← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
10/31/25: Epstein Israeli Agent Confirmed?, Nick Fuentes GOP Takeover, Graham Platner TELLS ALL
02:07:59
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A
This is an iHeart podcast.
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B
I turned off news altogether.
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A
I hate to say it, but I.
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B
Don'T trust much of anything.
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C
It's the rage bait.
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A
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
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B
We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.
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D
NBC News brings you clear reporting.
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E
Let's meet at the Facts.
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D
Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. The US Electric grid is approaching a breaking point. As demand soars from data centers and home energy use. Our aging infrastructure can't keep up. And the Department of Energy warns that without action, blackouts could surge 100 fold by 2030. The good news? One solution is already here. Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready. Powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather. Learn more@probane.com.
- [01:08]
E
If you're waiting for your AI to turn into ROI and wondering how long you have to wait, maybe you need to do more than wait. Any business can use AI. IBM helps you use AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.
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B
Hey, guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
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A
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
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B
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
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A
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
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B
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.
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A
Hey, everybody. Happy Friday and Happy Halloween. How's everybody doing? Everybody feeling spooky out there?
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B
Yes.
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F
Love Halloween.
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B
I can't tell. Sarcastic?
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F
No, I do. I love.
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A
That's. That was genuine. That was Ryan being genuine. I actually love Halloween too. I think it's just such a, like, weird, quirky holiday. And it's also, I don't know, it's almost like the most like community focused holiday. Like everybody getting out and acting like they actually know each other and aren't just like strangers on their phones. So I support.
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F
And no stress. Just, just having a good time.
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B
No stress. Just candy.
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F
Yeah.
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A
Yeah. Do you guys. Are you guys dressing up?
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F
I'm not dressing up. My kids, of course, are. We'll have people over at our place and then all the kids will go trick or treating from here. It's actually a great way to have a party because people are at your house for like 35 minutes.
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A
Yeah. And then they just go. Friends of ours always have us and others over every year too. And we just like eat some pizza and then go trick or treating. Yeah. We're being so. Me and the other girls in the family, my oldest daughter, my youngest daughter being demon hunters.
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C
So that's awesome.
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A
Yeah. So that'll be fun.
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C
What character are you going to be? Is there a specific character?
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A
I'm Rumi, Aida is Mira, and Ella is Zoe. These were all assigned by Ida, who was the one who was driving the screen.
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B
That's awesome.
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D
Adorable.
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A
But I do, I do like the movie and I like the songs, so. And Kyle is dressing up as like, he got like this hideous 70s looking mullet wig and then these like 70s glasses and the ugliest pants I've ever seen in my entire life. They're like brown, like mustard brown, crushed velvet. And they're tight. He's wearing those like a 70s. It's, it's hilarious. Yeah.
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B
I thought you were gonna say he was going as Lyle.
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E
Didn't happen.
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F
Yeah, we won't pick.
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A
That's a good idea too. I'm not sure that many people would get the reference, but certainly our audience would appreciate.
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C
Well, you know, it's spooky season, but the news keeps rolling in. Why don't we start with something a little spooky here with Trump. Trump is urging Republicans to kill the filibuster. We've got this here in Politico. This is him gesturing before departing Halloween. He did also do some Halloween trick or treating himself. He did another candy placement. If you remember, he placed candy on top of a minion a few years ago.
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A
Oh yeah, that was a great mom.
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C
He, he recreated that again with a different costume this time. I don't have the video for that, but what do we make of this?
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A
You can't really, you can't really beat the minion moment. That was, that was iconic. So here's what Trump said. He said because of the fact that the Democrats have gone stone cold crazy, he puts in quotes. The choice is clear. Initiate the nuclear option, get rid of the filibuster and make America great again. So, you know, obviously guys, shutdown has been going on for, I don't know, almost a month at this point. Is that correct? And then tomor everybody loses food stamp benefits. So 42, 43 million Americans, most of these are families with Kids are set to lose food, access to food, benefits from the government. This is apparently an affirmative choice being made by the Republicans because there was emergency funding available that they had previously indicated they're going to tap. They decided not to because they wanted to put pressure on the Democrats because they're basically like relying on Democrats to be the adults in the room and being like, you know what, we don't actually want 40 million people to go hungry in November as we head into the holiday season. So now it's, you know, looking like Trump has just decided to hell with it, let's just nuke the filibuster and then we don't need to negotiate with Democrats on, at all on this or anything else until at least until there's an election. And, you know, dynamics potentially change, although very unlikely, that, you know, difficult landscape for Democrats to take back the Senate.
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B
Yeah, I look at this as similar to what Donald Trump did when he was suddenly like, oh, maybe I will let Ukraine do long range missiles inside Russia. You know, like when he seemed to flip flop on Zelensky. I don't think that Republicans are serious about nuking the filibuster, but I also don't know with Donald Trump the extent to which, and this is why he does these things, the extent to which he's, he's serious or the extent to which he's like doing art of the deal stuff. And so my suspicion is that this is art of the deal because if you talk to Republican senators, they're still utterly horrified by the idea of nuke the filibuster. And not all of them, you know.
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F
Explain what, explain to people why that is like, because I think people, Democrats from the outside be like, well, of course Republicans just want to get rid of the filibuster, but that's not exactly true. So, like, why is that?
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B
So there's this idea among. And that's why what Trump did is sort of funny because one of the big talking points behind the scenes on the right about how the left is ready to just like completely go scorched earth on our institutions is that they want to nuke the filibuster. And here you have Donald Trump coming out and taking away anyone's like, moral high ground for saying that it's Dems who flirt with the idea of nuking the filibuster. Because when you get rid of the filibuster, if you're progressive. Well, yeah, this is a much more like system. This system is much, looks much more like direct democracy. You could actually do Things on the other hand, if you're a constitutionalist like Mike Lee, you say, well, the Senate is supposed to serve as the. What is the line? The line of a. The saucer. Yeah, the cooling saucer on the teacup. And it's supposed to sort of temper direct democracy. And so nuking the filibuster then is, is unwise. So some Republicans in recent years, like, I remember having this conversation in an interview with ted Cruz, like 2018, him being like, listen, I'm pretty sure the Democrats are going to do it anyway at this point, so maybe we should just do it and take away whatever short term gains they get from being the ones to nuke it. So there's some, there's been some movement on that question, but they definitely can't say it's just the Dems who want to nuke the filibuster anymore.
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F
And so at this point, we're. Now, tomorrow is open enrollment for most, if not all of the ACA exchanges. And the thing that the Democrats have been fighting for is to save ACA subsidies from going away. That won't, that won't happen. That people are, you know, people now have to go in and buy their insurance for the next year. And so I guess the question now becomes like, at what point into the open enrollment do Democrats say, okay, the thing that we were fighting for hasn't happened yet. Republicans are saying that they're willing to negotiate around these subsidies if we open the government back up. So what, like, what's the rationale at that point, I guess, for not just opening it back up and entering into negotiations?
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A
So I asked Ro Khanna about this specifically. I know Ryan, you and Sagar had talked about, I don't remember who it was on Twitter floated that the idea from the Democrats was basically to push the shutdown to November 1, when open enrollment starts, and then basically be like, guys, we tried and now open enrollment is here and we failed. Republicans stood in the way. So I asked Roe about that, and first of all, he was sort of shocked that that was like an idea that was out there. His. He was like, wow. And I was like, okay, well, that tells me that this is not something you guys are discussing behind closed doors. And so I asked him, you know, at what point is it too late to extend the subsidies? And at least in his mind, it was never too late. Like all the way up until, you know, at least the end of the year, right? For the following year, because open enrollment begins, but, you know, it lasts throughout the, you know, throughout the year. And I think even into January. Right. And in his mind there was no like too late that was looming now. He saw this weekend as a critical moment both because of open enrollment and also because of the, obviously the, the food stamp cliff as well. Another thing that'll happen at the end of this month, it's not exactly like on a, a date certain is that there are some organizations within the government that are called working capital organizations that are funded through sort of like inter government sales, that have contracts, they've continued to work and they've continued to have funding. A lot of that will run out at the end of this month as well. So you'll have an additional round of people who are out of work if you really continue, you know, into November in any sort of significant way. So he was seeing this weekend as a, as a kind of like an important date, but not like a drop dead deadline in terms of the extension of the subsidies. That's just Ro Khanna. He's not in leadership. So who knows what other kind of discussions are going on or you know, what the reality is behind the scenes. But I thought it was interesting his perspective.
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F
You would, you would hope that 42 million people, you know, who've been holding their breath waiting for the next round of food stamps to come in at the beginning of the month and then not getting that, that that would be enough to put pressure on the system because those 42 million people have the probably the least amount of political power in our country. You know, that doesn't put the kind of pressure it should. People that do have political power in this country are ones that travel all the time. And so my suspicion is that airlines completely falling apart and flight cancellations cascading are the thing that will drive this. If you remember, Was it the 2019 shutdown, Emily, when Sarah Nelson, the flight attendant union head came out and was like, all right, enough of this. If you don't have a deal by Friday, we're going on strike, we're shutting the airports down. And they came up, they came up with a deal. They're like, okay, fine, because like the senators, members of Congress and people who donate to senators and members of Congress, they are in and out of those airports constantly. And it's not just a safety issue which is key to people who want their planes to take off and land safely, but it's also the, the like night nightmare, hellish travel scenarios that develop. You know, Newark Airport was it yesterday was closed all day because of not enough flight attendants showing up. Newark Airport pretty important for you know, international and national travel. So I would think that heading into Thanksgiving, the biggest travel time of the year, something. Something's got to give at some point, or else it's a complete, you know, catastrophic meltdown situation. Yeah, well, grabs most Thanksgiving travel situations.
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A
True. The other thing is that, you know, the polls have been pretty clear that the public blames Republicans more. And so politically, I think Democrats feel like they're on pretty strong ground. You know, the polls are even more overwhelming in terms of the public wants the ACA subsidies to be extended and, you know, thinks that that is an important thing to fight for. So, you know, to me, it was interesting. The, the Trump Phil and the filibuster gambit was interesting, both because I think it's possible that they do it. You know, I mean, all the idea of, oh, we're a constitutional party or so committed to that. Like, it just seems so quaint at this point, like that.
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B
Well, Trump definitely doesn't care about that.
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A
Trump doesn't get. But apparently neither do they because they certainly haven't protected their, like, constitutional rights and, you know, powers as either in the House or the Senate. So they've just been completely shuffled to the side, and none of them have really raised a peep, with a few minor exceptions, have really raised a peep about any of that. So, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if they do actually go in that direction. But let's even say that it's just sort of a negotiating tactic, which I also think is fully possible. The fact that he's reaching for that tells me that he is actually feeling some pressure to bring this thing to a close. And the idea from Republicans going in was that they had all these ways that they were going to extract pain from the Democrats. You know, first they thought, like, all the federal government layoffs, that this is going to really be painful for Democrats. But I don't think it really was just because there have already been so many federal government layoffs. They're like, you're already doing this shit. So this is not really any thing totally different than what we've seen throughout this administration. And there's so much pressure coming from the Democratic base to show that they are fighting and able to stand up in some significant way that I think it's really changed some of the dynamics here. And. And they've. The Republicans, in a sense, miscalculated. I also did as well, by the way, miscalculated the. The strength of the hand that they would be ultimately playing here. And so, you know, you've got the, now they're applying the, the pressure, hoping the Democrats care. And I think they do to a certain extent about people losing their food stamp funding and then the threat of like, well, we'll just take any power away so there will never be these negotiations in the future. Is, is the latest gamut. But like I said to me that they are worried about some of these things. You know, you're starting to get a place, get to a place where people are noticing the effects, you know, the air travel, noticing those effects. Food stamps is going to be just a massive story. People very upset. You're going to see the lines at the food banks. We've already been seeing some. But you're going to see across the entire country massive lineups at these food banks. And ultimately it's Republicans who are in charge of the House, the Senate and the presidency. So it's no surprise that that's where people are. Most people are placing the blame.
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C
And also flagging something that Sager flagged yesterday on Twitter, the health insurance premiums. He shared this the US is a country where a solopreneur father of four has to pay 44k a year for healthcare with a 12k deductible while elderly retirees get it for free. So we've got these prices here for people just listening, these are silver plans for this family. They're 3,600amonth, 3,800amonth or 3,779amonth.
- [16:09]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's a disaster. And in that way, you know, I think one thing the shutdown has certainly, certainly shown is healthcare was not in the political conversation prior to this moment and now it really is. And it's a combination of Democrats forcing it to be part of the political conversation and also just the reality of what these prices are looking like. But you know, when you have figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene who have to come out and say the system is utterly insane, just I think it proves the point that you don't just have to accept the like news landscape as it exists. You can actually force a conversation on an issue where your opponent is on the back foot. And that is of, by the way, great importance to the American people.
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B
Marjorie Taylor Green, always worth noting, like the top small dollar fundraiser in Republican politics, but in the in Congress basically, period among Republicans. So she's also announced that she's going on to view next week, on Tuesday, on election Day.
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A
I can't wait for that.
