Dem Senator Stumbles Into Word Salad After Anderson Cooper Asks Him What’s Wrong with Ensuring Voters Are Eligible

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut struggled to give a clear answer on Monday when asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about President Donald Trump’s executive order related to mail-in ballots.

Earlier in the day, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s order related to ensuring only U.S. citizens vote by mail-in ballot could go forward.

The directive requires states to send a list of the names of those receiving mail-in ballots so their eligibility to vote can be verified, with the Department of Homeland Security working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration.

“The Federal Government has an unavoidable duty under Article II of the Constitution of the United States to enforce Federal law, which includes preventing violations of Federal criminal law and maintaining public confidence in election outcomes,” the order read.

The U.S. Postal Service was instructed not to deliver ballots to those unverified as citizens.

Further, states are required to have “unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, [to] enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots, reducing the risk of fraud and protecting the integrity of Federal elections.”

“In your view, what is the harm in the Department of Homeland Security creating a list of eligible voters?” Cooper asked Murphy.

Democrat Senator Chris Murphy has no real answer other than conspiracies when asked about voter integrity.

CNN: What is the harm in creating a list of eligible voters?

MURPHY: “Trump doesn’t want people to vote…” pic.twitter.com/IaJL7CT402

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 25, 2026

“Well, ultimately, Trump doesn’t want people to vote, and he’s going to be very selective about who he doesn’t want to vote. He doesn’t want people who are more likely to vote for Democrats to vote,” Murphy said.

“So he’s going to instruct either the Department of Homeland Security or the Postal Service, potentially, to remove people from the voter rolls or to profile people for removal from the voter rolls that are more likely to vote for Democrats, for instance, people who live in cities,” the lawmaker continued, as Cooper remained expressionless.

So his argument apparently is that if non-citizens vote, they are more likely to vote Democrat.

Murphy, who is reportedly considering a 2028 run for president, then went off the topic of voter integrity entirely, saying Trump is using his position as president to enrich himself.

“Trump is going to use whatever power he has available to him to make himself rich. He’s going to use whatever power he has available to him to try to steal the election,” he alleged.

In its Monday 6-3 ruling reversing the injunction, the Supreme Court did not decide whether Trump’s mail-in ballot order is lawful, but determined the 23 states suing to block it did not have standing because they could not prove any “concrete” harms had been suffered by their citizens, concluding their arguments are “conjecture.”

In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the majority of “[t]aking its eye off the ball” and thus “miss[ing] the Government’s actual objective: to secure our imprimatur for its effort to foment chaos ahead of the November elections.”

Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, wrote in a separate dissenting opinion, “Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful. Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives. Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”

The states challenging Trump’s order wrote in their brief to the Supreme Court that implementing it “would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service far-reaching new powers and responsibilities.”

But SCOTUSBlog reported that Alabama and 11 other states supporting the order countered in their brief that two recent rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit involving the same executive order concluded it was too early to challenge it without proof of actual harm to the states.

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