government into the White House to broker
07:40an agreement between the two rival golf leagues so that Trump can make more money hosting golf
07:45tournaments. He's in business with one of these entities, the Saudi-owned LIV League. In a normal
07:52world, the President of the United States wouldn't be in business with any foreign government, but the
07:56President is. And not only is that okay, but it is also apparently okay for him to bring
08:02the golf league that he's in business with into the White House and pressure the other golf league,
08:10the rival golf league, to cut a deal. And guess what happens? The PGA, which had long said they were
08:17not going to host events at Trump's courses after being hauled into the White House, looking the
08:22President of the United States in the eye, somebody they clearly have to do business with,
08:26they announced that they're going to start allowing their tournaments to be held at Trump
08:31courses. Big benefit to Donald Trump's personal bottom line. February 6th, two days later, Trump
08:36ends the criminal enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Do you know what this is? You
08:41should. It requires people who are being paid by foreign governments to register. It's no longer going
08:46to be enforced. So now members of the Trump administration can get backdoor payments from
08:50foreign governments, and nobody is going to enforce the law. This isn't theoretical. There were people
08:55who got arrested for doing this exact same thing, getting paid by foreign governments while working
09:01for the Trump administration in term one. He wants to make sure it's not a problem in term two, so he
09:06pauses enforcement of the actual act. Four days later, Trump eliminates the Consumer Financial Protection
09:13Bureau. This is just a magnificent present to all of his billionaire enablers, because this is the agency
09:19that stops big businesses, banks, other financial firms from ripping off consumers, and now it's just
09:25shut down. The same day, DOJ drops charges against Eric Adams in a mind-blowingly public and brazen quid pro quo.
09:36Adams says he will pledge loyalty to Trump, that he's going to support Trump's political priorities in New York City.
09:42Trump drops the corruption charges against Adams. Just like the Ogles case, the door is now wide open to engage in
09:48corruption or criminality as long as you support Donald Trump. The thing that makes this one so egregious is that Adams and the
09:54White House go on TV to announce the corrupt deal, and they don't hide it. They just say that Adams is now supporting
10:04Donald Trump, and we're now going to drop the charges against him, and everybody gets the message. There's a lot of
10:10stuff I can get away with as a corrupt official as long as I am in bed politically with Donald Trump.
10:16Trump, same day, February 10th, DOJ pauses enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This is the law that stops
10:26American companies from bribing foreign governments in order to get business. On February 10th, Trump suspends
10:32enforcement of an anti-bribery statute, paving the way for his friends in corporate America to start bribing
10:40foreign governments. Again, two days later, the State Department forecasts that they are going to
10:47dramatically upscale the amount of money that they're going to send to Tesla. This is the first time that
10:51Elon Musk shows up in this story, because by February 12th, Elon Musk is pretty well embedded in
10:56the White House, and guess what? The State Department is now going to spend $400 million for armored Teslas,
11:02its largest expected contract in the upcoming year. February 12th, same day, Musk infiltrates the
11:11Department of Labor and OSHA, giving him exclusive secret access to labor law violation data against
11:19him and his competitors. Unethical, corrupt, but this stuff is just happening every single day. A few days
11:26later, on February 15th and 16th, Musk now starts really testing the limits of what his boss will let
11:34him get away with. He fires a specific set of regulators at the FDA that are reviewing one of his
11:40medical products, Neuralink. The message is clear. You've got to do right by my applications, or you risk
11:47getting the ax, too. Three days later, on February 19th, Trump's new U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Ed Martin,
11:55starts to use his government power to harass Trump critics. He launches something called Operation
12:02Woolwind, and he's pretty unapologetic about the fact that this is going to be an enforcement
12:07operation against anybody who just seeks to get in the way of Doge. He doesn't say it's going after
12:14people who are acting illegally. He says anybody who tries to stop or protest or harass Doge's work
12:22is now going to be the subject of Operation Roarwind, and he starts trolling critics of Doge online.
