Shadowing Practice: Sen. Murphy vs. Trump's corruption | Today, Explained - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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So here's the thing about Donald Trump's blatant, sometimes open corruption.
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If it's happening out in front of us, if it's largely been accepted by the public and seemingly the courts, is it even fair to call it corruption at all?
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That was my first question to Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy at a recent forum about corporate monopolies
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and corruption held by the American Economic Liberties Project in Washington, D .C.
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That's this week on Today Explained Saturday.
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Let's dig in.
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Thank you to the American Economic Liberties Project.
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Obviously, thank you to Senator Murphy for being here.
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And thank you to you all, too, for being interested in this topic.
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You know, when I think about corruption, particularly this bending the knee kind of framework, one thing that immediately jumps to mind for me is that,
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you know, when we think about the Trump administration, this isn't happening in backroom deals.
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This isn't happening in some secret basement a lot of these things are happening right in front of us.
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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?
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Well, that's a good question to start with.
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I guess I haven't really thought about it.
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I think corruption is still a word that resonates.
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I think people understand that corruption is a bad thing
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that it is something that we have broadly tried to expunge from our politics.
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And I do think that people generally understand corruption,
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though, to be something that happens quietly behind closed doors.
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Corruption is something you try to hide. And
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so I do think the most important piece of this moment
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in some ways is trying to understand what to do with the brazen public way that Trump is engaging in corruption,
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because simply by the very fact that he does it every day, that he does it openly,
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publicly, and proudly, it is causing some people to question, wait, wait, is this corruption?
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Because this isn't what I learned corruption is.
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There's no shame in this.
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And generally, there's supposed to be shame in corruption.
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But I don't necessarily know it means you change the word.
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And I guess as I'm literally just thinking out loud, if you change the word, you're kind of ceding to his terms, right?
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He's trying to change the very notion of corruption by doing it publicly.
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And so if you call it something different, then I think you're probably playing his game.
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You know, your corporate pardons report documents over 160 companies that have had federal enforcement actions dropped.
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But as we know, corporate influence has been true in Washington for a long time.
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You know, how do you think this is a qualitatively different moment than the usual pay -to -play
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or the usual lobbying influence that we've seen?
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Yeah, it's just so nakedly transactional right now.
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And it's just a really easy story to explain,
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you know, whether it's the donations that Boeing made that got them out of their trouble, whether it's the Toyota donations,
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whether it's the money that Zelle pumped into the administration.
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You know, it now doesn't happen through slowly putting money into the political system, slowly building up connections.
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It's literally just a million dollars for a corporate pardon.
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And that now happens, you know, within weeks or months.
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It's put Eric Trump on your board.
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The lawsuit or the enforcement action is dropped, right?
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It's just so nakedly quick and transactional that it's hard to hide.
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And again, it's that same problem.
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It's so public, it's so transactional that to some people, it doesn't look like they're, you know, bread and butter of corruption.
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But the story is just a lot easier to tell.
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It doesn't make it any less forgivable.
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The slow sort of building of influence in Democratic and Republican administrations is still unacceptable.
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But in some ways, the way they're doing it makes it easy for us to explain.
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What do you think is the impact of
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that kind of flagrant degradation of the process or just doing it out in the open?
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I mean, we've established kind of how different this moment feels in its in -your -face nature of it.
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Does that have a democracy -corroding impact?
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Like, what do you think is the consequence of its being in our face in this way?
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Yeah, so I—listen, Trump takes over at a moment when a lot of Americans were seriously contemplating giving up on democracy.
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And while that conversation may not be sort of on the surface of kitchen table talks in our country, it's right below the surface.
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People just don't think that their voice matters.
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any longer they for a long time have believed
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that the elites get whatever they want out of the system
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and the way in which trump has chosen to do this
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so transparently i think is an effort to permanently shatter people's faith in the entire enterprise
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so as to transition the country to a kleptocratic oligarchy and
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so yes i think this is a particularly vulnerable moment for the country in
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which a lot of Americans are unfortunately ready to just say, fuck it.
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Like, this thing doesn't work any longer.
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It now clearly doesn't work because we have an elected president who is just stealing from us.
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I'm just going to walk away from the whole enterprise.
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And when people give up, right, when people just retreat from public action, that's the moment that the oligarchs seize power and never give it up.
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So, yes, the reason that I have been sort of raising the unacceptability of the corruption,
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right, raising for people the fact that it is abnormal, that we should not normalize it,
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is because I think Trump's core case here is in – and if he is successful in normalizing it,
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it may be the death blow to people's faith in the entire democratic enterprise.
