Astead Herndon

Obviously, thank you to Senator Murphy for being here.

And thank you to you all, too, for being interested in this topic.

When I think about corruption, particularly this bending the knee kind of framework, one thing that immediately jumps to mind for me is that when we think about the Trump administration, this isn't happening in backroom deals.

This isn't happening in some secret basement.

A lot of these things are happening right in front of us.

So I guess my first question was, is corruption the right word to even use when

It's been broadly sanctioned by legal and governmental entities.

You know, your corporate pardons report documents over 160 companies that have had federal enforcement actions dropped.

But as we know, corporate influence has been true in Washington for a long time.

You know, how do you think this is a qualitatively different moment than the usual pay to play or the usual lobbying influence that we've seen?

What do you think is the impact of that kind of flagrant?

degradation of the process, or just doing it out in the open.

I mean, we've established kind of how different this moment feels in its in-your-face nature of it.

Does that have a democracy-corroding impact?

Like, what do you think is the consequence of its being in our face in this way?

We're back.

It's Today Explained Saturday, and we're talking with Senator Chris Murphy.

As you mentioned of kind of explicit examples, Donald Trump Jr.

is a strategic advisor at MarketKaushi.

He's joined the board of another prediction market.