12:29The U.S. attorney for D.C. is now just trolling Doge critics online, obviously threatening criminal
12:36enforcement. You see what's happening here? We're 30 days into the administration, and everybody in
12:40Trump's world, including these supposedly independent U.S. attorneys, are getting the message that it is now
12:45part of your job if you work for Trump to use your government powers to either enrich yourself or
12:50Trump or to help Trump politically. February 21st, two days later, the SEC drops a major investigation
12:56into a company called Robinhood. Why does this matter? You guessed it. This firm donated two million
13:02dollars to Trump's inauguration fund. Thirty days later, the SEC drops an investigation into that firm.
13:12Put a pin in that, because you're going to hear stories like it over and over again.
13:18Throughout February, we watched the rich guys that are surrounding Trump come up with new ways to
13:23monetize their positions. Kash Patel is a perfect example. He's the nominee to head the FBI,
13:29maybe the most important independent bureau in the federal government, and while he is going through
13:33that process, he is selling merchandise online, ranging from t-shirts to playing cards with the proceeds
13:40supposedly going to whistleblowers, education and defamation cases.
13:46February 26th, news breaks that the FAA is considering giving a $2.4 billion contract to Elon Musk's
13:53Starlink. But it's not like a regular contract that's up for bid. It's a contract that was already awarded
14:00to one of Musk's competitors, Verizon. And word leaks that the White House is thinking of just ripping the
14:05contract away from Verizon, because Verizon is not a political supporter of Donald Trump in the way that Elon Musk is,
14:11and just giving it to Elon Musk. Now, that doesn't happen as reported. The contract has not been canceled yet,
14:17but there are regular reports of the administration still relentlessly attacking Verizon in a clear attempt to
14:23try to undermine their contract. February 27th, the next day, Trump drops a lawsuit against Capital One.
14:29Why does this matter? Capital One donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund.
14:34It's now just kind of automatic. You donate a big amount of money to Trump's inauguration,
14:38and you can ask him for something. We're not done. That same day, the SEC drops a lawsuit against Coinbase.
14:46Coinbase. You got the story now. Coinbase donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. They are now
14:54told that it's okay to keep cheating consumers. We're not done. On February 28th, a day later,
15:01the DOJ announces that it would drop a complaint against SpaceX, Elon Musk's SpaceX for labor
15:07discrimination. Elon's like, wait a second, all these other big donors to your inauguration are getting out
15:12of jail free. I want my get out of jail free card as well. He gets it from DOJ. We're now into March.
15:23March 1st. A report breaks. This is maybe second to Coinbase, the most stunning act of corruption.
15:33On March 1st, word breaks that Trump is selling meetings at Mar-a-Lago. On at least one occasion,
15:39Trump has charged guests $1 million to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago. According to the same report,
15:45business leaders can secure a one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States
15:50for a $5 million payment to Donald Trump. If you were mayor of a medium-sized town, and it was reported
16:01that you were selling meetings for like $200, you would be arrested. You would be run out of town.
16:10But not Donald Trump. He's selling meetings for $5 million, according to this report.
16:16And because the corruption in this White House is daily and normal, he gets away with it.
16:20March 2nd. Trump launches the crypto reserve fund.
16:25This is going to involve government taxpayer dollars purchasing and holding a variety of digital assets
16:31in a strategic reserve fund. A move that definitely inflates and protects Trump's investment portfolio,
16:39by now you understand, very heavily dependent on crypto assets.
16:44Now, this normally wouldn't be a problem because normally when somebody takes a high position,
16:48like president or governor or mayor, they divest from their own personal assets or they put it all in a blind fund.
16:55Trump does none of that. He's controlling his own assets. His family is controlling their own assets
17:01while he makes policy that benefits himself and his family financially.
17:06On March 3rd, a really curious thing, DOJ intervenes in an obscure but open and shut 2020 Colorado elections case.
