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Trump Unloads on No Kings
01:55:42
After millions rally at No Kings protests, Donald Trump posts an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown, spraying poop from a fighter jet onto the crowds below. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy discuss how far we've fallen and then get into the news, including the political prosecution of John Bolton, Trump's threat to send troops to another California city, and the prospects for peace in Ukraine, war in Venezuela, and the breakdown of the Gaza peace deal. Then, Tommy sits down with Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, to discuss his recently resurfaced Reddit comments and the disillusionment he experienced after returning from Afghanistan.
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- [00:00]
Jon Favreau
Today's presenting sponsor is Simplisafe Home Security. It's really feeling like the 1970s these days. Inflation, an unpopular war, and an insecure little criminal in the White House. Yeah, I've been thinking about the Watergate break in a lot lately. Republicans just aren't doing it like that anymore. No ingenuity. Do you guys think Watergate could have been prevented? With Simplisafe's proactive protection that stops crimes before they even start?
- [00:22]
John Lovett
I actually think it could have been.
- [00:23]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I think they got something here.
- [00:25]
John Lovett
I mean, listen, even without Simplisafe, those guys got caught.
- [00:28]
Jon Favreau
He did get caught, you know, and.
- [00:30]
John Lovett
It unraveled the whole thing.
- [00:31]
Jon Favreau
Maybe. Maybe the whole thing would have happened faster. Simplisafe.
- [00:33]
John Lovett
If only Nixon knew. He could have just gone witch hunt.
- [00:37]
Tommy Vietor
The whole thing would have evaporated.
- [00:38]
Jon Favreau
Now you set up Simplisafe and no Watergate at your house?
- [00:41]
John Lovett
No, not so far. Not so far, no. No. Creep coming at me. I did have Oliver Northover. I think this is for tea.
- [00:49]
Graham Grant Platner
Oh.
- [00:50]
Jon Favreau
Gotcha. Yeah.
- [00:50]
John Lovett
Is he dead?
- [00:52]
Jon Favreau
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- [00:53]
John Lovett
Now he's alive.
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- [01:24]
John Lovett
That's great.
- [01:25]
Tommy Vietor
You.
- [01:25]
Jon Favreau
You look like you're walking weird.
- [01:28]
John Lovett
Yeah, for sure.
- [01:29]
Jon Favreau
You stay away from this house.
- [01:30]
John Lovett
That's right.
- [01:31]
Jon Favreau
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- [01:51]
John Lovett
And John, this just in. Simplisafe has gotten a new award. Best copy of the day. Best copy of the day. Thank you guys. Simplisafe. That was great.
- [01:57]
Jon Favreau
It was the Watergate really did it.
- [02:00]
Tommy Vietor
MSNBC presents season two of the Blueprint.
- [02:04]
John Lovett
Hosted by Jen Psaki.
- [02:05]
Tommy Vietor
Each week she talks to leading Democrats about how they plan to win again.
- [02:10]
John Lovett
Including Texas Congressman Greg Cassar, who chairs the Progressive caucus, Congresswoman Sara McBride of Delaware, the first openly trans person elected.
- [02:19]
Tommy Vietor
To Congress, and more who are helping.
- [02:21]
John Lovett
To shape the future of the party.
- [02:23]
Jon Favreau
The Blueprint with Jen Psaki, Season two. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
- [02:54]
John Lovett
I'm John Lovett.
- [02:54]
Tommy Vietor
I'm Tommy Vitor.
- [02:55]
Jon Favreau
On today's show, we got Pete Hegseth and JD Vance celebrating the Marines by having them detonate artillery shells over California freeways. Donald Trump showing us he's not a king by musing about more domestic troop deployments and political prosecutions, all while the President of peace struggles to get a handle on Gaza, Ukraine and a growing military conflict. He's now started in the Caribbean. Then later you'll hear Tommy's exclusive interview with Graham Platner, who's running for Senate in Maine and has had quite a week.