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B
But it's interesting because I mean if the fight does become over you know, food stamp funding lapses and Dems coming to the table on the health care question for noncitizens. That's a, I think that's, that's my prediction of what happens is that Dems say to some extent, like, yes, of course, like put in the safeguards to make sure that citizens are the ones who are accessing the exchanges. That's my prediction of where Dems come from. And then they get the government back, like reopened and they can go out and say this was their win, that they were able to like, negotiate on that they get something with the premiums and they're like, we got Republicans to cave on this thing with premiums. I don't know if it happens potentially Wednesday. That's a possibility as well, that after the election is over, it's, it's. And you're. Nothing is moving. It's possible that people come to the table. I forget which Dem telegraphed on a, an interview just over the last couple of days. It was super moderate. I forget which one it was that they were like, ready to reopen conversations. So there are all kinds of things that could happen. But the food stamp battle, cheerpoint Crystal will be absolutely everywhere. Josh Hawley already has an op ed in the New York Times pushing back against his party and saying it's ridiculous to let food stamps lapse. So that could explode. And similar to the healthcare conversation, like what Marjorie Taylor Greene has sent to the healthcare conversation, that could explode in the food stamp conversation as well.
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A
Yeah, for sure. I just, I think the visuals of, you know, thousands and thousands of Americans lined up at food banks as you head into the holiday season is going to be a very, very challenging one. Some things I've seen floated are like, you know, Democrats might be willing to accept some sort of, you know, commitment to negotiations plus a vote on the floor. Something of that nature could be in the offing. And clearly Trump trying to up the pressure to, to force Democrats to, to cave here as he himself is starting to feel the heat from his own government being shut down. Now over a month.
- [19:17]
B
I turned off news altogether.
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A
I hate to say it, but I.
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B
Don'T trust much of anything.
- [19:25]
C
It's the rage bait.
- [19:27]
A
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
- [19:31]
B
We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little.
- [19:37]
D
NBC News brings you clear reporting.
- [19:40]
E
Let's meet at the facts.
- [19:41]
D
Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. The US Electric grid is approaching a breaking point. As demand soars from data centers and home energy use, our aging infrastructure can't keep up. And the Department of Energy warns that without action, blackouts could surge 100 fold by 2030. The good news? One solution is already here. Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready. Powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather. Learn more@probane.com Military life isn't predictable, but.
- [20:19]
C
Earning your Master's degree can be. With American Military University's 40 + flexible online master's programs, you can stay mission ready while you get market ready. Learn anywhere, anytime with an education built to keep pace, steady, reliable and always accessible. Plus, military service members, veterans and their families can save up to 45% on master's tuition with AMU special rates and grants. Learn more at AMU Apus Edu steady through every mission. Anything else before we move on? Should we hit the heritage or drop site next?
- [20:55]
B
Let's do drop site. That's a big story.
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A
Always love to highlight our our own reporting here and it is a huge story.
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B
Ryan's trending on Twitter Ryan's reporting is.
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C
Trending on Twitter going viral in all the right places. Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad how the Sex Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Back Channel to Russia amid Syrian Civil War. This was written by Ryan and Murtaza Hussein. Ryan, give us a little tldr what's going on here?
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F
Yeah, and this, this comes from Ehud Barak was using and for all we know he's still using this Gmail account that appears to have been hacked by Iran. It's not entirely clear who got it, but we, we pieced together decent amount of information that suggests that they're, they're probably the most likely suspect here. And so they've dumped Barack's entire inbox. Ehud Barak was, you know, former defense Minister of Israel, former Prime Minister of Israel, former head of of intelligence and extremely close to Jeffrey Epstein. And going through his emails, you find that Epstein really helped usher him through the world of the of global political elites in an in an absolutely stunning way. There's a moment in this piece. I'll first start with the Mossad part because this is a remarkable exchange between Barack and Epstein. So Epstein emails Barack Epstein helped Barack link up with Victor Vexelberg who is this Russian oligarch who's close with Putin, got him a million dollar advance and a million dollar quarterly retainer. We're talking serious money. Epstein was able to deliver to him here and he, and he so Barack of course is going to have to talk to Mossad about this arrangement that he's, that he's struck. And Epstein writes to him, do not go to number one too quickly. I understand more now. So we should speak. Number one is a euphemism that's. That's like Israeli speak for the. The chief of. Of Mossad. Because back in the old days.
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E
You.
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F
Know, we like, the identity of the Mossad chief was kept secret, and everybody just called him number one. And that's like, well established. It's just what you call the head Assad. It's number one. So Epstein, do not go to number one too quickly. I understand more now. So we should speak. So Epstein is basically directing the. His former head of military, former head of intelligence at Israel, how to negotiate and how to navigate his situation with the chief of. Of Mossad. So. So crazy like that. So anybody who's like, yeah, did Epstein have Mossad connections? Epstein had massage connections.
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A
Case closed.
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F
More than Ehud Barack. Like, he's more plugged in than A.O.
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E
Barack.
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A
That's.
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B
Wow.
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F
So what this story is about in particular is during the Syrian civil war, Israel, you know, wanted to, you know, you know, they had, they had a detente with Assad, but they also wanted Assad out. And they. Because they wanted to cut off, you know, basically Iran's ability to move weapons, you know, into Hezbollah. Assad, even though they had a detente with them, is not, not friendly. But they also didn't want to be seen as driving this scenario there. So that what they wanted to do is set up a back channel to Putin, who is a big, you know, backer of the Syrian government at the time, and say, look, you know, if. And this is, this was the scheme that Epstein and Bra came up with. Look, look, let's figure out a way that you can retain your geopolitical strategic aims in Syria while also getting Assad out. Like, that's. Let's. Let's figure this out. And in trying to set up that backchannel, you have one email exchange where Epstein tells Barack Putin wants me to come to this conference and meet with him. I told him no. I said, if you want to meet with me, you need to set aside real time and real privacy so we can have an actual conversation. Not doing this, like meeting you at the side of a conference thing. That's Epstein talking to Putin. He then successfully arranges a meeting. You could say, oh, he's. This is just smoke that he's blowing. No, he successfully then arranges a meeting with. With Putin and Barack and, and they set up. Set it up ahead of time by writing this article together about, about what their agenda is there and what makes Epstein such a remarkable historical figure is 2012. Putin has this, you know, has this election that is, that is contested. There's protests in the street. Putin believes, you know, quite reasonably actually, that some of these protests originate from US backed NGOs, you know, that are being pushed by Hillary Clinton, who was then Secretary of State. And that, that is like, you know, Putin, Clinton's had had a hostile relationship before that really elevates their, the, the hostility which then, you know, plays a role in our politics for the next, you know, decade and, and, and maybe more. And so Putin at this time is consolidating power in an authoritarian way, but wants to keep open capital flows. And the person, it turns out, who was perfect to help him navigate this is Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein is very close with the Clintons and also not just knows the technical details of how to keep these capital flows moving, but can help with the politics of it. So there's nobody in the world really who would be able to balance, you know, both Putin and the, and the clintons and the U.S. and at. And, and while he's doing it, is really working on behalf of Israeli, you know, national security interests. So it's a, it's. This is one of. We will have a lot, we'll have a bunch more stories coming on this, but this is, this is one of my favorite because it really peels back the way that, you know, power was working, particularly in the 2000 and tens. I wonder if we'll ever get another era like this because these guys were using email in a completely like wide open way in a way that they don't now. Like right now these, these conversations are happening on signal with disappearing messages for the most part. Thankfully, we still have a lot of morons in this world that will be revealing to us their text message exchanges.
- [27:31]
A
Right?
- [27:32]
F
Exchanges and adding Jeffrey Goldberg to exchanges. So like we're, we're gonna continue to get insight, but this.
- [27:38]
A
Thank God for the idiots.
- [27:40]
F
Thank God for the idiots. But this level and this amount of detail now all this all cuts off when the Panama Papers drop, incidentally, Panama Papers drop in all their emails.
- [27:51]
A
They're like, oh, hold on, can't be doing this. Gotta get a little smarter.
- [27:55]
F
We got another way to.
- [27:57]
A
That's interesting.
- [27:58]
B
That is.
- [27:59]
E
Yeah.
- [28:00]
F
Anyway, this is a story that's worth reading. I think you'll start it and be like, I don't read long articles anymore. I don't have the attendance. No Actually, I just finished that article, guys.
- [28:11]
B
The reason that people should go to dropsite and read the story, I mean, there are many reasons, but one of, I think the most important reasons is that when you look at these emails, they are speaking in the way that just confirms some of the most paranoid conspiracy theorists fever dreams, which is to say, say like actually as puppet masters. Right. Like, it is so wild to hear them talking back and forth about just how they're going to. With the flick of a pen or the click of the enter button on your email. Change Middle Eastern politics, change geopolitics. And that's exactly. They're speaking with the arrogance of people who can do that with phone calls and emails. And it's just wild to see it in print, like in the email form.
- [28:57]
F
And we used this quote in a previous article, but. And I wanted to reuse it in this one because it involved Syria and still relevant. But also it just explains everything. Epstein, to Emily's point, Epstein writes to Barack with civil unrest exploding in Ukraine, Syria, Somalia, and he spelled Somalia wrong. Libya. And the desperation of those in power. Isn't this perfect for you? It's like, you know, and then Barack says, you're right in a way, but not simple to transform it into a cash flow, a subject for Saturday.
- [29:31]
A
Unreal.
- [29:33]
F
And so.
- [29:34]
A
Yeah, well, I was just going to say too. I mean, there's also the, you know, the meta story about why it's you guys that are doing this reporting and writing all of these, these things out as well.
- [29:45]
F
Yeah, these, these emails, we, we had some early access through this like, nonprofit that was. That got these from whatever hacker group probably they run ins, released them. But now, you know, basically any media outlet could get access to these emails. You just have to, you just have to basically reach out and say, hey, I'm a, I'm a news outlet. Can we have access to these emails? And they say, yes, as long as you're not using them for, you know, commercial purposes or intel purposes. Like, go ahead. Here's the keys to like, look through the emails. This is available to anybody. You're right. And nobody. Like my editor Nausica, who worked on this story. She was flying to New York for this event drop site event we had. And she's like, I don't want to edit the plane. I don't want to edit the story on the plane because I'm nervous. Like, what if there's somebody else steal the story? I was like, nobody's stealing this story.
- [30:40]
A
They could be right there for them out there. In the open. And they're not doing it.
- [30:44]
F
Yeah, right. It's not that they don't have the ability and the information. They don't have the willingness to do the story. They don't want to do the story. There's so many.
- [30:53]
A
What do you attribute that to? Is it the origin of the emails coming from Iranian hacker? Is it that they just don't. They don't want to dig into these power relationships. Is Israel.
- [31:03]
F
Exactly.
- [31:03]
A
They wouldn't mind the Russia aspect of it. But Epstein.
- [31:06]
B
And I mean, when was the last.
- [31:08]
F
Time that you saw any headline anywhere in the world that used the word Mossad? Even, like, we all know this organization exists. It's very powerful.
- [31:17]
A
I mean, Barry Weiss did interview someone.
- [31:19]
F
That's true. She was learning the first time. Yeah, you just so funny. You just don't talk about these things. Like, these are. This is, this is how the grownups run the world back there.
- [31:31]
A
And, and we just pretend like. Like it's different. It's so fascinating.
- [31:37]
F
Yeah, it's an incredible story.
- [31:38]
B
I mean, just to see them speaking so flippantly about how to make money and change geopolitics is completely insane. And Ryan, I think the big takeaway that you made earlier, the point that you made earlier, that's a huge takeaway, is like anyone who said Epstein wasn't acting. I mean, this is. Because this is one of the big questions about how Epstein made his money and influence is that he was back channeling negotiations between different countries. And this actually confirms that. I mean, that's an argument that you hear a lot from people who are deep in the weeds in Epstein world. But it's, it's plain as day here in the report. Like, that's what's happening.
- [32:18]
F
And. Yeah, and the thing, exactly. The thing we're learning from a lot of these emails and documents that we've been reviewing recently is that Epstein was. There's this, there's this idea that Epstein was just basically just on the dole and doing nothing but running a blackmail operation. And I, and I don't think that that, that, that that holds up. Epstein was legitimately making connections between these spy agencies, between these, you know, top political figures around the world. And when you get into the tax advice he was giving, he was actually. And maybe it was. It's because he's not a trained tax guy, like, pushing the envelope on a lot of tax strategies that legitimately was saving these oligarchs and these. And these billionaires and plutocrats in the United States, you know, tens and Hundreds of millions of dollars. Like he, he, like he genuinely was doing the work for these people that was making him valuable. Now is he doing, you know, blackmail and videoing all the gross stuff that, that people are doing on the side with him? Yeah, probably. And that's part of it. And, and even if he's not, everybody knows that he is, you know, a disgusting creature.
- [33:36]
A
Well, they assume, they assume that he is, whether he is or not. And 2009, they know he's already been.
- [33:41]
F
To jail, like by this point, tied.
- [33:44]
A
In with Israeli intelligence.
- [33:46]
F
Yeah.
- [33:47]
A
Are they gonna like, you know, kick him out of the bank or disassociate with him or, you know, cross him in another. Any other way when he's number one, valuable and making them money and number two, they just assume any bad thing, whether in the context of, you know, his island or just in their life in general, they assume he's got access to all of that. So it, it does help explain how he maintains all of these relationships and all of this power even after he is a literally like convicted registered sex offender.
- [34:19]
F
Yep. And yeah. And who else is going to get a meeting with Bill Clinton and then with Vladimir Putin or, you know, like it's a, it's a, it's a rare. He had. Rare. He's like one of the most connected people in the world at that time.
