Sen. Chris Murphy spent months negotiating a bipartisan border security bill with Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and the White House. Then, in a flash last Sunday, hours after the bill was released, Republicans sabotaged the effort.
Before the Connecticut Democrat went to sleep that night, he knew the legislation was dead. “They're going to burn this bill down by the time we get up tomorrow morning, aren't they?” Murphy texted Sinema.
I sat down with Murphy in his Capitol office this week to discuss the saga of the border deal for the latest episode of Playbook Deep Dive.
During our conversation, Murphy shared the inside story of the construction of the bill — from Lankford’s scrupulous attention to detail (“If you negotiate with James Lankford, you are negotiating text, not ideas”) to Sinema’s role as mediator (She “is trying to figure out a way to get the two of us on the same page”) to the intense pain he experienced when the whole thing collapsed at the urging of Donald Trump.
Murphyalso explained why Biden changed his views on immigration policy and why the president’s position is often misunderstood. And he discussed whether his high-profile role negotiating the border deal was an audition for higher office.
With help from Deep Dive Senior Producer Alex Keeney, this transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Has anything in your career been as disappointing as what happened to the border bill?
I've never seen an about-face like this in the 20-plus years I've been in politics. On Sunday afternoon, we had 20-25 Republicans we thought we could get to support the bill. Sen. [Mitch] McConnell had been in the room negotiating the bill with us for months, and within 48 hours, we had four yes votes. And Sen. McConnell had voted against the bill that he wrote.
Let's go back a little bit. I want to unpack the process of putting this together. I haven't seen you speak much about that. When immigration reform failed in 2013, I remember doing a reconstruction of how the bill came together by interviewing seven of the Gang of Eight.
What was very interesting to me was that they all had different strengths. It was almost like Ocean's 11 — or Ocean's 8. What did each of you bring to this? You, Sinema and Lankford?
I'm a progressive, and I'm somebody that cares about preserving immigration and asylum. I also haven't spent my career working in and around immigration.
It wasn't the issue that you're defined by?
So, I brought general progressive values to the table, but I also brought a bit of a fresh perspective. I'm also somebody that thinks my party has been wrong for being so sort of defensive about immigration. I think we need to recognize this is a moment that the American public is demanding that we pass some new, tough laws. And that is not representative of everybody in my party. Sen. Lankford is somebody who has spent a long time studying the border. He's been down there dozens of times, he knows the statutes inside and out —
He demonstrated that from the beginning?
Yeah. James is somebody who has expressed a lot of interest in this topic for a while and has learned it well. He brought that expertise to the table.
Sinema, obviously her skill is producing compromise. She sits in that room as someone trying to bring James and me together. James represents the conservative right. I represent the progressive left. And Sinema is trying to figure out a way to get the two of us on the same page. She's got her own independent thoughts about what needs to happen on the border, but she is also somebody that is very squarely focused on getting a result.
She's the one that's got an interesting electoral issue this year. Did that ever come up in the negotiations? Were you guys sensitive to that?
Well, she talks about Arizona all the time, so everything that she brings to the table is educated by the experience of immigration in Arizona. But I'm very personally close with Kyrsten, and not more than once during the last four months did I talk to her about her election.
What was your relationship with progressives like? I heard from a lot of activists who were concerned that because you didn't have a history on immigration that, “Oh, boy, Murphy's going to sell us out here.”
I can understand why people looked at me with skepticism because I haven't worked my entire career on the issue of immigration. And I'm also a white guy from Connecticut.
Yes. Race became an issue. People were complaining that there was no prominent Latino or Latina involved in the negotiations. Did that bother you?
I understand where people are coming from, that this is an issue that directly impacts and affects Latinos, both in the United States and those that are coming from Central and South America. And I understand the need that people have to make sure that voice is represented.
All I can tell you is that throughout the process, I was keeping in touch with my Latino constituency in Connecticut. I was talking to [Sen.] Alex Padilla, who's a close friend of mine, sometimes every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. So I know the perspective that I'm lacking inside that room. And I try to compensate for that by being closely in touch with Latino leaders that I respect.
But I generally understand why some people would wonder why I was in that room. I do think that I've gained a recent reputation for being able to work with Republicans and being able to hammer out big, tough compromises. I have a relationship with Lankford, a pre-existing friendship and working relationship, and once he was the appointed Republican, I think it made sense for the two of us with Sinema to be the team to get this done.
One question on the timeline here. I think everyone watching this was actually pretty surprised by how quickly things turned sour. Was there a moment during those negotiations and especially towards the end where you realized, “Oh shit, history is going to repeat itself again. It doesn't matter how far we go on this issue, how far we move to the right. Republicans want an issue, not a solution.”
I am probably way too hopelessly optimistic and naive for this business, but it's probably why I'm a good negotiator, because I just refuse to give up. That moment for me was Sunday night around 10 p.m.
You were still hopeful?
When we released the text, I thought that was a tremendous achievement that no one thought was possible. I think a lot of people thought that bill was never going to emerge.
But on Sunday night, it was pretty extraordinary to watch the MAGA movement and the anti-immigration right burn that bill down to the ground in the hopes that it wouldn't be alive by sunrise.
The fury from the right that........