- [03:25]
Tommy Vietor
He's had a week. There's been a lot of reporting on Reddit posts he made over the years, some of them pretty controversial. So we walked through a lot of those. We talked about his time in the Marine Corps and in the army and deployed overseas and what it did to him, how it made him feel about the country and a lot more.
- [03:41]
Jon Favreau
So check it out, check it out. But first, organizers say that nearly 7 million people turned out to protest at more than 2,700 no Kings events all across the country, which would be 2 million more people than the last protests in June and one of the largest single day demonstrations in American history. The protests were almost entirely peaceful, quite joyful and patriotic, with very few arrests. All this despite the White House and Republican leaders referring to the event as a Hate America rally and maligning the Americans who showed up as Hamas loving terrorists and Soros funded antifa radicals. Not entirely wrong, but yeah, that was just us. This bizarre line of attack continued on Monday when Speaker Mike Johnson and other senior House members held a press conference with photos of just four protest signs that supposedly proved their point. Here's what they said, along with Johnson's answer to a pretty shitty question.
- [04:39]
John Lovett
Congratulations.
- [04:39]
Graham Grant Platner
They didn't burn any buildings down.
- [04:41]
Jon Favreau
That's a big achievement for the left.
- [04:42]
Tommy Vietor
We got to see on display what.
- [04:44]
John Lovett
That Hate America rally we've been talking.
- [04:46]
Tommy Vietor
About was really all about the Marxists.
- [04:48]
Jon Favreau
The radicals and the Islamists the Democratic Party promoted this weekend.
- [04:52]
Graham Grant Platner
What does it say that the President.
- [04:53]
Tommy Vietor
United States over the weekend released a.
- [04:56]
Graham Grant Platner
Video of him pooping on the American people?
- [05:00]
Jon Favreau
The president uses social media to make a point.
- [05:03]
John Lovett
You can argue he's probably the most.
- [05:06]
Jon Favreau
Effective person who's ever used social media for that he is using satire to make a point. For those of you unfamiliar with the video that the reporter was referring to, please enjoy. Now, if you're just listening to the audio of this pod, the President posted a video of himself wearing a crown while flying a fighter jet labeled King Trump that sprayed what certainly looks like shit all over the Americans who turned out to exercise their right to assemble. Guys, thoughts on the protest and the poop video? You can sort of take them one at a time. I did see that the New York Times described Trump as, quote, unquote, flying a jet that dumps brown liquid on demonstrators.
- [06:11]
John Lovett
And I think that's actually the only accurate thing you could say because, you know, because it is AI. It's not clear where the brown liquid came from in the fighter jet that Trump was flying. It would presumably have had it been loaded up in advance, a payload, as it were. I just remember we worked in the White House and I remember a president put his feet on the desk and that was a scandal.
- [06:32]
Jon Favreau
I remember we went from brown suit to brown liquid.
- [06:35]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, yeah, it's.
- [06:36]
Jon Favreau
We're. Yeah, we're in brown suits, brown shirts.
- [06:40]
Tommy Vietor
Coming next.
- [06:40]
John Lovett
It goes brown suit, brown poop, and then the brown shirts. That's a real bummer.
- [06:45]
Jon Favreau
Just shitting all over Americans.
- [06:47]
Tommy Vietor
Did you see Kenny Loggins ask for it to be taken down because it's an unauthorized use of Danger Zone.
- [06:51]
Jon Favreau
As he should.
- [06:52]
Tommy Vietor
Song still bangs.
- [06:53]
Jon Favreau
As he should. There was also the shit hit an American flag too. That was in one of the scenes, which is interesting because Trump has said that you can't burn the American flag or he's gonna throw you in jail for a year. But I guess he can. He is the king. So he can poop on the American.
- [07:08]
Tommy Vietor
Flag if it bounces it off Harry Sisson's head and lands on a flag.
- [07:11]
Jon Favreau
Oh, yeah, that was Harry. That was Gen Z influencer Harry Sisson.
- [07:16]
Tommy Vietor
Very nice, smart guy, talks about politics. So the President poops on him. A 23 year old.
- [07:21]
Jon Favreau
He bore the brunt of the shit.