- [34:36]
C
Yeah. I wanted to read this one little section here. It says in the same email thread, Epstein offered Barack guidance on how to ratchet the pressure on the US to strike Iran. I would use the opportunity to compare it with Iran. The solutions become more complex with time, not less. I think many people would like to your views on Egypt, Syria, etc, Russia's role. Question mark. I think you might point out the gassing of women and children is an expressionist from the 20th century. Women are no longer equivalent to children. Civilians versus combatants only. Yeah, it's. It's surprising because, you know, it's like I, I think most people just think of him as like mainly doing the, the island stuff, but now he's a foreign policy expert.
- [35:18]
F
Yeah. And it fits in this. This was the height of the Davos man era where every, everybody was an expert on everything.
- [35:26]
A
Yeah.
- [35:26]
F
And so if you spoke with authority, you didn't even have to spell the countries. Right. And it was, that was good enough.
- [35:33]
B
Yeah. Well, that's another crazy part.
- [35:35]
A
If you're a billionaire.
- [35:37]
B
Yeah. You're just watching them like totally boomer text, you know what I mean? Like in these emails about changing geopolitics, where they're all lowercase with the most bizarre punctuation. Sorry, Boomers. But like just the craziest back then.
- [35:53]
F
And maybe today still was a power move, like I noticed. And Crystal, you may remember this too. Like really powerful people. Ariana, for instance, my old boss, like, they would. I think they would leave in all the typos and grammatical errors and this display of their own authority and power that like, I don't have to.
- [36:15]
A
I don't have to care about. Yeah, well, that was.
- [36:18]
F
You get my point. You do the work to like interpret what I'm saying because you're going to. Because I am a person of deep authority and power.
- [36:27]
C
It's Ally.
- [36:28]
A
I think my son still, still operates on that model.
- [36:31]
E
Actually.
- [36:32]
A
No, to be honest with you, it's a zoomer. A zoomer thing. I learned this from Ella, actually, that capitalize, like proper capitalization of your sentence is considered like an old person thing to do now.
- [36:44]
E
Yeah.
- [36:44]
C
Or a list.
- [36:45]
A
Zoomers turn off the auto capitalize so that their texts are all lowercase. That's. Yeah, that's a young person thing.
- [36:56]
F
They have that in common with Jeffrey Epstein, so good for them.
- [37:00]
A
Yeah, there you go. There you go. So, I mean, I think, I mean, in a way, Ryan, you have put on the public record now, like one of the big mysteries, like you said. Does Jeffrey Epstein. Is he connected to Mossad? You know, is he working with them? Okay, case closed. We know that at least no longer. No longer conspiracy that is now recorded, known, reported out.
- [37:26]
F
Now what's the. What's the relationship? How deep. What else did they do? That remains to be discovered.
- [37:30]
A
But how does he get himself into that position? All of that is still, you know, still up in the air. But it's a sort of important piece of the puzzle that you've. That you've been able to fill in here. And I just also do think it's extraordinary that the lack of. Lack of interest from the. The national media. The opposite. The anti interest from the national media in digging into these emails because they. They could have had the scoop themselves, you know?
- [37:52]
B
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, there's this like maxim in journalism. If it bleeds, it leads. And everyone tends to blame journalists for over sensationalizing stories and only covering bad stories, sad stories, awful stories, but the fact that they're not interested, I mean, right, the c. Reporting on the prison and the cameras, we've seen some of that. But if it bleeds, it leads. It's clearly not true because this is the most sensational Epstein material that you could report out. It's right there in emails. And it reminds me of the time that one reporter was, I forget what the exact scoop was, but Trump just came out and said it. And the reporter was like, I've spent months investigating this. And he just, he just said it. He just came out and said it like it's, they're saying it. They're just putting it plain here and it's like juicy, like intriguing, crazy stuff and they're not touching it.
- [38:42]
F
Yeah, well, I'm telling them now. We have a bunch more stories to do. So if you want to scoop us.
- [38:47]
A
Like you still can, the opportunity is still available.
- [38:51]
F
Yeah.
- [38:51]
A
All right. We should get to this heritage thing. But we didn't even mention at the top of the show, Graham Platter is joining us in a little bit. So, and we, we asked our premium subscribers to submit some questions for him as well so people can hear from him what they're interested in. But before we get to this, Emily, you want set up this, this heritage situation? I, I get the, the absolutely not.
- [39:15]
B
I turned off news altogether.
- [39:18]
A
I hate to say it, but I.
- [39:19]
B
Don'T trust much of anything.
- [39:22]
C
It's the rage bait.
- [39:25]
A
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
- [39:29]
B
We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little bit.
- [39:34]
D
NBC News brings you clear reporting.
- [39:37]
E
Let's meet at the facts.
- [39:39]
D
Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. The US Electric grid is approaching a breaking point. As demand soars from data centers and home energy use. Our aging infrastructure can't keep up. And the Department of Energy warns that without action, blackouts could surge 100 fold by 2030. The good news, one solution is already here. Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready. Powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather. Learn more@probane.com Military life isn't predictable, but.
- [40:16]
C
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- [40:46]
A
But I think I need, I need some of the like granular, like the texture, the color from you of how this is.
- [40:53]
F
You can tell me where I get it wrong.
- [40:54]
A
Oh yeah, you're right. I like that.
- [40:56]
B
Yeah, that'll be more.
- [40:57]
F
Here's my. Is my outside. Here's my outside. Look in. I mean, depending on where you want to start. But for the sake of time, we'll start with Tucker interviewing Nick Fuentes the other day. You know, we, we know Tucker can badger a guest. Ted Cruz learned that firsthand. The Fuentes interview was, you know, more of a kid glove situation. Now I noticed he, like, you know, Tucker has like, made fun of him for being gay in the past. And I noticed that Tucker spent like enormous amount of time kind of forcing him to like, talk about women, which I felt like Tucker's like, kind of passive aggressive way of messing with Fuentes the whole time, because, you know, what women did. They talk about all of the women.
- [41:41]
B
At one point, Fuentes is like. Tucker was like, okay, so what's the problem? And Fuentes was like, well, it's the women.
- [41:46]
F
Yeah, so like, it's that part. It's just the whole, the whole thing's ridiculous. But so that created this, you know, Fuentes is like an on the record anti Semite. Like, Right. He doesn't. He says like, basically that he's anti Semitic.
- [42:00]
A
Like, that he like, yeah, he's one. He's like, the Jews control, and it's not Israel, it's the Jews. Like, he, he is a. I mean, he, he talks about being, quote, unquote, radicalized on race, even in the.
- [42:12]
F
He'll talk about question. Like, this is not a guy who's leaving, who's trying to like, he says.
- [42:18]
A
Women should be burned at the stake more. No, he is an. He is an overt, like avowed identity politics racist.
- [42:25]
E
Just.
- [42:25]
A
That is his ideology.
- [42:27]
F
And so there's been this effort to kind of cut Tucker off. And this happened at TP usa. There was, you know, Charlie Kirk was under a lot of pressure to not let Tucker speak at his, at his event. And then Heritage came under pressure to distance itself from Tucker Carlson. And so the head of Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, put out this startling video response to this, which. And we can talk about this a lot, but there's a bunch in here that just taking the traditional, like, genuine, I think, reasonable definition of anti Semitism, not the like, oh, you're criticizing Israel. That's anti Semitic. Like, there are. While we go through this, we can just like count the dog whistles in it. Like, there's. They're like. And you can, and you can argue about whether or not people are too sensitive to whether or not these are anti Semitic dog whistles or not, but they're known. And, and he. And he deployed them anyway. Globalism. Venom. Like venomous. What do you call them? Basically, snakes or whatever. Anyway, Griffin, if you want to play this, you, you'll, it's, you'll, you'll, you'll hear them, like, bing all the way through.
- [43:44]
G
I'll have more to say on this in the coming days. But today I want to be clear about one thing. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti Semitic. And of course, anti Semitism should be condemned. My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interest of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence and technology. But when it doesn't, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington. The Heritage foundation didn't become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won't start doing that now. We don't take direction from comments on X, though we are grateful for the robust free speech debate. We also don't take direction from members or donors, though we are inherently grateful for their support and we're adding more every day. This is the robust debate we invite with our colleagues, our movement friends, our members, and the American public. We will always defend truth, we will always defend America, and we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else's agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail. Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right. I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says. But canceling him is not the answer either. When we disagree with a person's thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas and debate. And we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left. As my friend Vice President Vance said last night, what I am not okay with is any country coming before the interest of American citizens. And it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interest of our own country first. That's where our allegiance lies, and that's where it will stay.
- [46:19]
F
And so the beginning of that is just normal. Like, look, you can criticize Israel and not be anti Semitic and we're not.
- [46:27]
A
Going to be Christians, specifically Christians, according to him. The rest of us, I don't know so much. Right, right.
- [46:33]
F
Launches with the Christian thing, but yet globalist, venomous. The reference to donors. Like if, if he was writing this speech, trying to cater to more tender feelings about anti Semitism, that he wouldn't have used those terms like those are, those are very deliberate and provocative terms to use in a video that defends not only their relationship with Tucker Carlson.
- [47:04]
A
But the value engagement with Fuentes.
- [47:11]
F
Last thing I'll say, and I'm talking too much here. I made this point on Twitter.
- [47:17]
E
During.
- [47:17]
F
The Obama years, Netanyahu basically went to war with Obama over the Iran nuclear deal. And that was kind of the beginning of the end of Israel's relationship with the Democratic Party, which was already strained because some Democrats would offer some rhetoric criticizing some human rights abuses related to the occupation. And they end. That was. They did not want that. The Republicans were much more willing to just be fine with whatever you're doing to the Palestinians. And so they actively pursued this. They had a bipartisan approach. AIPAC and Israel had a bipartisan approach. They switched it to a one party approach, still tight with Schumer, Jeffries, et cetera, the leadership, but went to war with the base of the Democratic Party and abandoned the party more broadly and lined up with a party roughly the same time that Charlottesville is happening. It's clear that there's becoming this like strong Fuentes element within this coalition. And so the, the long term play of aligning with these kind of Christian nationalists was to me always going to blow up in their face. You then have two years of this genocide where the younger Republicans are watching it unfold on their phones and the combination of that means they've basically lost everybody. Now at this point.
- [48:51]
B
I feel like we're usually on the same page about this stuff. I don't see the globalism and venomous and vile comments and about donors, I mean, I assume he addressed donors in that video because he was.
- [49:03]
F
I think you can argue about whether those are. Whether that's anti Semitic, but what's clear is that people read that as anti Semitic.
- [49:13]
B
Yeah, I mean, whatever, whatever was going.
- [49:16]
F
On behind and to use it deliberately is then a provocative.
- [49:19]
A
It was not written to cater to people who were genuinely concerned about anti Semitism. It's written to cater to gripers who are the. Who apparently everybody in the party is just afraid of at this point, I don't know. I mean, judging by J.D. vance, judging by Tucker, judging by the statement, like, I mean, that's. I. Richard Hanani has been arguing, like, Nick Fuentes and the Gory birds are the future of the Republican Party in a lot of ways. And I've. I've been saying this. I think they're already the present of the Republican Party as it exists right now.
- [49:49]
B
Kevin Roberts is the man who greenlit Project Esther, and there are a lot of internal divisions over the old neoconservative line at Heritage that is categorically pro Israel and pro Likud, pro Netanyahu at every turn. Unless they're also, like, going pro Smotrich. Right? Like, that's. There's. There's. He has stood up to that. He said they're not taking money from defense contractors anymore. Now, I would have to go back and look and see how well that's held. But it has been explosive inside of Heritage. And so what to. To Ryan's point, it does sound like there was a deliberate writing of the script to basically be like, we are not catering to you guys over on whatever floor working over there on Project Esther who are blowing up, and maybe even, like, having people blow us up on social media for being affiliated with Tucker. Now, Tucker lost his job at Fox within, like, a day of giving a big speech at the Heritage foundation about how there was, like, a spiritual battle happening in American politics. And so Kevin Roberts is. I mean, there's a lot of, like, internal politics on this, but Kevin Roberts is seen as somebody who has aligned Heritage actually with, like, the grassroots MAGA universe as opposed to, like, the D.C. maga universe. And so at the same time, though, he's got this, like, contingent of neocons over there doing their Project Esther thing. And he's genuinely pro Israel, but he's also trying to, like. Like, I don't necessarily know that people are. I mean, I know some people are definitely afraid of the Gripers and of Laura Loomer, but I think they're also, like, if we sound like that. Seth Dylan, op ed, he wrote for the Free Press, which was super controversial on the right, saying, we must gatekeep. We must gatekeep. What we actually want to do to attract people to our side and to get them to trust us is to say, hell no. Do not gatekeep. Gatekeeping is the worst thing possible. It's like a virtue signal in one direction versus a virtue signal in the other direction. And, like, this video has exploded the right, like, The MAGA coalition, everyone is, like, debating this and freaking out over it. And it is, like, dividing people in personal, sensitive ways. And he actually might, like, lose his job. It's not impossible that the board, like, votes him out over all of this.
