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Transcript: Sen. Chris Murphy on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” May 31, 2026

2026-05-31T11:38:00-0400 / CBS News

The following is the transcript of the interview with Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on May 31, 2026.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re back now with Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. He is the author of a new book, Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America. He joins us from Hartford, Connecticut. Good morning to you, Senator.

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Good morning.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to talk about your book in a moment, but just to pick up on where we left it with President Zelenskyy, do you believe that there is enough bipartisan support to press the Pentagon to reallocate some of these patriots, so he can take down all the incoming Russian missiles?

SEN. MURPHY: Yeah, I doubt it. Unfortunately, I think the story here has been pretty simple from the start. Donald Trump does not want to do what is necessary to support Ukraine, and the Republican Party will always follow his lead. We’ve had a bipartisan sanctions bill sitting on the Senate floor for a year and a half that would tighten the screws on the Russian economy, make it harder for them to fund the war. Donald Trump has basically had a veto on that bill. He won’t allow Senate Republicans to bring it forward. He’s been sitting on $400 million that Congress allocated to help Ukraine. He hasn’t spent a dime of it, despite protests loudly, publicly and privately, from Senate Republicans. So I just think ultimately Donald Trump has decided he does not want to help Ukraine, and there doesn’t seem to be enough courage in the Republican caucus to fight back. I mean, I hope I’m wrong about that. This is obviously a critical moment where Ukraine actually looks like it is about to be able to take a real offensive position, and so I’m rooting that they will finally stand up to the President on this.

MARGARET BRENNAN: To your point, on the 400 million, Hegseth, the Secretary of War said that that was to be released, but we haven’t seen anything more. I know you sit on the Appropriations Committee, so you have a chance to ask some of these questions, potentially of Secretary Rubio, when he sits before you on, I believe, Wednesday, asking for $33.6 billion budget. What’s the top priority when you do get to ask questions of the secretary?

SEN. MURPHY: Well, the top priority is ending the war in Iran. This has been an absolute disaster for the United States. Obviously, the primary impact is here at home, as families and businesses are being ruined by gas prices. They’re $6 a gallon in some places, but it’s just been a humiliation for the United States, and it’s made Iran more powerful. Of course, there’s an impact in Russia as well. We’ve had to suspend sanctions on Russian oil in order to get their oil on the market, so the consequence of the Iran war is not just that Americans are dying, the prices are going up, but Russia is also getting more powerful. We’re literally funding their war effort, so we need the Iran war to end. There’s been this talk of a deal for months and months and months. I think the terms of the deal are pretty humiliating in and of themselves, but we just need this war done, no matter the terms, at this point.

MARGARET BRENNAN: On the point about the sanctions, we talked about that, President Zelensky, and you can see that full transcript online, but I know that the White House pushes back and says the money isn’t that significant in terms of what Russia is able to pocket. You obviously disagree.

SEN. MURPHY: Yeah, I mean, I just think from a moral perspective, no matter whether the money is a difference maker, the idea that we are helping Russia fund this war is ridiculous. It’s not small potatoes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

SEN. MURPHY: Russia is getting billions of additional dollars because of our sanctions relief, that’s allowing them to buy some of the missiles that are on the verge of raining down on Kyiv. People are dying because of our help for Russia. So, it’s just bad enough that the Strait of Hormuz is closed and it’s hurting our economy. The fact that we are adding insult to injury by the war in Iran helping Russia is just unacceptable.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You have written this book that we mentioned, and I know that you said about it in a recent interview that 2028 Democratic contenders are texting you, talking to you about some of the ideas in it. Some of our recent CBS polling found that 62% of registered voters view the Democratic party in a negative light, so how do you take these ideas, and what’s the main one Democrats need to hammer home to redirect the party?

SEN. MURPHY: Yeah, this book is really about the spiritual crisis in the country that led to Donald Trump. This is a country that is feeling more lonely, more adrift, more exhausted by an economy that abuses workers, a culture in which we tell people that they can make themselves happy by just buying things instead of being active citizens, and so it’s a book about the underlying work that we have to do to unrig the economy, so that people feel purpose and value, and unrig our democracy, so that people feel power. And that’s what the book really is about, the emotional state of the country. Here’s what I think Democrats need to do: they need to understand that the people are furious at the fact that our politics have become captured, and people are feeling out of control of their lives because they think we’re all corrupt. They don’t think–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

SEN. MURPHY: –Donald Trump is just corrupt; they think everybody in politics is corrupt. So, Democrats need to be much louder about the ways that we’re going to get billionaire and corporate money out of our politics, because people don’t believe us when we say we’re going to fix the economy–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.

SEN. MURPHY: –if we don’t also tell them how we’re going to fix our democracy.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, well, to that point about spirit and character, the campaign for Graham Platner confirmed to CBS on Saturday that the Maine Senate candidate had sent sexually explicit texts to women other than his wife. This is in addition to other past controversies. Does he pass the character test?

SEN. MURPHY: Yeah, I mean, I have not followed this story as closely as others have, but Graham Platner is somebody that served our country, he served his community, he’s also made mistakes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

SEN. MURPHY: And he has admitted that. Character also involves standing up to people who are bankrupting and corrupting this country, and this race is going to be a contrast between somebody that has put his life on the line for this country against somebody that is literally empowering the moral hollowing out of our nation from the White House. So he certainly admitted that he has made mistakes, but I think this is going to be a pretty clear contrast in Maine between somebody who has spent his life protecting us, versus somebody who seems to be protecting Donald Trump’s corruption.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you know, I want to ask you as well about an interview that aired right before this program with my colleague Rita Braver on CBS Sunday Morning. She interviewed the former First Lady Jill Biden about the new book she wrote, in which she talks about the infamous 2024 debate, where the then-president really couldn’t answer questions. She says a lot of things, including that she thought her husband was having a stroke because she- he was incomprehensible. She admits that she said to him afterwards that he really screwed up, but that’s what she’s revealing now. Democrats, stridently, including on this program, said time and again that his cognitive abilities were fine. How do you convince the public that Democrats are telling the truth now?

SEN. MURPHY: Yeah, listen, I think Democrats do have to be honest about the mistakes that we made in 2024 Obviously, in retrospect, Joe Biden should have stepped away from that race. We should have had an open contest. And in this book, I frankly talk about how tribal our politics have become, how Republicans are willing to excuse Donald Trump’s corruption, because their entire identity structure is built around their party. And I think that happens on the Democratic side as well, where we are willing to look the other way too often at mistakes that our own party leaders are making, and this book says that that’s not just up to politics to fix that. We actually have to create more healthy identity structures for people outside of politics, so they see their purpose through their work or through their connection to a local community. And that makes our politics less tribal–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.

SEN. MURPHY: –and maybe allows us on both sides to stand up to our party when we think they’ve gone wrong.

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, Senator Murphy, we have to leave it there. Thank you for your insights today. We’ll be right back with more Face the Nation.