17:14This is the case of Tina Peters, who tampered with voting machines on Trump's behalf in Mesa County, Colorado.
17:20She was convicted by a jury of her peers. Open and shut.
17:24But because Peters is a MAGA loyalist, now DOJ, on March 3rd, says it's going to step in and review the case
17:31because there are concerns about how it was prosecuted. This is just President Trump, again,
17:36clearly shielding those that violated the law to help him from consequences.
17:40Same thing, different day. No, not even a different day. This is actually still March 3rd.
17:45Yuga Labs, a blockchain company, donated $100,000 to Trump inauguration fund.
17:51They now get in line. They get what everybody else is getting.
17:54The SEC closes an ongoing investigation into the company.
17:58On March 4th, DOJ lays off thousands of IRS employees.
18:02This is bad for a lot of reasons, but it certainly helps Trump's Mar-a-Lago friends
18:06because the IRS now cannot enforce the law against the big, giant tax cheats
18:13in the way that it could have when it had those personnel on the books.
18:17Mar-a-Lago is celebrating.
18:19March 4th, same day, word breaks that the Commerce Department is considering changes
18:24to this very specific rural broadband program and who's eligible.
18:29Why? Because Elon Musk wants to dominate that program.
18:33Under the program's original rules, Starlink was kind of capped at $4.1 billion.
18:37This curious change now will allow Elon Musk's company, Starlink,
18:41to receive between $10 billion and $20 billion from the rural broadband program.
18:47This is like a broken record, but six days later, the CFPB, which is basically shut down
18:54but exists in name only, it drops a lawsuit against the Bank of America and J.P. Morgan.
19:01Bank of America donated $500,000 to the inauguration.
19:04J.P. Morgan donated a million dollars to the inauguration on March 11th.
19:09A day later, Trump and Musk hold this now very well-known advertisement for Tesla on the White House lawn.
19:17This is just taxpayer dollars used to support the personnel at the White House
19:22and the White House being used to sell cars for Elon Musk.
19:25And the message, again, is pretty simple here.
19:27If you are loyal to me and you pay any kind of price for your loyalty to me,
19:32I will use government resources to help you, to get you out of trouble, even including free advertising.
19:39On March 19th, or eight days later, the GEO group donated $500,000 for Trump's inauguration fund.
19:50This is a private prison company, and the NLRB drops its investigation into this company.
19:59I mean, it's really getting disgusting at this point.
20:01I mean, I don't know that there's anybody left that made a major donation to the inauguration fund
20:06that has not gotten their favor from Donald Trump.
20:10On March 24th, the Treasury Department guts something called the Corporate Transparency Act.
20:14This is the regulation that requires businesses to reveal their true owners to the government.
20:19These new rules now make it easier for billionaires to hide money, to avoid taxes, to engage in corruption.
20:25Less accountability for corporations.
20:29March 25th, a day later, the SEC reduces from $125 million to $50 million, an existing fine.
20:37So this has already been litigated.
20:39This company, Ripple, it's a blockchain-based digital payment company.
20:43It's been fined.
20:45And Trump comes in and reduces the fine from $125 million to $50 million.
20:51You know the story by now.
20:53These guys made a big investment in the inauguration.
20:55Most of these companies that got to get out of jail free or have their investigations terminated
21:00were giving $500,000, a million dollars.
21:03Ripple wanted to make sure they got it right.
21:05They made a $5 million donation to Trump's inaugural fund, and they got their fine reduced by $75 million.
21:15March 28th, Trump pardons the founder of Nikola Autos, one of his campaign megadonors.
21:22Again, this is a pardon for one of his major campaign contributors.
21:27When asked about the pardon, Trump said, they say the thing they did was wrong, but he was one of the first people who supported me for president.
21:36Like, he just tells you what he did.
21:38He said, yeah, they said what he did was wrong.
21:40I mean, he did something that was probably pretty wrong, but he supported me for president, so I'm giving him a pardon.