- [52:11]
A
Did you guys see this thing that was going around that was like, you know, I'm told there's lots of ideological diversity on the right. Here's the real ideological diversity in the right. And it's a screenshot of Laura Loomer fighting. Fighting with someone else. And she says to them, you're a Muslim. And they reply, you're a Jew. I mean, that's. That's kind of what's playing out here, right? You've got Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, who is also a, you know, a. A racist and white nationalist. Just ask Trump. He'll tell you if he's being candid, who is, you know, extremely powerful, but he is on the side of, like, the Muslims are the real baddies. We've got to, you know, we will back Israel. And in his view, Israel and the Jewish people are all, you know, this is all tied together. This is not reality, but this is his view. So we'll back Israel no matter what, and we'll do everything we can to, you know, like, his wife threatened Cenk Uygur with deportation on Piers Morgan show the other day. Right? That is. That's that view. And then the. The Fuentes view, like the purist version of the other side is. Is. No, it's actually really the Jews that are the biggest problem, and they're controlling everything. And that's why we're doing all this stuff for Israel and whatever. And so that is, like, this big divide that is ultimately playing out. And so obviously, D.C. you know, the Trump regime and their acolytes and a lot of the, you know, the sort of, like, entrenched interest or whatever are on the Stephen Miller side of that. And then you've got Fuentes, which embodies the. The other side of that. And so, you know, to go back to the Tucker thing, like, this was very interesting to me as well, because you're right, Tucker is very powerful media figure in his own right. Very talented media figure in his own right. Right. And flirts with the ideology that Nick Fuentes just says plain. So when it was Tucker talking to. Wasn't it, Candace, he trashes Fuentes. He says he's a loser. He's a gay loser in his mom's basement. But then when they're face to face, no, it's it's kid, let me hear what you have to say. I think you've been taken out of context. Don't you really mean this? Why don't you tell me more about yourself? So that's why I say even someone as powerful and as talented as Tucker Carlson, he's afraid of these guys. And you can see, you know, the JD Vance event this week, the TP USA event, you know, bunch of griper questions, you know, kids coming up and being like, well, what about your Hindu wife coming up and being like, well, what about why are you in Hawk to Israel? And. And you know, taking like a Christian nationalist perspective on why that's a problem. Like, they are. J.D. vance is the most online character you can imagine. They are all well aware that this is where the energy in the party is and they're afraid of it. They're afraid of crossing it. So on the question of gatekeeping, Emily, I mean, look, I know we all have like pushed, all of us in our own way have pushed back on cancel culture and like woke scolding and all this sort of stuff, but you're not going to draw the line at a literal Nazi. Like, is there really literally nothing that is out of bounds? Because apparently that is increasingly the position in the Republican Party and in the conservative movement. And that's why it's becoming, you know, increased, like incredibly radicalized in a way that I think a lot of maybe like Norby's outside don't realize how much of this energy there is at this point, I think.
- [55:27]
B
Jen. Well, so this is kind of just as we're talking about it, I'm thinking of this. So Fuentes is engaging in intense revisionist history, in his opinion.
- [55:37]
C
That's what I was going to say, too, Emily. Yeah.
- [55:39]
F
Oh my gosh, the revamp.
- [55:42]
B
Yeah, like, and I was.
- [55:43]
A
I don't hate. I don't hate anybody. Yeah, no, as a Christian, I don't hate anybody. It's like, dude and Tucker. And this is what was. Sorry to cut you off, Emily, but this is what was so lame about Tucker's approach. He said, oh, let me hear you in your own words. No, you need to take his words that he's actually sent and say, well, what about when you said this? What did that mean? Now that you're trying to present yourself and like, oh, launder yourself for a more mass audience. You can't just put all that stuff in the past unless you've had some sort of a genuine evolution of which there is no evidence whatsoever.
- [56:13]
B
I think with this, again, like, I was working in conservative campus politics at the time that Fuentes was ascendant. And the way he tells the story about how he ended up getting canceled is insane and untrue. And he's like, I was just questioning Israel. It's like, no, you fucking weren't. That's not actually what was happening. And so I think there are these, like, people who don't understand, again, having dealt with a lot of students, they get lost. I wrote a whole op ed for the Federalists this week about how to deal with this stuff, because it's so. It's like, genuinely dangerous, but it's also not the majority. And the more that you gatekeep, the more that you push people in that direction because they're like, hey, you're calling. Like, it doesn't matter. If. If we say one thing, we're gonna get called Nazis, we're gonna get called bigots. It doesn't matter.
- [56:59]
A
I don't agree. When. When Nick Fuentes was canceled, he was a much smaller presence. Like, it worked. When he was de platformed and you didn't have all of these people having, let's just sit down and chat conversations with everyone. He was much less of a force. Like, I think that, I do think cancellation of him and gatekeeping Nazis was like, it did work to a certain extent.
- [57:23]
B
I think you just have to do it in a way. This is what I wrote the pieces like, you have to do it in a way that doesn't alienate already alienated people. So not Fuentes, but the people who are listening to Fuentes and are being taken in by him saying that you are. You're being called bad. You didn't do anything, something wrong, but you're being called bad. You're just asking questions, but you're being called that. That's just what I'm saying is like, it. That does need to be. You do have to do that carefully because there's this sense of, like, victim mentality among people who have to some degrees been alienated their colleges, telling them this, that and the other thing. So I do think you have to be careful with it. That said, that said, it's just like the entire. You don't have to talk to Nick Fuentes. Like, you actually don't have to talk to Nick Fuentes, and you definitely don't have to then respond to people who are mad because someone else that you associate with talked to Nick Fuentes. Like, you can just not say anything about Nick Fuentes and ignore him and let him wither or don't even. You don't even have to ignore him. Just be like, this is insane. Like, we're. This is America. And Tucker went into this whole thing about blood guilt and about how that's anti American. But, yeah, I mean, I don't think people are wrong to say he was much tougher on Ted Cruz than he was on.
- [58:39]
A
Of course.
- [58:39]
B
Right. Obviously, there are a lot of. Especially because Fuentes and Charlie Kirk, that was the scene as like, the dark and the light on the right, that, like, dark Charlie was actually Fuentes and they were like bitter enemies. And Fuentes saw himself that way. And after what happened to Charlie Kirk, Fuentes has been trying to rehabilitate himself and to, like, do the soft launch of Fuentes 2.0, who's just anti Israel and just a Catholic, anti Israel guy. And so I think a lot of people don't know what to do with that, but you definitely don't have to treat it like it's credible.
- [59:10]
C
He also complains to, like, he's like, tell some of his fans you guys are doing, like, low IQ anti Semitism. Like, I'm trying to do a professional, tidied, tidy critique.
- [59:20]
F
Now, I think that's a key point because effectively policing boundaries of conversation requires, you know, basically stigmatizing, you know, odious things. And, you know, canceling people requires kind of moral credibility. And that's why the left was able to do it in the 2010s or so. They. They blew it. They overshot. They lost their moral credibility. That's why they can't kind of do it anymore. But Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL and the entire kind of Zionist movement by weaponizing antisemitism claims simply as a tool to, like, help out Netanyahu and help out Israel destroyed the moral credibility of the claim of anti Semitism. And so people like Fuentes then recognize that's absolutely true. They have completely destroyed this. They don't have the weapon anymore. So now if I just talk about Israel, I'm completely covered and can smuggle my genuine anti semi.
- [60:20]
A
That's exactly.
- [60:21]
B
That's exactly what I wrote with. Go ahead, Griffin.
- [60:24]
C
I was gonna say, outside of the Israel conversation, I do think that Nick Fuente's popularity is a product of conservative media having no Trump critiques. Like, like there is. And like, Fuentes has critiqued Trump not just on Israel, but a lot of stuff. And if you look, the majority of conservative media are kind of just ball lickers. Like, they, like, there's no critiques on terror of no critiques on anything. And Fuentes does have this, unless it's from the South. So if you are a young conservative who's not happy with something that's not even, not even Israel related, but happy with something Trump related, well, Nick Fuentes is filling that vacuum. So I actually think his popularity isn't just this Israel stuff, but the fact that he's willing to critique Trump on other things, something I see very few conservatives doing well.
- [61:10]
B
And the with young people are going down for Trump, he's like basically lost all of the gains. So I think that's absolutely true. I think it also explains Tucker and Candace's popularity right now. It's that like there is no criticism. Like Tucker flirts with it. He hasn't gone full in criticizing Trump. But yeah, I think that's true, Griffin.
- [61:25]
A
Well, and on the Israel point though too, like, listen, they, if, if you are giving people a frame of like the Jews are bad and then you're like, look at this genocide for two years. Look at our politicians like doing everything that they want. Look at the way that the ADL tries to control you and smear you. Look at the way all these donors back Israel. Like, like it's not hard to make that case, especially when to Ryan, to your point, you have Netanyahu and everybody else who's a Zionist insisting that every Jew be associated with this genocidal state. So Israel is doing half the work for the anti Semites by saying, yes, of course, you know, yes, Jews must be associated. They are associated. They support what we're doing. Like they are doing. They are creating half of the propaganda that is necessary for the Fuentes of the world to be able to sell their view. And you know, in a sense it reminds me a little bit of like Trump's rise, you know, or you could think of like a Sarah Palin's rise. Like the things that Fox News would flirt with or, you know, other conservative influencers would flirt with, the kind of dog whistles they'd flirt with. Trump would just come out and say, and people, of course, people who have been been sort of propagandized to think things in that direction. If you just come out and say there, yes, finally someone's actually saying it, not just doing the code words in the dog whistle. And so Fuentes is like the actually say it version of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. So, you know, since there is this like, you know, there's, there's always been this strain certainly on the right and going back a long time, but now with the, you know, with the. The horrors we see coming out of Israel and the insane way our politicians behave vis a vis Israel is just created a perfect, perfect storm for the rise of this. Of this movement. And that's why I say, like, this is. This is where the Republican Party is. The ideology is, you know, incredibly baked in, especially among young conservatives. And, you know, that's. That's why I think a lot of these characters, including the Heritage foundation people apparently, or this dude, at least. Least are afraid of the gripers and, you know, feel like they have to sort of, like, contort themselves to. To cater to them and to their hateful, like, racist worldview.
- [63:46]
B
Lastly, I will say on this is that. I think that is the. Like, these young men, I've talked to some of them, they grew up at the height of MeToo, at the height of cancel culture. They were going to schools where it was this constant drumbeat about here, by the way. So that. That's. That's. I just hope that there are lessons going forward about these broad categorizations of, for example, anti Semit, because it does allow people to come in and weaponize it, and it's very seductive in those circumstances.
- [64:17]
A
Hey, Graham.
- [64:18]
E
How are you?
- [64:20]
A
Good. How are you? This is a better question. What's going on?
- [64:26]
B
What's going on?
- [64:26]
E
It's been real mellow, really chill. Yeah, things have been very, very, very relaxing for me the past few weeks. I've been getting a lot of stress.
- [64:35]
A
Not stressful at all.
- [64:36]
E
And I've been eating very healthy.
- [64:39]
B
No.
- [64:42]
A
Glad to hear that. Very Maha of you.
- [64:44]
B
How much.
- [64:45]
F
How much time you got, by the way?
- [64:46]
E
I. Honestly, I. I about. Let me look at the schedule. I. I'm. I don't think I've got anything. I've got a. Yeah, I got essentially as long as we need, so.
- [64:57]
F
All right, well, there's a lot of fun. There's a lot of fun. A lot of good. A lot of probing questions that. That we got that we can get to. But to start to see crystal or anybody want to start with anything from yourself before we get to the audience?
- [65:12]
A
Yeah. Yeah, let's go. I mean, Graham, I do. I do just want to know, like, you've. You've been a candidate for a while, but this is really your first time with this level of, like, heated national media scrutiny. And so what has that. What has that been like for you?
- [65:29]
E
I keep having to point this out to people. I've only been a candidate for, like, 10 weeks. Like, this thing that's kind of crazy. We didn't launch until August 19th. And. And the whole conversation around the launch started at the beginning of August. So, I mean, like, you know, end of July, none of this was remotely on my plate. I was still legitimately just farming oysters in Sullivan and having a very normal existence. So. So, yeah, it's. I mean, it is. I feel like I inhabit two worlds where there's like, the whole politics, pundit class world, which I don't actually spend a lot of time in at all. But, you know, obviously I have to interact with it because people send me stuff and I see things. But then there's like, the actual world I inhabit, which is still eastern Maine where I live, and that's like a totally different world that remains to be very normal. And all the people that I know still know me. And we all, like, every. Everybody's incredibly supportive. And then as we've been going around the state doing all the town hall stuff, that continues to be like, people turn out in droves and they want to talk and they want to. They want to engage. And. Yeah, I mean, it's very. It's just funny that it's like the, The. The national media sphere, which I've always had a lot of cynicism and frankly, like. Like skepticism about the past, like, two weeks of my life. What? I'm just like, yeah, well, that's all made up. So.
- [67:04]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, I saw this. I saw this extraordinary report from Alex S. Wald, who I used to work at, with back in the day at msnbc, and he went from being a reporter from NBC to, I guess, starting a, like, main news outlet, Villager.
- [67:19]
E
And of course, because it's like, we all know a lot of the same people. Unsurprised, I'm sure.
- [67:26]
A
I'm sure you do. Yeah. So I saw him doing a report on msnbc and he's like, guys, this is the biggest disconnect I've ever seen between on the ground and national media coverage. And I have tried to find anyone who has, like, turned on Graham over the Reddit story, over the tattoo, and I have tried really hard, and I can't find anyone. And I'm curious if you have found. I mean, obviously you had a campaign personnel who departed who has turned on you, so we got that one, certainly publicly. But I wonder if, you know, you have had people in person tell you, you know, that they're upset or they're disappointed or they're switching support. What have you experienced with that regard?
