Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) argued President Donald Trump was attempting to turn the United States into a “totalitarian state.”
Host Jake Tapper said, “The New York Times reported that the private donor who gave President Trump $130 million to pay U.S. troops during the shutdown, that he is billionaire Timothy Mellon, and the donation appears to violate federal law. But what do you say to Americans who look at that and think it’s President Trump, not Democrats, making sure that troops get paid?”
Murphy said, “Well, I think one of the reasons that President Trump is refusing to negotiate is because he likes the fact that the government is closed, because he thinks he can exercise king-like powers. He can open up the parts of the government that he wants. He can pay the employees who are loyal to him. I mean, this is a leader who is trying to transition our government from a democracy to something much closer to a totalitarian state. And so, this is part of what happens in totalitarian states — the leader of the regime only decides what things get funded and what don’t, often, in coordination with their oligarch friends. So I just don’t want to live in a world in which Donald Trump and a handful of billionaires decide which part of government works and which don’t.”
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