21:45I'm not saying that there hasn't been a lot of really bad stuff that's happened in the pardon program under Democratic and Republican presidents,
21:53but let's just name it when Donald Trump names it.
21:56April 8th, we're into April, Trump issues an executive order to expand coal mining.
22:01This is part of his down payment on the promise he made to those oil executives.
22:05The shares of the company owned by Robert, excuse me, by Joseph Kraft, the billionaire coal magnate who helped lead those Trump fundraising efforts during the presidential campaign, immediately shoots up.
22:16On April 9th, this really curious timeline of events plays out in which Trump posts on his social media, this is a great time to buy.
22:25A lot of his followers comply.
22:29They make investments in the market.
22:31There's reports and speculation that many of his inner circle might have done the same thing.
22:37And then a couple hours later, he announces that he's pausing most of his tariffs.
22:40And the market shoots up.
22:41People who followed his directions online make a lot of money and potentially other people who had access to that insider information might have made a lot of money as well.
22:52On April 17th, Musk steers billions of taxpayer dollars to something called the Golden Dome.
22:58Reuters on April 17th reports that Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, has emerged as the front runner to develop Trump's proposed Golden Dome.
23:07This is a really ill defying, technologically unproven defense system.
23:11It supposedly has a price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars, money that now looks as if it will be funneled directly to Elon Musk.
23:19At this point, it is just head shaking.
23:22On April 23rd, I mean, now it's like he can do anything he wants.
23:26Like, he has just blown the lid off of any expectations about what a president can and cannot do to enrich himself.
23:34On April 23rd, a message appears on the homepage of the website for Trump's meme coin declaring that the top 220 meme coin holders would be invited for an exclusive dinner with Trump.
23:45And the top 25 coin holders, these are private investors in Donald Trump's financial empire, would get a special VIP tour of the White House.
23:56After the message went up, the price of Trump's coin jumped by more than 50%.
24:00In the two days following the announcement of the special VIP tour in the People's House, the White House, Trump and his allies made nearly a million dollars in trading fees alone.
24:12They are just selling access to the White House out in the open.
24:15April 26th, Trump's family, this is just last weekend, announces the launch of a private club called the Executive Branch, a new private club in Washington.
24:27The initiation fee is around a half a million dollars.
24:30It is advertised as a place where you can hold secret audiences with the Trump administration.
24:35As long as you pay Donald Trump's family and their financial backers over $500,000 in membership fees, it is apparently already sold out.
24:46This is not normal. None of this is normal.
24:52This is outlandish. This is illegal. This is unconstitutional, brazen corruption.
24:59And this is only the first 100 days.
25:04I just detailed 40 instances of mind-blowing corruption in just 40 days.
25:09Capped off by an attempt to just sell access to the White House to people who put money in the pocket of Donald Trump's personal businesses.
25:20Donald Trump wants to numb this country into believing that this is just how government works.
25:25That he's owed this. That every president is owed this.
25:29That government has always been corrupt, and he's just doing it out in the open.
25:33But this is not how government works.
25:35This has been the story of his first 100 days.
25:39But it's our choice as a nation to allow it to be the story of the rest of his term.
25:44We need to expose what he is doing. We need to rally everybody from the left to the right.
25:49Nobody in this country, whether you are a hardened conservative or a hardened progressive,
25:55should root for the President of the United States to be enriching himself off of this position.
26:01We need to rally this nation against this corruption and bring it to an end.
26:06Because if Donald Trump gets what he wants and we just start allowing our government leaders to openly steal from us during the first 100 days or for the rest of his term,
26:16then I am telling you American democracy is not going to survive.
26:20I yield the floor.
26:22I yield the floor.
26:24In the first 100 years, we are in the 20th century.
26:26We are fighting.
26:28We are fighting.
26:30We at least have a new situation against the world.
26:32We are fighting.
26:34We are fighting.
26:36People are fighting.
26:38We are fighting.
26:41We are fighting for each other hours.
26:46We are fighting.