- [68:03]
E
Only one person has texted me saying that the. And it was actually It's a very weird one, too, because essentially they completely misread a comment I made like eight years ago. And they've just been there. Like, I did. Couldn't get defensive about it. But, like, what they reference. I'm like, I didn't. I never even said what you thought I said. I mean, you clearly didn't even read anything. But that's okay. 1. And the rest has just been overwhelming amounts of support. I mean, like, I. My phone is a nightmare, but not because people are mad at me. My phone's a nightmare because I just. I have hundreds of missed messages of people just saying, stick with it. This is insane. You know, we're, we're. I mean, it's all like, yeah, overwhelming support. And so. But no, there was, but there was one person who was like, I can't abide it. And then I read why, and I was like, I never even said that, dude. But that's. I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not, I'm not. I don't take things very personally. So I, you know, it's fine. I'm not gonna get into it.
- [69:04]
A
What do you, what do you say to lefties who are worried about getting Fetterman?
- [69:08]
E
If I was me, looking at me, I would worry about the same thing. So, So I, I mean, I get it. We've been burned before. I think a couple things I would say is there were plenty of hints around Federman early on that maybe things weren't quite what they seemed. I, I don't. Despite what people are claiming are in my Reddit posts, I think my Reddit posts show a fairly like.
- [69:35]
F
What would you flag as those hints? I, I agree, I agree with you. And I think we elevated some of the. Probably, but not enough to our discredit. What do you, what do you think are some of those hints for Fetterman?
- [69:48]
E
I mean, yeah. Israel from the get go. You know, there was there. And. Yeah. And then also, like, there were. There was a lot of that kind of shying away even early on from. I would say more like progressive social change, like, trying to. And I don't shy away from that.
- [70:04]
B
That.
- [70:05]
E
I mean, I, I. It's not the core of what we're doing here. I think economic social justice or economic justice is the core of what needs to be done. But I'm also not willing to frankly back off wins that we've had towards justice and equality in this country. And I'm, I'm very blunt about that. So, yeah, I. And then there's also the element that. And I, I don't like. Federman was trying to get into politics for a long time. I still don't really want to be doing this in some ways. Like, I like, I'm doing this because I. Frank. I mean, because I have. I mean, I didn't go looking for it. I was approached with this idea. There is a moment in history right now where I think my kind of politics, the politics I want to see in politics is just ripe for developing and that's why I'm doing it. But I've not been. I mean, I mean, everybody likes pointing out I have no background in politics and I don't. I mean, I have a very political background, but not in electoral politics and campaigning. Because I. Yeah, my. The kind of politics I look at, I view as. It's very power focused and it's very organizing focused. And that's where I've put my energy for years at this point. But that's also what we're doing with this campaign. So.
- [71:28]
B
What do you say to that? Because I look back on Fetterman and it's like this is a guy who came from a very good background and was kind of doing what people would say was like the stolen working class valor. Like walking around as though he was just, you know, it is T shirts and his car hearts and the like. What do you say to people who are now bringing up like boarding school and all of that sort of thing? Like, what's your response? Because there's been some of that circulating.
- [71:53]
E
Yeah, look, my grandfather was a architect who worked with Sarah and a few others who. He's not like famous famous, but he designed Windows on the world. He designed the lobby at the St. Louis Arch, a few of these things and. But it's very funny too because growing up I knew my grandfather was an architect, but I didn't know what that meant. And there's also this kind of weird thing where my parents. I grew up in Eastern. Like I was. My mom has been. She likes. She doesn't have a college degree. She started a restaurant in the 1970s in Bar harbor and she's essentially been a serial entrepreneur in the food industry since. She still runs a restaurant to this day because she has no money and she can't retire. I mean, she's in her 70s and she's still running a restaurant. Like, it's my. My dad was a small town lawyer and I mean I grew up, I would say like solidly middle class but also in eastern Maine. So there's this weird mix Of. I mean, I got my first W2 job before I went to high school. I worked all through high school. I washed dishes, I did landscaping. I worked on the Appalachian Mountain Club's trail crew. I bagged groceries and pushed carts at Hannaford. I mean, I have always worked since. And I come from a family, only I don't know, like, that's just kind of what you do. And I know that they're trying to frame me as some, like, silver spoon rich kid, but I'm sorry, like, to anybody that, like, comes down here and asks around about how I grew up. And my, like, everybody in here knows it's nonsense. But I. My mom did want me to go to a good high school, and the local school, which I wanted to go to had lost its accreditation through the state in, like, 99. And so there were a number of families around here that. That sent their kids up to Bangor to go to John Abst. Which at the time was just kind of like, it was a private school. But it. I mean, it's. It's weird and it's not. It wasn't like, choked or something. And I. My mom did try to send me to Hotchkiss for half a semester in the beginning of my sophomore year. And I realized I was the only kid who'd ever worked. And I hated everybody. And I. So I got myself thrown out because I found out that if you don't go to class in prep school, they just send you home and maybe a.
- [74:24]
B
Formative experience for you.
- [74:26]
E
I mean, without exaggeration.
- [74:28]
B
Yeah.
- [74:29]
E
Deeply. I had never engaged with people with, like, that kind of wealth and lifestyle. Like, it was. It was. I mean, my middle school had, like. There were, like, 13 kids in my graduating class. You know, I grew up in a really tiny town.
- [74:44]
B
Town.
- [74:45]
E
And eastern Maine is full of a lot of poverty. So. Yeah.
- [74:48]
F
Now, does Maine. Does Maine have. I know Vermont has this thing, but does Maine have the thing where if your high school loses its state accreditation, then the local town subsidizes the private school tuition? In other words, did the. Did the town then subsidize?
- [75:04]
E
Because what the private. Because the. The year after the school got its accreditation back.
- [75:11]
F
Okay, so then you lose.
- [75:12]
E
But at that point, my mom was just like, well, you're in. You're like, you're going to this high school because it's where you've started. And, like, at that point, I liked going there. I mean, it was a good. It was. It was a good school. I got a great high school education. It was also cool. I'll just be. Is. It's in Bangor. I drove an hour from Sullivan and there were other kids that went to John Bapst who drove an hour from all the other directions. So I met kids from all over the state of Maine. And it was a, it was an interesting mix because you had like kids from like wealthy families, you know, car dealerships, that kind of thing. And then there were a lot of kids who just went there because it was a good school and they got in and they, you know, the kids that lived in mobile home parks. But it was a very Maine. Wealth in Maine is interesting. I think it actually gives us a different. It's actually why I think our politics is kind of the way it can be because there's this weird mix of ultra rich and ultra poor, but everybody still inhabits the same space and people know each other. It's very. It's weird. Yeah.
- [76:17]
A
Yeah. I mean, that is something I wondered about because, I mean, Maine is a very rural state predominantly, and it's a very white state. And yet it's still, you know, those are demographics that have fled the Democratic Party in most of the country. Probably like Maine and Vermont are some of the only exceptions to that. And yet obviously Democrats can and do still win in the state of Maine. So I was curious about what has kind of kept that, that politics together.
- [76:43]
E
I think part of it is the fact that Mainers are even a lot of conservative Mainers still kind of have a distrust of the system and the ultra wealthy. There is the residual kind of leftovers of what the Democratic Party used to be be. And my opinion should be again, there is, I mean, there. But there's also, I would say like a social progressivism even amongst, I mean, a lot of conservatives I know are also pro gay marriage and, and you know, like, they don't care about like their, their conservatism is. It's around guns. It's around weirdly at this point, like this kind of Trump style anti establishment element, which I actually think is why like a working class oriented message works really well. I mean, I mean, I know guys who will literally say things like, can't stand Bernie Sanders, he's a communist, but I still love him. He still cares. You're like, okay, these are guys like love Donald Trump. So they're like, there's still a fair amount of that up here. And then there's also just the fact that Southern Maine at this point is kind of a more I like standard, like liberal hub. And there's a lot of voters down there. So.
- [78:06]
B
Sorry, I just have a quick follow up.
- [78:08]
A
Go ahead, go ahead.
- [78:10]
B
Just on like the, the culture question with Crystal's question about how to keep this together. Like, I saw your Instagram post, but not, and this is a, the, as the populist left kind of reckons with what's happened over the last 10 years, the idea of, like, what to do on trans issues and immigration issues. I saw you posted on Instagram that you have no intention of throwing trans kids under the bus or, you know, immigrants under the bus, that sort of thing. But how do you talk to people who disagree with you completely? Like, Janet Mills is getting sued by the Trump administration over the idea of whether trans athletes, like, should be able to compete in women's sports. And that matters a lot to a lot of, like Trump curious Mainers whose trust you need to win over. Same thing with, like, Bernie came out and said Trump did secure the border when he was on Tim Dillon's show. So how are you navigating those conversations? Because that can't, it's not easy.
- [78:55]
E
But also, Graham, let me add a.
- [78:57]
F
Yeah, let me add a audience question to that because there's, there's one that really lines up with this. I'm not going to do the guy's handle because it's inappropriate for a family show. But he says what they say. Love your left populist economics, but can't stand your dogged refusal to moderate on unpopular culture war issues. How is protecting women's sports shelters and prisons from opportunistic males, quote, throwing trans people under the bus uncovered, Quote. How is ensuring we have a functioning border and limiting illegal immigration, quote, throwing immigrants under the bus, question mark? And no, I do not support Trump's policy either. So to kind of dovetails with what.
- [79:36]
E
Emily was asking on the immigration front. We need to have a total overhaul of immigration policy in this country. We the immigrate. The foundations of it were written in the 70s and we only did some overhauls in the 90s which frankly weren't even that intense. We are, we are living with an, with an immigration structure that was built for a world that we no longer inhabit. And we're going to continue running in like, and this is why, you know, people are like, oh, Obama did this and Biden did this and Trump did this. And like, it's like, and when you look at it in the aggregate, there aren't that big of changes because the law never changed. I think that we do need to have a, a legal pathway to citizenship for people who've been here for ages. I'm sorry. Rounding them up and throwing them out is not going to happen. It's not. And also it's, as we are seeing right now, the doing of it is pretty unconscionable. But that doesn't mean that we don't have a border, and that doesn't mean we don't have, like, an effective system. We need to have a system that is, I would say, reflective of the needs of our time and the realities that we live in. And it's going to require more judges, it's going to require more courts, it's going to require more energy and time to adjudicate, whether it's asylum cases, whether it's people with illegal applications. But we've never been able to do that because there's been no coherent overhaul of the underlying policies. And what I mean by not throwing immigrants under the bus. I'm not saying that we don't have to overhaul our immigration system. We absolutely do. I don't think the answer there is armed masked men kidnapping people off of work sites. And I'm going to say that I think that's a good idea. I'm never going to, like I will. I refuse. I mean, that's just authoritarianism. That's garbage. And it's also, in my opinion, unconstitutional. So there are. Yeah, we shouldn't be doing that on the, on the, the issue around, like, trans people. I, I do not believe, and I think this is true for a lot of Mainers as well, because we have a real libertarian streak up here, including us lefties. It is not the role of the federal government to come down and tell people, tell communities, tell school boards, tell municipalities how to handle what are frankly, often very complicated and nuanced discussions. We need to set standards when it comes to equality and decency and treating everybody like that. But I do not think it's the role of the United States Senate to go down into a municipality and. Or go to a local school board and tell them how they're supposed to figure out what can frankly, be deeply complicated discussions. That is not the role of the federal government. And I think that there are a lot of people who don't think that's the role of the federal government. Government. I also think, and I'll just be very upfront, that this continues to get pushed and pushed and pushed as this huge discussion. So we don't talk about universal health care. So we don't talk about the fact that we need to remove the cap on Social Security or that we need to raise taxes on frankly pharmaceutical companies and, and big agricultural corporations that have just been building an apparatus status that screws working people constantly for their own benefit. We don't talk about that stuff because we spend all this time talking about things that I think are nuanced discussions that should be left up to municipalities. Again, it doesn't mean that we, that the Fed. That doesn't mean the federal government comes down and says, hey, municipalities can just do whatever they want and we can treat people unequally. We, we need to set basic constitutional standards. But these are complicated discussions and I don't think it's the role of the U.S. senate to have them.
- [83:37]
F
We've got some on. We got a whole bunch on, you know, your service and then also your time with the Blackwater offshoot. What Constellus, I think it was called one of them. So from Halal flow says, like how does someone with your worldview you end up working for Blackwater? I think a lot of people on the left would find that helpful to hear. They're worried you might be another Federman. Federman is haunting.
- [84:04]
A
There's a lot of trauma. I feel it too.
- [84:06]
F
There's a lot of trauma, he says, but I don't think you are. There were already signs of who Fedman was when he was running and caving to dmfi. Pro Israel lobby.
- [84:15]
A
Yeah, not to mention that whole incident where he like tried to murder a random black guy in his neighborhood.
- [84:20]
C
Yeah, not mentioned.
- [84:23]
F
Maybe not mentioned a little more. He said you touched on this a bit during your last appearance on the show when you talked about your US military service. But we didn't go into much into this. The State Department security contractor. So who did you work for and why? And for people who are skeptical of American empire, why should that not be disqualified?