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As you mentioned, kind of explicit examples, Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor at Market Couchy.
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He's joined the board of another prediction market.
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Your Bets Off Act targets prediction markets banning bets on government actions, war, assassination.
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But as we know, this kind of insider trading isn't a bug of these kind of things.
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It's a feature.
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And these companies have kind of built it into the cost.
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Has the train left the station on these prediction markets?
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Is there a way to rein them in as your Bets Off Act tries to do?
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No, it definitely hasn't left the station.
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And you're right.
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I mean, these prediction markets are designed to make insiders and powerful people filthy rich.
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So what the Bets Off Act essentially does is say anytime, first of all, you can't bet on government action, right?
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Just period, stop, right?
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Nobody should be able to make money off of war or famine.
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You can't bet on government action.
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But second, you also can't bet on an event where there is one person who controls and knows the outcome.
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Because in almost every case where those bets are offered, you know, bets as benign as what a celebrity is going to say on the Jimmy Fallon show that night.
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The bet is controlled by a powerful person,
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meaning the powerful person and anyone who surrounds the powerful person knows the outcome of the bet,
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can place wagers that they know will make money on the bet it's rigged
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and only and always rigged in favor of the rich
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and the powerful
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so the prediction market game is really all about bets where powerful people know the outcome
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and can profit and that's why eric trump
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and donald trump are you know deeply integrated into these industries
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because they and their friends are the ones
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that profit they are the ones very likely
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that placed those bets on friday before the iran war started
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that the war was going to start 24 hours later
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and they see an infinite amount of enrichment
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that comes from these these markets now here's where your question is an interesting one right
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and i literally got it two or three times yesterday is it too late like
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and of course it's not too late
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but people i feel kind of baked into the culture baked in this yeah
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but it but it doesn't but
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but people people are beginning to smell how corrupt these markets
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are like a lot of people do know what happened with those iraq war bets
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and here's where i just think the democratic party um perpetually suffers from lack of imagination right
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so we should say that if you elect us we are going to take all these corrupt prediction markets down.
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Now, whether we can or not, right, that's a question of the politics of the moment.
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But we should promise that we are going to eliminate corrupt prediction markets the minute you elect us, just like we should be saying to the broader case of the work that this organization does.
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If Democrats are elected, we are going to break up all these big, corrupt, monopolistic media companies that have been constructed under Donald Trump's regime.
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We should just say like, okay, Paramount, enjoy this well you have it because as soon as we get elected,
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we're going to break you into pieces, right?
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And people would respond to that boldness of vision when it comes to antitrust.
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And I think they would respond to that boldness of vision
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when it comes to the most corrupt new ways that people in and around the president are profiting, like the prediction markets.
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People will definitely respond.
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I guess my question is, there is some form of a conflation between the overcorruption we were talking about in the beginning and something like corporate consolidation,
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or do you see those as kind of a one in the same when we're talking about these monopolistic media companies?
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Yeah, it's all part of the same story.
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The only way that Paramount Skydance gets to be as big and as corrupt and as manipulative as it is,
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is because of corruption, because of an underlying deal that is done between the Ellison family and the Trump family.
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I mean, Hegseth literally says it on stage, right?
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I can't wait until my friends, the Ellisons, get control of CNN because then you'll stop telling the truth about the war.
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The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.
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Like, that's literally what he says on stage is that I don't like the criticism that we're getting,
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but it's cool because pretty soon my buddies will be in charge of the storytelling.
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So, no, it's all part of one story.
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And again, back to how you message this.
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Yes, I understand that it's a hard thing to break up that corrupt consolidation.
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Yes, I understand that by the time we get control of things here, the prediction markets will be even more mature.
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But by stating what you are going to do, you can actually bend reality, right?
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By being bold in your claims about what you will do with power,
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people start signing up for the project.
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Not just people out in the public, but members of Congress, right, start signing up for the project the bolder it is.
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So, yes, those are hard things to unwind, but they become less hard if you state very clearly at the outset about what your intentions are.
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To this point, you signed a memo with Senators Schiff, Warren, and Smith that argues that Democrats can't run on affordability without naming the corporations and the billionaires driving the crisis.
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I guess I wanted to ask about that with the context of what the Democratic Party's history has been in mind.
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You know, there's close relationships between the Democratic Party and some of these, let's say, Silicon Valley money or tech money.
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There's close relationships between Democrats and folks in big law.
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Are those relationships an impediment for Democrats doing that clear naming and shaming that you're talking about?
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Absolutely.
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I mean, like, absolutely.
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So what did we do last year?
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We passed a bill essentially greenlighting the massive expansion of the crypto industry and corruption inside the crypto industry with Democratic votes.