- [07:22]
John Lovett
Yeah, look, it's all very stupid, but man, we just like. There really is this double standard where if a Democrat says anything remotely Critical of a subset of the population. These people lose their fucking minds, and it is completely acceptable.
- [07:39]
Jon Favreau
Talking about the deplorables.
- [07:40]
Tommy Vietor
I'm talking about deplorables.
- [07:41]
John Lovett
Well, that was Hillary Clinton doing it. But anybody, you know, you know, and she can't do anything. Right.
- [07:44]
Tommy Vietor
But the.
- [07:45]
John Lovett
But, like, you can't like anything. But meanwhile, these guys, they love making fun of people from the cities. They love shitting on, you know, urban America. And they. And literally now, literally shitting on. And it's just there. And, you know, they clutch their pearls at anything, by the way. They like that. They defend anything these people say in a group chat. But then if Graham Platner says something, it's because Democrats will accept anything. There's just, like, the double standard on what Republicans are allowed to say about their fellow Americans versus what Democrats are allowed to say is, like, unending.
- [08:16]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I just. Like that Johnson could only find four fucking lame photos for his press conference. I thought to myself that when the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, patriotic, joyful, that they would just. I didn't think that they would be like, oh, sorry, we were wrong. I thought they would just move on to something else. But to double down on it is crazy.
- [08:38]
Tommy Vietor
They're so stupid. I mean, if you'd been to any protest since, what, 2017, you knew exactly what it was gonna be. It was a bunch of people out there having a good time. Funny signs, people honking, goofy costumes sometimes. And, like, I took my kids, you know, like, we made it about 20 minutes because it was basically nap time and it was hot, and they were like, where am I? Why is everyone honking? But it was fun. And, like, obviously that was gonna be the case.
- [09:02]
Graham Grant Platner
And.
- [09:02]
Tommy Vietor
And the most patriotic thing you can do in this country is criticize your country and fight to make it better. And that's what everyone is doing. And Speaker Johnson knows that, and he's just playing along with the Trump show.
- [09:13]
Graham Grant Platner
Love it.
- [09:13]
Jon Favreau
You. I think you went downtown. We were. We were in Hollywood with the kids. I feel like that was a bit. That was the big one downtown.
- [09:20]
John Lovett
I like the downtown is where I went the last time. A similar vibe. This time it does feel like. And I think, you know, this. This does feel like what the no King protest is, which. It is the kind of, like, umbrella for all the different protest movements and groups that we've seen. Because there were, you know, anti ice protests. There were the no Kings people. There were people out there for Prop 50. There were, like, lefty groups there. You know, there's everybody handing out Their pamphlets, which I try not to grab because what am I doing with a pamphlet? Nothing.
- [09:47]
Jon Favreau
Nothing.
- [09:48]
John Lovett
Absolutely nothing.
- [09:49]
Jon Favreau
You know, like, just give them your email address.
- [09:50]
John Lovett
You know, it's funny though, because, like, you think of, like, what should Johnson say? Like, not the right thing to do. I'm not worried about, like, what should he be saying? And he should say, like, if they were really trying to, like, minimize it, it wouldn't be to describe a hate America rally. Then it's a big controversy and you show the protests and you show what he says. People can judge with their eyeballs. You would. If you would say something like, I'm glad they're expressing their rights. I think what they're doing is a bit overblown, but they have the right to protest as anybody else, and I wish them luck. When they're done, we'll be on to the next thing. Right? Like, there's like a way you could handle it to try to minimize it politically, which they're unwilling to do in part because I really think, like, that's the bubble that they're in. Like, I, you know, these, these guys are now in a little, like, bubble of their own, like, like turning each other up and spinning each other up about this. And they're not getting, like, good advice or good feedback or good information.
- [10:38]
Jon Favreau
He did say at one point, he's like, the irony of the whole thing is, you know, they were able to protest because he's not a king. Like, if he really was a king, they wouldn't be able to protest.
- [10:48]
Tommy Vietor
This was like, how literal are you?