- [84:44]
E
So I never worked for Blackwater. This is a. I see this everywhere and I'm always like, oh for God's sake. The company that we all know is Blackwater, the one that Jeremy Scahl wrote about back in the late 2000s that that company, Eric Prince's little kind of warlord fantasy, that company essentially went away after 2012 and the. It was sold. I forget who bought it. There were, there were several iterations afterwards similar, like same facility down in North Carolina. And this is something that I think gets lost in all of this. The State Department has contracts for high threat security. They don't, they don't do it in house. And the contracts were written with very specific, specific requirements about what kind of training people have to Receive what kind of background they have to have. It's all around combat backgrounds, combat arms, special operations, infantry, that kind of thing. And so they've maintained those contracts. The. There were only a few companies for a long time who could meet any of those requirements. Triple Canopy, Blackwater back in the day, and then the Academy afterwards, Z Soc, There were a number of these outfits. And they. Because they were the ones who had the training facilities, they knew how to meet the contract requirements, performance. There's a story in all of this that I think often gets lost, which is that after Blackwater folded, hedge funds started buying all of it up. And because they saw. They essentially saw, like, if you. If you can have all the companies, then you can set your price. You're the only ones that have the ability to meet the contract requirements. By the time I got around to doing this, which is 2018, so I left the army in 2012, I frankly didn't know what to do with my life for the next six years. And at some. In 2017, I was back in Maine, utterly lost. Had left college, didn't know what I was doing, but I was fully qualified to go work for the State Department in Afghanistan. And I had a lot of friends who were. Who were on that contract. And so essentially, a friend of mine hit me up on Facebook, was like, hey, dude, what are you doing? I'm like, honestly, man, I have no idea. I'm lost. I can't figure out where I fit in this whole thing. And he was like, I mean, come on over and get on the ambos detail. And, you know, it's the. The money's okay. We don't do, like, we did nothing. I mean, this is by 2018.
- [87:29]
F
Yeah. You talk about what you actually did because people think of it as like, you went out there and you're shooting kids.
- [87:34]
E
For the record, all of that used to happen back in the. The late 2000s. Like, all of, like, all the horror stories from that are true. Sorry, all that's. It's. It is. But there is also a reason why the hammer came down, because that stuff happened by the time I get there. Essentially, it's this. Like, it's. It's a corporate money grab. And, like, they use guys like me with these backgrounds to meet the contract requirements so they could pay us bare minimum and walk away with the balance, which is, frankly, what everything in Afghanistan was. By 2018, whole things seemed to exist purely to move taxpayer money into the pockets of defense contractors. I was a driver on the ambassador's advanced security team. So I would go to a venue before the ambo would go and I drove the vehicle and guys on the team would make sure that everything was set up and he'd be able to walk in the door and meet the people. It was all in 2018. We were barely leaving the Green Zone. We didn't, I mean, look, I was there for six months. I mean, I probably went on like 12 or 13 moves. All I did was lift weights and play video games and I got huge. And I played a lot of Far Cry.
- [88:59]
C
Far Cry. Okay, nice. Which one?
- [89:02]
E
The Montana one? The one that was all. Yeah.
- [89:05]
C
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.
- [89:08]
E
It was deeply boring and it was, which was, I mean for me at that point was good because I was like, I wasn't, I was over looking for excitement. I was just trying to figure out what was the only skill I had. And so I, but you know, six months, I, I, I, I actually, honestly, three months into it, I was done. I was like, this is such a waste. And then there was this other element where there I am at the embassy, like watching the embassy staff and watching the ambassador and the generals and the NATO staff and the UN staff and no new ideas. I hadn't been in Afghanistan in seven years, and there I am seven years later at like, with access to the whole, all the brain trust. Nothing had changed. Same nonsense.
- [89:55]
A
Wow.
- [89:55]
E
And I was like, I'm. This one, we are going to lose this war and when it collapses, it's going to be a mess. Now, I don't want to say I was right, but, you know, and I don't, I didn't want to be there when that happened. But two, I was like, there's no purpose to this. Nobody has any idea, like it's in, the embassy is constantly under, under construction because there's always some new security threat that we have to pay somebody, some contractor comes in, in and has. The whole thing was just a scam. It's just one huge scam paid for by tax dollar money. And I wanted no part in it. So I quit. I was, I was only there for six months. I quit and I moved back to my hometown and I became an oyster farmer. And I'll be honest, until this stuff happened, I had no intent on ever looking back because I was just, I was done.
- [90:45]
A
You said someone approached you about running, happening. Who was it? Who was it that approached you?
- [90:50]
E
So the past couple years, I've done a lot of community organizing. I, I, after I left Afghanistan, I got real disillusioned and thought there was no value in anything. And that made me essentially sink all of my time and energy into living in a small town, which ironically then rebuilt.
- [91:08]
F
You've mentioned the community organizing. What. Can you be more specific? Like, what'd you do?
- [91:12]
E
Yeah, no, I. So I, I'm. I was an organizer with the local group called Acadia Action. And we focused on, I would say, like, building basic organizational capacity in the county I live in, getting people connected, getting people engaged with mutual aid projects, getting people engaged with identifying local races and finding candidates that people could run, but locally, all like local school board stuff, select board, that kind of thing. And really, honestly for me, I like, I ran, read no Shortcuts by Jane McAlevey A few years ago and then took organizing for power a couple times. Got really into this idea of on the ground power building. And I just didn't see it in my. I didn't see an exist.
- [91:57]
F
That's a labor training session, right?
- [91:59]
E
Yeah, it's a labor. A labor. A labor organizing training. But I just took that into my community because, you know, where I live, labor organizing is fairly hard because, you know, everybody has like seven jobs. Jobs. The. It was doing that that I got connected with a lot more people around the state in labor and in like, kind of statewide organizing around economic justice issues. And there was a. I mean, unbeknownst to me, there was a. There was a move to try to find a candidate to run who came from like a working background, who was a normal person living a normal life to run on kind of an economic populism. And in Maine is tiny and everybody knows each other. At some point somebody's like, you should go talk to Graham and Sullivan. And so they did. And my wife and I initially told them to get out of our house because, I mean, the, I mean, like, I cannot, like, the whole concept is insane to us. I mean, we, We've leapt. We, my wife and I have built a very idyllic but very small and simple life. We do not make a lot of money. We weren't trying to. We run a very small oyster farm that is focused on, frankly, like a high quality product. We do a lot of tours. I like the eco tourism side because I think bivalve aquaculture is one of the most fascinating things I've ever been involved in. And I want to tell everybody about it. And when I go to the US Senate, everyone's going to have to hear about mussels and oysters for the. The rest of test of time. You can't wait for that. But, but we, when this idea came to us. The thing that we realized is that as people who've dedicated a lot of time, past couple years to organizing in our community, that this is an organizing opportunity. That this is not about just winning a Senate seat. This is about actually injecting. I, I would say like the mechanics of on the ground power building around working class issues that I have been waiting for and wishing to God existed my entire life, essentially. And, and to. We didn't go looking for it. It literally showed up at her doorstep. But we recognize that if we don't take this, we had this moment of like, do we believe in what we believe?
- [94:27]
F
And, and to Crystal's question, who. Who was that that showed up?
- [94:31]
E
It was a combination of folks, some folks I knew from, from labor, people affiliated with the afl and then a. There was some input from people who came, who had worked on Dan Osborne's campaign, whole kind of project, try to do something similar. So.
- [94:52]
F
I heard from people on Dan Osborne's campaign who flagged your campaign for me. So that actually tracks. Yeah.
- [94:58]
A
Graham, I share your sense that the moment is right for your politics, which of course very much similar to my politics. But in like, obviously you had that same inkling. What is, what do you think has struck a nerve or hit a chord in Maine? Because I think it's pretty undeniable at this point. I mean, Here you are 10 weeks into a race, you're, according to a lot of polls up on the sitting governor of Maine, certainly competitive with the sitting governor of Maine. We all watch your town hall after your scandal broke. There's 700 people, there's overflow capacity. It's literally in a town of just over 2,000 people, like totally insane. So there's clearly something happening here. To what do you attribute that energy?
- [95:48]
E
The material conditions for regular people are getting worse. Like here in Maine, our hospital system is legitimately collapsing. It's not academic, it's not theoretical. Like it's going to happen a year from now. Hospitals are closing now. People cannot get access now elderly people are dying in their homes in undignified, horrific ways alone right now because there is no support for them. That's happening. It's happening. And people continue to be told by the kind of, I would say the establishment political system that things are still actually okay, all in all, that we don't need to try anything new, that really what we need to do is kind of double down on sort of more corporate establishment Democrats. But not even that. I mean, just kind of the whole thing is like everybody Sees what's happening. Everybody can, like, witness. Everybody's watching videos of masked federal agents kidnapping people. They're also watching their neighbor, like, die alone in their house. They're watching their ability to have access to healthcare happen. They're watching the Trump administration talk about starting a new war with Venezuela. They're watching the establishment Democrats continue to, like, not do anything about anything. And the reason I think this is all happening right now is. Is I just came along and told everybody that what they were seeing was happening, because it's what I'm seeing. And people hate getting lied to. They hate getting told that, like, there's a different reality happening than the one that they are witnessing. It's like Gaza. You know, you got the Democratic Party telling people for years now, like, no, this is fine. And everybody's like, I'm watching videos of children starving to death and getting ripped apart by American bodies, bombs. Don't tell me this is fine. I think if you can just extrapolate that out to the larger system, and that's where the energy is. People are. People are angry, and they are sick and tired of this. And there is an irony for me, like, I've been saying this stuff for, like, the past couple years, and, like, you know, I could say this in a bar and somebody would be like, yeah, man, sounds wild. But then I do it on a Senate campaign, and people are just like, yeah, absolutely. I mean, this reflects exactly what. What I'm seeing. And I think that. Yeah, I think just the. The material reality that we are living in is what is driving all of this.
- [98:29]
B
Yeah, we have a question here from. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Chris.
- [98:32]
A
I was just gonna. Real quick. We have seen some public polling. Do you have any, you know, what are your internal polls, or do you have.
- [98:38]
E
We don't have any yet. I'm gonna be entirely frank. The last two weeks, I have barely slept. I am. I am.
- [98:43]
A
Like, you're very coherent for that. So.
- [98:47]
E
We are. We are. Yeah. We. We are in the. We are in the midst of. Of doing all of that. We also.
- [98:55]
A
You're fielding a poll.
- [98:57]
E
We are in the midst of fielding a poll. We also have. I mean, again, this is something I want to kind of reiterate. I know from the outside, this whole thing looks, like big and real. I just want to. We are 10 weeks in, and I've never done this before. So we had. We essentially threw everything at the wall for eight weeks. We built an immense amount of momentum. We built a substantial war chest. We kind of fleshed things out. You know, last two weeks, we essentially have made contact with our opposition. We. We had our first kind of stress test. There were people on the campaign that frankly weren't kind of up to the task task, and they are now gone. The. The bulk of the campaign is very much still here. And I think in many ways this has kind of galvanized everybody. So we were planning November is when I sink my oyster farm. I have to go. Like, actually, when we get off the phone, I'm going back to go out on the. On the boat. So we were planning for November to be kind of a slowdown period where we take all the connections and the resources and the information, the visibility, and now we coalesce it into an actual, like, structural campaign based around movement building, based around organizational capacity. That's the project that we are engaged in right now. So I, It's a. Yeah, I want to reiterate because a lot of people are like, where's your policy team? I'm like, dude, I'm driving all over Maine and I haven't had five minutes to myself. And we're only eight weeks in. Go ask one of the other candidates in this race who's been in it since April, where his is. He has. He should have a better excuse. Excuse.
- [100:34]
B
Go ahead, Griffin.
- [100:35]
A
He's too busy running scam packs.
- [100:37]
C
That takes a lot of time, Crystal. So I want. We want to hit you. We've got a lot of other audience questions, so we're going to do some like, rapid fire ones really quick with you, Graham, but this one actually comes from me first. I wanted your take on Pete Hegseth, his renaming of the department Department of War. He routinely calls the soldiers war fighters is kind of like his coin to term. And he's made a lot of talk about women and. And trans people in the military in their place. What do you make?
- [101:04]
E
Is a deeply insecure man who did a highly unimpressive military career and wants everybody to think that he was some kind of God of war, which he most certainly is not. He was an infantry officer who doesn't even have a Ranger tab. So harden me. While I don't think the man deserves an ounce of respect now, all of this is. Is just masculine insecurity and it's. And he never should have been confirmed in that role.
- [101:32]
C
All right, so we've got a few others here. Now this one is a Sager related question. Sager referred to you as a Brooklyn leftist.
- [101:42]
F
And a hiclib.
- [101:43]
C
And a hiccup.
- [101:44]
A
He's shifted from hiclib. To now Brooklyn leftist. Yeah, that's the tag.
- [101:48]
C
Now this is from Cade M. I'm sure this will be asked, but if not, how does Graham respond to Sagar's characterization of him as being no different than a Brooklyn leftist?
- [101:55]
E
Um, well, I've never lived in Brooklyn strong town and like. And my politics really developed more coherently since I moved back to small town Maine. So if. I mean, I guess I. Yeah, I don't know, like, seems like an insane thing to call me, but are you.
- [102:19]
A
Still pro gun, Graham? I was gonna ask question.
