The Biden White House pressured Twitter to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story three weeks before a presidential election.
Now a Democrat senator wants to make that kind of censorship permanent law.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy just told a national podcast audience exactly what Democrats mean when they say they want to "fix" the internet.
Senator Chris Murphy made his case on the I've Had It podcast while promoting his book Crisis of the Common Good.
He told hosts that Americans are suffering from loneliness and powerlessness, and that government needs to build rules to fix both – rules that make people feel more powerful and more connected.
"Regulating the internet so that you're spending less time alone on Instagram should be an important government project," Murphy said.
He made the electoral motive explicit.
"If people are feeling more powerful and less lonely, then they are going to be less likely to fall for a bulls— demagogue like Donald Trump," he said.
That is a sitting U.S. senator, on tape, saying the federal government should regulate what Americans see online so they vote differently.
The White House did not mince words in response.
"Chris Murphy is a lightweight, anti-American disgrace who lies for a living," White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Fox News Digital.
77 Million Voters Are Not a Problem to Be Solved
Murphy's entire framework rests on a premise that 77 million Trump voters need to be fixed.
In his telling, those Americans did not weigh open borders, record inflation, and rising crime and vote accordingly.
They were just lonely people who spent too much time on Instagram and got manipulated.
Murphy is not interested in understanding why more than a quarter of the country twice chose Trump over the Democrat alternative.
He wants to change what those Americans are allowed to see until they reach a different conclusion.
What Murphy is describing is not a public health project – it is an election management scheme.
Murphy insists his ideas are not partisan – that connection and empowerment cut across political lines.
But his own summary blows up that claim.
"Unless you fix what's broken with the culture," Murphy said, "you're going to be stuck with people like Trump for a long time."
Murphy's target is not a loneliness crisis. It is the voters who chose Trump.
Democrats Already Built a Censorship Machine – the Twitter Files Proved It
Democrats already built this machine once, and Elon Musk tore the lid off it in 2022 when he bought Twitter and published the internal files.
The Twitter Files showed FBI agents flagging conservative accounts for removal while White House officials pressured platforms to act – with Democrat operatives cycling freely between government posts and Big Tech content moderation teams.
The House Judiciary Committee's Weaponization Subcommittee reviewed tens of thousands of internal emails and concluded that the Biden White House changed Big Tech's content moderation policies to serve its own political agenda.
The platforms deleted satire and buried the Hunter Biden laptop story, shadow-banning conservatives until the whole apparatus became invisible enough to deny.
Now Murphy wants to do it again, but legally, with a formal government mandate attached.
Section 230 – the law that currently shields platforms from liability for user content – is already in Democrats' crosshairs.
Strip that protection and replace it with federal oversight, and Washington controls what gets removed and what stays up.
Whoever holds power next controls the tool.
Every Democrat who cheered the Biden censorship regime and now wants to institutionalize it knows exactly what Murphy is building.
Murphy's Plan Runs Straight Into the First Amendment
The First Amendment does not have a loneliness exception.
Government cannot direct what speech platforms carry in order to produce preferred electoral outcomes.
That is the definition of a prior restraint on political speech, and courts have thrown out every attempt to do it by statute since Reno v. ACLU in 1997.
Murphy offered no specific legislation, no regulatory mechanism, and no legal framework.
What he offered was a statement of intent: Democrats believe Trump's voters are a malfunction, and they will use every tool available to correct the output.
They got away with it once, and Murphy is counting on Americans not to remember.
The 77 million people Murphy thinks are broken should remember exactly what he said – and exactly why he said it.
Sources:
- Lindsay Kornick, "Chris Murphy calls for 'regulating the internet' so people won't fall for a 'demagogue like Donald Trump,'" Fox News, September 21, 2026.
- "Sen. Chris Murphy Wants to Regulate the Internet So Americans Don't 'Fall For' Another Trump," Townhall, September 22, 2026.
- "Weaponization Committee Exposes the Biden White House Censorship Regime in New Report," House Judiciary Committee Republicans, September 27, 2024.
- "The Cover Up: Big Tech, the Swamp, and Mainstream Media Coordinated to Censor Americans' Free Speech," House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, October 2023.