- [10:49]
Jon Favreau
I know once you get past the AI videos of shitting on people and the hate America stuff, you get some Republicans and some not Republicans on on Twitter and social media elsewhere saying like, one, is he really a king? Is he acting like a king because he won a. He won a free and fair election. And aren't they just piss the Republicans president and they just want a Democrat president instead? And then the other, you know, critique was, what was the point of that? What were they. What were they trying to do? What do you guys. What would you say to people who say, what was the point of that?
- [11:22]
John Lovett
Yeah, just because someone was duly elected doesn't mean they can't do an autocratic takeover faster than you could imagine or.
- [11:30]
Jon Favreau
Slowly seen that a few different places throughout history.
- [11:32]
John Lovett
The fact that we are. And currently would you suggest we wait to protest until we're not allowed? What's the sense in that? The whole point is to do it while you still can't. I wish You. I, like, I hope you're right. Right. Like, I hope you actually sincerely now have convinced yourself that this is all overblown. But the challenge of dealing with a government like this is your worries feel too early, and then they feel too late. Well, I'd rather us do this too early, even if you are right.
- [11:55]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. I do think the point of it was for a lot of people in the country who don't like what's happening and are probably a little scared. You see that other people came out and you're like, wait, I'm not alone. There's a whole bunch of people who have the courage to come out and protest. It went, okay. We did it. It gets people, like, excited. It also sends a message to Trump that he's. Because, like, they can say whatever they want. They see the pictures, they see the numbers. Like, they know. They know what it means. And so I think it's really important to, like, have that show. Have that, like, show of, you know, protest.
- [12:31]
Tommy Vietor
He barely won the popular vote this time, but now his approval is underwater. A lot of people who disapprove of what he's doing were out there on the streets, and it's, you know, sending a message to him and also sending a message to the midterm.
- [12:42]
Jon Favreau
It's also, like, this is not a. It's hard to get our minds wrapped around. This is not just, like, election to election anymore. This is, like, now, you know, in facing an authoritarian takeover of the country, it's gonna take, like, a long movement that spans many elections and maybe many years, to be honest. And I think getting the muscle going of getting out into the streets and protesting when we need to is really important.
- [13:09]
John Lovett
Absolutely. I also would say, by the way, it doesn't take right now in America very much courage to go out there on. On the street. It's completely safe for everybody to protest. We don't live in authoritarian regime. There are.
- [13:19]
Jon Favreau
But people needed to know that. I think. I think it was. That's why it was good to do it, because people are like, okay, phew, you're right.
- [13:24]
John Lovett
Totally. No, totally agree. But, like. Like, there are acute and very serious threats and warning signs about how dark this could get for a lot of people. They already live in an authoritarian state. If you're an undocumented person, you already live there. Different people are having a different experience of this, and it's affecting. If you're James Comey, you're in it, right? Like, it's. It's. It doesn't happen everywhere all at once. I do think when people say, like, what was this all for? What is the point of that? First of all, it's a show of this incredible amount of people that all feel the same way that are part of this big movement. That's great. But I would say when you see that there are seven to eight or whatever, millions of people that are willing to come out this way, very organically organized, it does tell you that there's a big amount of enthusiasm and energy that isn't being directed, that isn't being used effectively in the days in between, that there are ways this big group of people can be mobilized to do more than just stand up and like, make their voices heard during a protest. There are ways we need to be activated to make us a political force that corporations or institutions, colleges, media companies, others are more nervous about or more worried about. I do think that's the next phase.
- [14:20]
Jon Favreau
J.D. vance and Pete Hegseth spent no Kings Day a few hours south of here at Camp Pendleton to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps. For some reason, they decided that the celebration should include firing live artillery shells over Interstate 5, one of the biggest freeways in California. Our pal Governor Newsom had strongly objected for safety reasons and decided to close a 17 mile stretch of the five during the ceremony. The Vice President's office had responded to that by accusing Newsom of wanting people to think the exercise is a dangerous show of force when it was really just routine training. A statement that did not age all that well after a 155 millimeter shell exploded over the freeway, sending pieces of shrapnel flying onto California Highway Patrol vehicles that were part of, wait for it, J.D. vance's motorcade. Tommy, you have any idea what the hell they were thinking?