- [102:22]
B
We have this question from Hunter, who says he's at Hunter Shade says Mainer here. My question for GR is about a Second Amendment support. Would you vote along party lines on issues of gun control, or is this something you feel strongly enough about to buck the party trend? And what is your position generally on civilian gun ownership? Also, could you give a little background, your side to the, quote, militia training accusations I've seen in the news? I'm assuming that's the Socialist Rifle association picture that's been going around. What do you make of all that?
- [102:46]
F
Great, Emily. The last paragraph's good too, actually, of that one. Do you have that?
- [102:51]
C
Yeah, it says I've lived. It says I've lived in Maine my whole life and know the gun culture is stronger than most New England states. But do you think your position on firearm owners will help or hinder your endeavors in the state, given most of the population lives in York and Cumberland counties, which do not have the same gun culture as, say, Aroostook County?
- [103:07]
E
Aroostook. It's okay.
- [103:10]
B
This is our Brooklyn Left list.
- [103:12]
C
I'm literally in Brooklyn right now.
- [103:14]
B
Okay.
- [103:15]
C
And I don't claim you. I don't claim you here.
- [103:17]
E
Okay?
- [103:18]
A
You're different than me.
- [103:20]
E
Firearms have been a entrenched part of my life since I was a kid. I grew up in Romaine. I grew up hunting. I grew up shooting. I learned how to shoot at 4h. I joined Marine Corps. I joined the infantry. Yeah, I mean, obviously I. And then after that, I've been a firearms instructor. I still am a firearms instructor. And I'm a competitor. I do competitive pistol shooting. It's my hobby. Firearms remain to be a fairly, I would say, intrinsic part of my. Of my life. And that's how it is for a lot of people. People in rural Maine. I come from a firearms owning tradition that is based around competency and responsibility and safety. I. I got a. I get a chuckle out of the whole me training paramilitaries thing. In 20 I don't know if anybody remembers, but in 2020, Covid happened and a whole bunch of people bought a bunch of guns. People who had never owned guns before.
- [104:22]
B
That's right.
- [104:23]
E
All these like left wingers, progressives, Democrats, Everybody's like, the sky of the world is apart lgbt. As someone who has spent a long time working with firearms professionally, I saw a bunch of people who frankly I was like, you should not own a gun. And if you're going to own a gun, you need to understand how to own a gun. You need. And so I taught and, and like there are a lot of people, I would say on the left or progressive spaces who see gun culture as, as, as really scary. Like they don't want to go to gun shops, they don't want to hang out with people that usually teach firearms. And so I taught a, essentially an introduction to firearms course for a bunch of first time gun owners, some of which had come through the sra, which is, I mean it's also funny, the SRA was like an online meme that turned meetups. People are like, it's like the left wing nra. I'm like, I mean, okay, not in my experience. It was mostly just a bunch of people posting a discord servers. But like whatever, I, I would, I would do that again. I mean I, if people, I'm a firm. Guns are tools and they're incredibly dangerous and they are not to be viewed as toys. They are not to be viewed as extensions of like your masculinity. They're not gonna, in. They're not going to make you inherently safe. In fact, having them makes you far less safe. Having a gun in your house increases the likelihood of gun violence in your house essentially exponentially. Because if it wasn't there, it wouldn't happen. So I'm a firm believer that if people in a country that is awash and guns like ours, if you are going to be around firearms in any way, you need to get combat competent, professional training in how to use them. And that was what I was trying to do. And like, I will not walk that back. I think teaching people how to safely handle firearms is a good thing.
- [106:27]
B
That's awesome.
- [106:28]
C
Speaking of discord and old post, this is from Sirota554 for Graham. One of the posts that came out from the referred to yourself as a command communist. My question as a communist myself is do you still consider yourself a communist? And if not, why not?
- [106:43]
E
No. And I'll be honest, I've never considered myself a communist. Arguing with people on The Internet and calling oneself a communist to piss them off is something I used to do.
- [106:53]
C
Copy that.
- [106:54]
E
I mean, there isn't, of course, I'm, I'm advocating for universal health care and, and like the ability of working people to organize and build unions. Of course somebody's going to call me a copy communist. So. I used to just make jokes about this stuff long before, I mean, it's, yeah, if you read the threads, by the way, it's fairly obvious I'm being a sarcastic dude, but whatever.
- [107:17]
C
Graham, Graham, I don't want you to read my old post I've deleted, so we'll leave it there on that one. This one comes from Faras Abu Zayd. Graham, you said you wouldn't support Chuck Schumer for Democratic leader of the Senate. Is there anyone you would endorse more broadly? What current senators do you admire, respect, or see yourself working closely with should you be elected?
- [107:34]
E
I, honestly, I, like, I've thought about, about this. I don't know who I would want to push for leadership because it's going to depend on kind of the general feeling. I will say I have an immense amount of respect for Chris Van Hollen. I think he understands his role in the Senate in ways that I look up to, which is that you have structural power, but you also have secondary power. I think Bernie understands this too, and Elizabeth Warren as well. Like, there is a secondary power. There is the power that comes from you being visible as a senator. Like when Chris Van Holland went down to El Salvador to interview Kilmar Alber Garcia, he got to do that because he's a US Senator. If he was anybody else, he would not have been able to do that and bring visibility onto that. And I think he understands his role in the Senate in a way that I, I, I would like to see more senators understand it. Not ne. Like there's a, you have to bring almost an element of activism to it as well. Well, if you're going to utilize the role in all of its power. And so I, I think that that's so I have, I have an immense amount of respect for him. Immense amount of respect for, for Senator Warren, for, I mean, Senator Martin Hinrich has been a real, real cheerleader for me throughout this whole thing. Incredibly supportive. There is a, yeah, I mean, I, I could just keep going down the line list. Ed Markey, Peter Welch, like there's a I, but there's some guys.
- [109:07]
A
Yeah, but Van Holland's been important on Gaza also. Using that visibility.
- [109:15]
E
He understood his role. He could go do what he did. If he was not a US Senator, nobody would have cared if he went and walked the line. But you know, he's a senator, so they, so they have have to.
- [109:28]
C
Okay, our last and most important question from the ama. This is from Sciatica. Man. Was R. Oh, yeah. Was Ryan Grim a good bartender?
- [109:40]
E
Tipper.
- [109:42]
C
Okay.
- [109:43]
B
Oh, you actually remember serving Ryan. This is great.
- [109:47]
E
Yeah, we have, we have, we have. We connected over our. Our mut. Our mutual tunein time.
- [109:53]
B
So tuna is the best.
- [109:56]
F
It's a great bar.
- [109:57]
A
Well, Ryan and I are also. We're Chesapeake Bay people, so we have some connection to the, the mollusk, the pro mullisk community.
- [110:05]
E
Someday I want to come back on and just talk about aquaculture, but that's a whole one.
- [110:09]
B
We would love that. Yes. Sagar had an oyster bar at his wedding and the oysterman sniped at me one time and it soured me on. Oysterman.
- [110:18]
E
Oh, no. Well, hopefully I will say this. Maybe next year when the weather turns, you should come up, I'll take you out on the oyster farm and we can rebuild some trust with the bivalve mollusk community. So.
- [110:31]
B
That sounds awesome. That would be the best breaking points ever.
- [110:35]
C
Awesome.
- [110:36]
F
We'll all go. No, Maryland has done a great job funding aquaculture to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, but could use federal for sure.
- [110:43]
E
I mean, I'm a firm believer, frankly, that, that, that using aquaculture projects as. As environmental rehab projects is. We. It's highly underutilized. There's a lot of potential there. But we also, frankly, we don't have like a big lobbying wing, so we don't get anything.
- [111:03]
F
Now I. You were on David Sirota's podcast last night and people should go and watch that one. That was, I think it was instructive. And you were asked this, but I wanted to ask again for our, for audience, our audience as well, because this is something that people are very curious about about. One of the more disturbing Reddit posts that people have circulated talks about it's a question if you could fight in previous wars, you know, what. What would you do? And you talk about kind of the, the joy almost of combat and I think so can you talk about like how you got into a mindset where you believed to that and whether you still share that mindset, whether you're in touch with it and you know, how that relates to your current posture towards American imperialism and wars in general? Because we're talking about, you know, people getting killed.
- [112:00]
E
I viewed myself for a long time as a professional soldier. It was it, it was my identity. I was very, I was a very competent soldier.
- [112:09]
B
Soldier.
- [112:10]
E
I was, I saw a fairly significant amount of combat. I also, and I mean it's, and I have to. This is a weird. I, I'm, I still work on, I'm gonna work on this till I die. I think I still have these. I have a very complicated relationship with my time in combat because I, I think it was all for nothing. I think the horror and the violence that I took part in was completely pointless. And yet I still have this element of me that when I was engaging in it, I found infantry combat very exhilarating. I found infantry combat. I found my proficiency in being an effective soldier in combat as something that I viewed. I was very proud of it and in some ways enjoyed it. But I want to make it clear, people, I think I never enjoyed, I never enjoyed or relished in killing ever. It's. But it was more, the, more like the professional challenge of other people are trying to kill you and then you have to make decisions and be effective in your weapon systems, be effective in your leadership in order to survive and then like win and like. And that was how I always viewed it. And, and the thing that I connect with now is that when I look back through history, I see a lot of people who like me engaged in wars of imperialism, wars of colonialism, who that experience in many ways shapes and forms, turned them into dedicated opponents to it. One of the reasons I am in such opposition to this stuff now I know how easy it is as a like, young person who wants to go do this kind of thing for whatever reason, how easy it is to be taken in by it. And that's why we shouldn't do it because there will always be young men and women who in their youth are going to be taken into being part of something bigger, finding, finding meaning in struggle and suffering and all that stuff. And if that's going to happen, that should never be taken advantage of by the, by a political apparatus. Which is exactly what happened. It's what happened to me. And I, I struggle with it. I'm going to struggle with this until the day I die. I don't think there's an answer in here because I will always, I will always find some connection and some, I don't know, feelings of, of, of self worth in like how good of a soldier I was. But I also think it was all pointless and it's. Yeah, and I'm doing better with it now. I mean, for a number of years there, I mean it sent me into a dark place because I couldn't square the two, and I still can't square them. But. But I think frankly, developing a more structural critique has allowed me some. Like. I'm like, oh, yeah, right. I did this for the service of something I was not in charge of. And that kind of. I'm not trying to get myself off the hook. It's just that there is a way of describing it where I don't have to feel like I no longer require it to have meant anything. It doesn't mean, like it no longer has to have value to me. I think it was valueless. And I'm okay with. With that.
- [115:45]
F
One of the generals who participated in a lot of those small wars that you mentioned was S.M.
- [115:50]
E
Butler. One of my personal heroes, surprisingly.
- [115:55]
F
Yeah. So have you read War as a Racket?
- [115:56]
B
What.
- [115:57]
F
What was your reaction to it?
- [115:59]
E
Sple sp. Butler has been a hero of mine for a long time. And, you know, his. His support for the bonus army, his time, his. Obviously his time ratting out the business plot. I mean, I'm a big. A big Smedley Butler fan, but Smedley Butler got there because of his combat record. You know, it's. It's. I think it is. I don't want to.
- [116:22]
B
That's interesting.
- [116:25]
F
Yeah. Right. Smith. Yeah. He participated in some horrifying war crimes.
- [116:30]
E
Yeah. Everybody should go read Gangsters of Capitalism by Jonathan Katz. Great book.
- [116:36]
B
Ryan has a good podcast on Smedley Butler. Back from.
- [116:38]
F
It was with actually the author of Gangsters of Capitalism.
- [116:42]
E
Great book.
- [116:42]
F
Catch on the cats. That's right.
- [116:46]
C
All right, well, on that note, I think we're all set. Graham, thank you for giving us so much of your time today, being open to answering all of our questions, and we'll continue to follow your race.
- [116:57]
A
Yeah. Happy Halloween. And, you know, we'll just let you get back to your very quiet, quiet, idyllic, actually today, low stress today.
- [117:05]
E
And tomorrow I get to go out on the. On my boat. So things get pretty nice for a bit.
- [117:09]
A
Yeah, nice. Awesome.
- [117:11]
B
That's awesome.
- [117:12]
A
All right, Graham, thanks for connecting with you. Thank you so much for answering all our questions.
- [117:15]
B
Thank you. Seriously, appreciate it. All right.
- [117:20]
C
All right, folks, that's.
- [117:22]
A
That.
- [117:22]
C
Any. Any reactions before we split? I know, Crystal, you gotta run.
- [117:25]
F
Almost. I almost wish we had more time. There's. Because there's so, like American politics pushes the conversation constantly away from material conditions, and I hate when we even participate in it. But people really want to know, and I. And I want to know what his response is on A lot of these personal questions, but we. We spend so much time talking about the person, we. We don't get enough time to talk about the policy. And I guess we understand where he is on the policy spectrum, so maybe that's less important to suss out, but I don't. Yeah, that's just a general observation about the state of.
- [118:11]
B
And I often think it's helpful to have, like, good, decent, personal conversations as your frame of reference for what decisions somebody will make in a policy sense going forward. Because a lot of times people will say, well, if that bill came to my desk, I'd do this, this, and that. And they have a horde of lobbyists descending on them, and turns out they're John Federman. So, yeah, I think. I think sometimes it's. When you're not having, like, a gotcha back and forth, you actually get a good sense of what the person will be like in. In Congress, the Senate.