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The Stablecoin Act, the Genius Act, which has like a modicum of consumer protections,
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literally has in it a carve out from ethics rules for
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the president of the United States to be able to issue his own cryptocurrency.
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Like, that's incredible that the Democratic Party signed off on a crypto regulatory bill that greenlights Donald Trump's corruption scheme.
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There's no explanation for why we did
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that other than the integration of parts of our party and very powerful people in the crypto industry.
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Or maybe more charitably, our fear
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that the crypto industry is going to spend a ton of money against Democrats in the next election
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if we don't do what they want.
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But that's, you know, just a slightly more acceptable form of corruption, right?
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Just the I'm going to do what you want because I fear
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that there's going to be political consequences in the next election.
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So, yeah, the memo that Adam and Elizabeth and Tina and I sent says very simply,
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you're not going to win over the public unless you tell a story about corporate
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and billionaire corruption because people are smarter than a lot of us think they are.
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People understand that the corruption of the economy, right, their stagnation in their economic lives is derivative,
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is downstream of the corruption of our politics.
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Like, they get that.
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And if you don't tell that full story, the influence that the corporations and the billionaires have in our politics and how that has limited your economic opportunities,
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your message is just not believable.
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If you just, like, start with, let's trim the sales of the way that the pharmaceutical companies price drugs,
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it's like you're not telling me the whole story.
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Like, the real story is that we got into this mess with prescription drug prices that are so high.
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because our politics is corrupt.
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And the prescription drug companies have way too much control over Washington.
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So don't just tell me your plan for lowering prescription drug costs.
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Tell me your plan for knocking out the prescription drug industry's power in Washington.
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Like, I need to know both things.
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I mean, that really rings true from, you know, even my some experience on the road.
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I mean, oftentimes leading up to 2024,
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things like corporate capture or corporate consolidation or things I heard even more Trump supporters or RFK supporters sometimes talking about, and not necessarily coming from Democrats.
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What took so long to name this, to name something that feels like it's been in the populist air for a while?
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I mean, listen, I think inside the Democratic Party,
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there is an enormous hangover from Barack Obama.
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And I mean this – I'm going to do this in a complementary way to Obama, right?
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So Obama lifted our party, right, into power.
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And we did really important things with him.
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He did not use this frame for the world,
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right, a frame of corporate capture and an agenda of release from that capture.
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He was more technocratic, right?
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More market -based in his reforms.
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And we got away with that as a Democratic Party because of the unique talent of Barack Obama as a messenger.
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He was just somebody
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that we were never going to reproduce in our party as someone who just made folks feel better about government
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because he was in charge.
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And what it exposed, though,
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in his absence is a lack of a narrative that the Democratic Party tells about who has power,
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who doesn't have power, and how we're going to fix that. And
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so I do think our reliance on Barack Obama as kind
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of a savior for the party's messaging exposed us as not having a coherent underlying message
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when we didn't have a uniquely talented political figure at the top.
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Makes sense.
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I'm going to end on a question about people's own kind of emotions in this moment.
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I think the scope of Trump's corruption can feel disempowering.
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The administration seems immune to public opinion at many times, undeterred by legal and kind of institutional restraints.
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And it feels like, you know, we're kind of strapped in the beginning of a roller coaster that, you know, you don't know where it ends. Is that true?
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Like, do we have our constraints coming?
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Is moderation coming or is it just a matter of like, you know, fingers crossed?
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Yeah, I think it's, again, I think it's only coming if the Democratic Party, as we head into this election,
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the 2020 election, makes the unrigging of our democracy a tentpole for our party's messaging, right?
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If it's up to me, our party's message is unrigging the democracy, unrigging the economy, kind of period stop, right?
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And if you're like signed up for those two projects
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and we got to fill out what that means to unrig the democracy, it probably means that we're running on a constitutional amendment to get dark money
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and billionaire money and anonymous money completely out of politics.
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But like people are up for that.
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And I guess I'll end here because you are right that people are feeling super discouraged and super powerless right now. And
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so we as a party have to sort of start our
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analysis of what this moment needs through a diagnosis of the way that people are feeling.
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And people are feeling like they have no agency, like they have no control.
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So both our economic and political messaging has to be about returning control to human beings and explaining to them, as we've talked about a few times,
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that it goes both ways the corruption of our economy is downstream of the corruption of our democracy,
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but also, and I'll try to say this the right way to end, the corruption of our democracy is also downstream of the corruption of our economy in this way.
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When our economy is an economy that only cares about profit and efficiency, it's a virtuous economy.
