Chris Murphy

Joe Biden may or may not be the candidate for the Democrats but this whole thing has been about trying to destroy who Trump sees as one of the strongest candidates.

The corruption scheme happened.

One witness is John Bolton who has told us he wants to testify.

I think many of them didn't understand how big it was.

I think what's interesting, Anderson, is that a lot of these Republicans haven't seen this argument made before.

I mean, frankly, that's insulting. And it belies the fact that our troops are actually fighting for us and protecting us overseas and to protect our right to disagree with each other and to speak our minds.

That's just absolutely ridiculous. And I'm not going to let this country slide into war again like we did in 2003, when the Bush administration bullied opponents of that war into silence.

I mean, I don't know that I would use all the same words, but it was fairly extraordinary, to hear the administration tell Congress that we can't debate war and peace.

The bottom line is the president doesn't have this power. He can't decide to hold aid or put conditions on aid that Congress didn't.

The one sacred covenant that a president makes with the people who elect him is that he's going to use the power of the Oval Office to protect the nation and to advance the common interests, not to advance his personal political or…

I think it just confirms what we've known for a long time, the president was using the massive power of the Oval Office and taxpayer dollars to try to get a foreign government to interfere in American politics.

Senator Murphy, first of all, just your reaction to the House Intelligence Committee report accusing the president of misconduct and obstruction.

If Republicans don't vote to render some consequences to President Trump for the way that he's abused the office, I think they are just inviting future presidents to do the same.

I don't know why you have the power of impeachment in the Constitution if not to be used for a scheme of this magnitude.

There's no way for the president to offer an adequate explanation for what he did. He had two asks of the President Zelensky in that phone call. One was to help him destroy Hillary Clinton. The second was to help him destroy Vice President…

I have been very open that I believe that Congress needs to pursue impeachment at the same time as we pursue a legislative agenda.

Well, if we don't get a background check deal done, it's only because the president decided to walk away from the table.

Well, of course. You listen to him at the U.N. and you read the transcript of his remarks. And you can see him bending over backwards to get along with this president. Why? Because Ukraine is totally dependent right now on the United…

I mean, the President continues on a daily basis to admit to a level of corruption that I believe is likely impeachable.

But ultimately, this country needs to make clear that you can't use the foreign policy and the foreign power of the United States of America in order to try to get foreign countries to enter into our political fray.

I said listen, don't get involved in the 2020 election. When you're dealing with the United States of America, deal with the State Department.

What we should be doing right now is engaging in diplomacy to ramp down these tensions and any alternative is ultimately going to be much worse off in the long run for us and our Saudi partners.

It would be a disaster for the United States to pretend as if we have a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia and start firing missiles into Iran, causing a new regional war.

What the United States of America should be doing right now is deescalating this conflict between the Saudis and the United States and the Iranians instead of escalating it.

If President Trump were to come out in the next several days for expanded background checks, I think you'd have a lot of Republicans eager to rally around him.