- [118:40]
A
Yeah, I agree with that. I'm just very struck by, you know, the similarities I see between him, between Richard Ojeda, between Anthony Aguilar. You know, I mean, I think about Anthony, like, had just retired, and then he's like. Like, it's similar thing. Like, somebody hits him up on Facebook like, hey, you want to go, like, give out food in Gaza? And, you know, he's. At the time, he's just settling back into civilian life, and it's like, okay, this is pretty good paycheck, and seems like I'd be doing some good and just goes over. And that's how you end up as this person who clearly is a very moral and courageous, like, both physically and, like, ideologically courageous person, going and working for this, like, monstrosity of an organization in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. So, you know, I think if you've. If you've known people who have not had the desk jobs, like a JD Vance or, you know, a P. Buddha judge or what, but who were in the right, who were doing the ugliest parts of war, who were used as pawns in these, you know, horrifying chess games that our country has been playing around the world with catastrophic outcomes comes. I think you're gonna. His story is gonna actually make a lot of sense to you because there are a lot of parallels with the. The guys that I've known who have been in. In similar situations.
- [119:55]
B
I don't think Dems know what they have on their hands with Dan Osborne and Graham Platner. I don't think Republicans know what Dems have on their hands with Dan Osborne and Graham Platner. And I know Dan's running as an independent, but the. You just talk to Graham and you realize he has this fluency. Like when Griffin asked him about people getting worried about being federated, he answered that without asking, what do you mean? Fetterman? Which just about any other senatorial candidate would be like, explain. And if you explained it, they might get it. But he just has this, this fluency and speaks like a regular person. And that's what you in this media environment desperately need. And on top of that, he has this crazy background where that he's perfectly open and honest about. He's just sort of like, sorry, but like the perfect podcast ear a candidate what you think background to explain. You know what I mean? And he's open about it. So like all of the background that the consultants think is going to destroy him ends up being something that it's an opportunity for him to have normal conversations about and look like a dimensional human being. And I don't think people understand in D.C. that actually is effective now in a way that it's. It's not that he's going to have problems if he goes up against Susan Collins, of course some of that stuff will be a problem. But it also gives him this opportunity to sit down and have long form conversations that someone up in Maine is going to watch and say like, oh, actually this guy isn't the scary person, the caricature.
- [121:18]
A
All right, guys, I'm gonna. Sorry, I'm gonna jump. Yeah, yeah. But I'll see. I'll see y'. All.
- [121:22]
C
Bye, Crystal. Happy Halloween.
- [121:24]
A
Happy Halloween.
- [121:26]
F
I have one more question for Gaylor Griffin or Emily. Like, one of the fascinating under discussed or almost undiscussed elements of the race is this. There's this dynamic where people say, well, maybe Graham is actually too far left, you know, for a swing state. Like, like Maine.
- [121:44]
E
It.
- [121:45]
F
That does not factor in that Janet Mills launched her campaign on and is running her campaign on the least popular issue that Democrats currently have, which, which is, you know, trans athletes in sports. Her. She launched her campaign on. What was her slogan? I'll see you in court. Like the fact that she fought Trump over trans question. The trans athlete question. So on the one hand you have people saying Graham's too far left, but if, if just objectively speaking, if the thing you're concerned about is that somebody has an out of the kind of, you know, way out there position. Yeah. On an 8020 issue.
- [122:25]
B
Yep.
- [122:25]
F
Like, Mills is actually ironically, even though she's centrist coded and centrist on everything else. And certainly a corporate centrist on the thing that's 80, 20. She's out. She's out there. Well, and what, so what. So the question then is like, what do you think of Graham's response on that from the right? Like, how will the right, like, hear what he said about both immigration and the trans sports question?
- [122:49]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think if he's up against Susan Collins, that'll be interesting against Janet Mills. I mean, this is for him. It gives them a great. Like when Bernie explains that often these identity issues are used as a shield by corporate elites like Janet Mills so that they don't have to talk. Janet Mills is like the perfect example of that. Like you, you're talking ad nauseam about this particular issue issue. Even though 8020 in Maine, people are like, just stop. And you know, just like it stop. Yet she's talking and taking the unpopular position because she is still stuck in 2020 when she believes that signaling on the cultural issues is actually how you buy the goodwill and earn the goodwill of Democratic primary voters. And that's not the case anymore when you're in a head to head with somebody who has the burning line. So I obviously completely disagree with, with what Graham said because I think the Obama administration nationalized the issue by using the Education Department to have dear colleague letters that threatens federal school funding if you don't let people compete in opposite sex sports, go in opposite sex bathrooms and locker rooms and the like. So as long as you have title nine on the books, there's no real like, local solution to this question of like civil rights. If a woman should have to be in a women's shelter with a man, like, that is a serious question and it is a material question question. And that's where I disagree often with Bernie and I wonder if privately he would disagree with it too. That's a kitchen table issue. That is a, it's, it's not a, it's not healthcare, although it has healthcare implications. But like when people are putting their heads on the pillow at night, that is something that like genuinely they care about if their kids and their schools are tied up in this and all of that. So I think it could, like, I, I would expect to see that SRA picture everywhere if he's up against Susan Collins just because it's so, so I really appreciate what he said about that. Like you should be when, when people who shouldn't have firearms are trying to arm up and like LARP and militias. I think that's awesome. Like, he is the type of person who should be training them up. Like, it's awesome for him to go in there and say, I'm going to teach you how to do this right. But that picture is going to be everywhere. That will definitely dog him. I don't know what you guys think.
- [124:57]
C
And Ryan, when you say it's an 8020 issue, that sounds like, oh, we need to talk about this, then we need to reverse course. But it's also, it's not like a top five issue for people. Is it even a top ten issue for people in May?
- [125:11]
B
Like, well, I think it's an issue of trust after.
- [125:14]
C
But let's say whenever someone like, well, if someone. Yeah, exactly. But like if someone were to rank like their mains top five issues, is that even in the top five? And then I guess my other question is like, are we basically just trying to say, like, don't worry, we're not woke now? You're never going to like, not be woke if you're like in the Democratic Party. Like, so I think like you're kind of just walking into a terrain where you're never going to be, be as, you know, based or on the trans issue as the Republicans. So you're always going to kind of lose the issue. So at that point, if it's not a top five issue, I don't think it's an always.
- [125:53]
F
Like, I think, you know, this is a new issue. We, we live in a world set up for a binary and now we have a spectrum and a non binary. And so how do you. How do we integrate those two things? Is not a settled question yet.
- [126:10]
E
So.
- [126:11]
C
But it should. But it's also not a question that a. I believe like a Democrat candidate will beat a Republican on. So like, why fight in that territory when it's not a top five issue for Mainers?
- [126:22]
F
Oh, because also I think it's important.
- [126:25]
C
It'S a top five issue.
- [126:26]
B
No, no, I think here's what it is. It's a litmus test issue for people in terms of whether they trust a candidate when it comes up. Right. So it's not like people are going to the polls. I think some people do go to the polls and it's not everyone, but Maybe it's even 10% of people are like, I'm voting on the fact that Janet Mills sent our school district spiraling into chaos because everyone was yelling at each other over this policy. And I don't think it's right, blah, blah. But I think if people see this as a common sense question, should a. Which Most people do. To Ryan's 8020 point, should a, you know, 18 year old boy be competing in this track, which has been a huge issue in New England, competing in this track race with this girl who's going to lose out in scholarships, potentially, whatever, and they see someone say something on the other side, it just loses trust in that person. I'm not saying it's what they vote on, but I do think because it's such a big topic of conversation, it's seen as a litmus test for whether you're, you're trustworthy.
- [127:18]
C
And I understand that. I understand that. And my argument is I don't think it loses. I don't think it's like a deal breaker trust issue. Like, okay, like, yeah, maybe I disagree with him on the trans stuff, but I agree with him on housing. I agree with him on all the other things he wants to do for me. Maine. Like, it doesn't seem like a deal breaker. And in fact, it seems like the more you play into that issue that in my opinion, you'll never win against a Republican. Then why pl. Why, why fight that battle?
- [127:46]
F
I mean, we'll see.
- [127:46]
B
I interrupted you last time.
- [127:47]
F
Sorry. No, no, go ahead. No, well, it's, it's, it's also, it's also an issue that needs to be figured out as a society.
- [127:55]
C
So like, but not by like main, not by like mayors, by who, like huge.
- [128:00]
B
It's like local news. It's all over. This question is all over, man.
- [128:03]
C
Yeah, yeah. And also, you know, there was that Trump ad like Kamala's for they. Them, I'm for you or whatever. I felt like that question had a larger sense outside the trans issue. Like that, that, yeah, Kamala's for others. Kamala is like not for you. And people kind of ran with that and said it's all about the trans issue. I, I'm just saying I don't think a Democrat can be like on the, on their hands and knees being like, I promise I'm not woke. Guys like, that just doesn't work.
- [128:28]
B
Work. Here's what would be worse for Graham. It would be worse for him to suddenly flip flop on trans issues because that also makes you look untrustworthy. That also makes you look like the consultants got to me. And now I was this leftist who was at the SRA and I'm like, ah, never mind. So I think it's a really tough balance for him to strike. But I also think there's some wisdom to him saying I'm not throwing, throwing immigrants under the bus. I'm not throwing trans kids under the bus. I think he has to have a good answer, and you can see him working that in real time with the local answer, and that's a be. But it's going to be tough. I, I think there's, like. I don't know. I see, I see what you're saying, Griffin, that, like, you'll never. Susan Collins is always going to be able to say what she's going to be able to say on that.
- [129:13]
E
Yeah, right.
- [129:14]
C
Yeah.
- [129:15]
F
Then we'll just have to figure something out. Like, we got to get to a place where everybody's, like, comfortable and people's rights are respected on, you know, and space and spaces are respected because, like, obviously, and everybody, like, basically everybody agrees you can't. Like, you're not going to just let a guy walk into a women's room at a gym by claiming outside the door that he's a woman. Nobody would allow that. So it's like, okay, I mean, like.
- [129:42]
C
Like Hunter Schaefer, like, nobody will allow that.
- [129:45]
F
So if we don't allow that, then, okay, where are we then? Like, what's the, what are the actual rules here? Well, like, we need some rules. Like, we've got a new in. We have a new, like, situation that we're dealing with. What are the rules here? And we, and as a society, we just had to figure. Got to figure them out. Democrats, Democrats can't just keep saying, well, don't worry about it.
- [130:07]
C
There are so many trans people, though.
- [130:09]
F
That.
- [130:11]
C
That put completely, like, unless you were told, like a purist female and would. And they. You get eyebrows raised if Hunter Shakes Schaefer walked into the men's room.
- [130:20]
B
So, like, it's pretty different with kids, though. I think Republicans lose the upper hand when you're talking about adults with the public. And in a state like Maine, which is not Alabama, it is, as Graham invoked, very libertarian. And so I think that's part of the wisdom in talking about it is maybe you can get Susan Collins to start talking about that sort of thing. But when it comes to kids, there's, you know, that. That's a totally different question. And I think that's what most of the conversation, if I'm, if I'm, like, looking at local media in Maine, that's mostly what the conversation's been about. High schools and, and the like.
- [130:48]
C
I'm an advocate of the new par.
- [130:49]
F
My.
- [130:50]
C
My new paradigm is dark woke, where it's like, yeah, we, we, we. We believe these. In these issues. And you're we're going to give you housing and how are we going to pay for it? We're going to melt down all of the high school swimming trophies and that's how we're paying for it. Like, like that to me is a far stronger way to go for, for, for the candidates. And then like, I do think like maybe there's some like large like federal stuff that could get worked out along the lines of like how we move, made gay marriage equal or what have you. But I don't think that a candidate needs to be like, fuck, I gotta solve this question in my individual race in Maine. That's just my personal take. I'm going dark.
- [131:33]
A
Answer.
- [131:34]
C
All right, well, we'll leave it there. Thank you all, folks. We are releasing this full two hour episode for the public. Normally we pay for all the first half of the show and then you.
- [131:45]
E
But we're.
- [131:45]
C
You guys are getting to see the whole second half because we had Graham today.
- [131:49]
F
So if you want to ask people.
- [131:51]
B
Like Graham questions in the future.
- [131:52]
C
Yes, here's your picture. Exactly. If you. All those questions today came from our Breaking Points members. You can sign up today to help our reporting, help us do all these extra shows, all these extra interviews. Go to breaking points.com. we've got a monthly membership, we've got a yearly membership and it helps us do what we're doing here every day. So we thank you all for the support and Happy Halloween. Bye bye. Anyone? Someone else say how something Halloween. No one's dressing up.
- [132:18]
F
Happy Halloween.
- [132:20]
B
Don't do a platinum costume. It's not going to be funny. It's not going to work for you. Take your shirt off and get a pencil. Don't do it.
- [132:27]
C
That's. Well, I have not seen any platinum costumes yet, but the day is young, folks. We'll see you on Monday. Bye bye. Get ready to power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2.
- [132:41]
E
Power up the visuals with 4K support.
- [132:43]
C
And a bigger, more vivid screen. Power up the fun with exclusive new games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong bonanza. Nintendo Switch 2 All together, anytime, anywhere. Games rated E to eat. Games and systems sold separately. Compatible TV required for 4K display make.
- [133:06]
A
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- [134:07]
B
This is an iHeart podcast.