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It's an economy where morality doesn't matter where the health of workers
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or the health of communities is just irrelevant to economic decision
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making it becomes this just winner take all economy in which the folks who do well just
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grab it all and we've normalized that because we've normalized the idea
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that that that sort of shared prosperity is not a value any longer in our economy okay
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when that becomes normalized inside our economy, it becomes normalized inside our politics too.
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Our politics becomes winner take all politics.
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So if a CEO is justified in making a thousand times more than the average worker and using his power as CEO.
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to abuse workers in order to enrich himself, and that's okay, then why is it wrong for a president of the United
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States to use his power to abuse the people under his authority
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and enrich himself maximally in the same way that a CEO would?
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So when we normalize zero virtue in our economy, it's really easy to say, well, maybe virtue shouldn't matter in our politics either.
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And so that's why the project is so big, right?
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There's cross currents between what has happened in our economy affecting our politics, what's happened in our politics affecting our economy,
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which is why your willingness to confront this question of corruption in government
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and in our economy and recognizing how they flow back and forth, I just think is so critical and why I was So I'm glad to help kick this off today.
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Well, Senator Murphy, thank you for coming.
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Appreciate it.
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Thank you.
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That was Senator Chris Murphy.
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Every Saturday, we'll be in your video and audio feeds with a new and interesting interview in politics or culture.
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And of course, you can catch Today Explained every weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.
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I'm Estet Herndon, and thank you for joining us.
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And I hope you tune in next week for the first episode of our new podcast, America Actually.
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Now, what's the show about?
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It's about who we are beyond Donald Trump.
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He's been defining our politics for more than a decade, but we're building to a presidential election that should theoretically replace him.
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So who do we want to be?
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I'm going to start asking those questions, and I hope you join me.
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Subscribe so you don't miss a thing at youtube .com slash fox.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Sen. Murphy vs. Trump's corruption”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: corruption, bet, economy, politics. This video has 255 sentences and 3456 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:50. The speaker talks at a natural 158 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| corruption noun | /kəˈɹʌpʃən/ | The act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle; the state of being corrupted or debased; loss of purity or integrity. |
| prediction noun | /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/ | A statement of what will happen in the future. |
| corrupt adjective | /kəˈɹʌpt/ | Willing to act dishonestly for personal gain; accepting bribes. |
| crypto noun | /ˈkɹɪptoʊ/ | A secret supporter or follower. |
| prescription noun | /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/ | A written order from an authorized medical practitioner for provision of a medicine or other treatment, such as (ophthalmology) the specific lenses needed for… |
| billionaire noun | /ˌbɪl.jəˈnɛɚ/ | Somebody whose wealth is at least one billion (10⁹) currency units (usually understood to exclude holders of hyperinflated currencies). |
| capture verb | /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/ | To take control of; to seize by force or stratagem. |
| enterprise noun | /ˈɛntəˌpɹaɪz/ | A company, business, organization, or other purposeful endeavor. |
| outcome noun | /ˈaʊtkʌm/ | That which is produced or occurs as a result of an event or process. |
| consolidation noun | /kənˌsɑləˈdeɪʃən/ | The act or process of consolidating, making firm, or uniting; the state of being consolidated. |
| downstream adjective | /ˌdaʊnˈstɹiːm/ | Toward the lower part of a stream; with the current (of a river, brook, or other flow of fluid). |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| enforcement noun | /ɪnˈfoɹsm(ə)nt/ | The act of enforcing; compulsion. |
| essentially adverb | /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/ | In essence: by nature. |
| publicly adverb | /ˈpʌb.lɪ.kli/ | In public, openly, in an open and public manner. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| break up verb | To break or separate into pieces. | |
| build up verb | To erect; to construct. | |
| fill out verb | /fɪl ˈaʊt/ | To complete a form or questionnaire with requested information. |
| get away with verb | To get away, or escape, taking (something) with one. | |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). | |
| knock out verb | To strike or bump (someone or something) out. | |
| lead up to verb | To set in motion; to act as a causal or preparatory event or sequence of events. | |
| take over verb | To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I guess I haven't really thought about it.
- Because this isn't what I learned corruption is.
- You can't bet on government action.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | it's been · haven't really thought · have had |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | been accepted · is dropped · are designed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person who controls · anyone who surrounds · Act, which has |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 62 contractions and reduced forms, such as doesn't, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: ethics /ˈɛθ.ɪks/, filthy /ˈfɪlθi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: corruption /kəˈɹʌpʃən/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/, prescription /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, consolidation /kənˌsɑləˈdeɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: consolidation /kənˌsɑləˈdeɪʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like corruption, prediction, corrupt.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.