- [15:11]
Tommy Vietor
I don't get this. Like an M777 howitzer fires a hundred pound shell that can go 19 miles. Why are we doing this over the highway? What's the point? I know it's the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps. It did feel like Vance was trying to send a message being like, this is real America, by the way. We got the big guns, we got the big weapons, go have your little protest. But we're going to do adult shit over here with the things that can kill you. And it's just like it feels like one of those stories where if roles were reversed and a Democrat did this, Fox News would bury that politician with this story because it's so shockingly reckless, they were so shockingly arrogant.
- [15:51]
John Lovett
About it.
- [15:51]
Tommy Vietor
And then they were so catastrophically wrong. Like, if Newsom had not closed the highway, someone could have been killed.
- [15:58]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [15:58]
Tommy Vietor
Shrapnel falling from a howitzer shell on your car at 60, 70 miles an.
- [16:03]
Jon Favreau
Hour could kill you, couldn't you? Done some fireworks, some, you know, shot some blanks in the air. I don't know plenty of ways to celebrate our troops without firing live artillery over an American freeway.
- [16:17]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah.
- [16:18]
John Lovett
My view on this is that if you're going to fire missiles, you better destroy the five or quit fucking around. Yeah, the. The other part of it, I went and looked, and this is the 250th anniversary of means, which is. Which is a year long. They're marking it over the course of a year. And you can go look up all their official events that they're doing across the country, which did include events on the West Coast. This is not on that schedule, that planned series of events. There's all kinds of things. There's Fleet Week. There's events, like, everywhere. This wasn't on it. Like, I don't know when they added this 250th anniversary event.
- [16:50]
Jon Favreau
The Times talked to a current Marine Corps official and also, like a former. Both went on background, and they were, like, highly irregular. Don't know why this happened. The California Highway Patrol officials were, like, extremely dangerous. Didn't know why this happened.
- [17:07]
John Lovett
Like, the Highway Patrol was like, this is a very concerning. Why are we doing this? And by the way, like, it kind of is part of this. Like, what Vance actually said in his speech has kind of not gotten the attention it otherwise would have because they bombed a major thoroughfare. But. But he gives a very. You know, he, like, some of it is just a sort of pro Marines patriotic talk.
- [17:28]
Jon Favreau
He.
- [17:28]
John Lovett
Vance was a Marine and, like, kind of had a lot of inside jokes with everybody, which I'm sure he was excited to do. But he does also get up there and give a partisan speech about blaming Democrats for the shutdown and all the rest. And, like, they are using the military for partisan purposes in a way that previous presidents would never have done and previous administrations wouldn't have done. And as far as we can tell, they don't get any benefit of the doubt. That's what they were doing with this.
- [17:50]
Jon Favreau
Fake shit on Harry Sisson's head. Real shit on the five. It's just. It's bad, bad out there. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform. Create a professional website to showcase your offerings and attract clients. Whether you offer consultations, events or other experiences, Squarespace can help you grow your business. Squarespace offers a complete library of professionally designed and award winning website templates with options for every use and category. No matter where you start, your website is flexible to what you need with intuitive drag and drop editing, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects on brand, AI content, and more ways to list what you offer. No experience required. Every dream needs a domain. That's what I always say. Squarespace Domains makes it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all inclusive price. No hidden fees or add ons required. Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure your domain remains online and protected. Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life. Whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service, don't wait to claim your name. Invest in your dream domain today. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com crooked to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain, that's squarespace.com CROOKED.
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John Lovett
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- [19:27]
Tommy Vietor
Your lucky jersey, your chairs and your.
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John Lovett
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- [19:45]
Graham Grant Platner
Together.
- [19:46]
John Lovett
Let's drive.
- [19:51]
Jon Favreau
It seems like Trump isn't done militarizing California. Here he is on Fox News this weekend talking about his plans for San Francisco and a few other comments that may not help him beat the king allegations.
- [20:01]
John Lovett
I think they want us in San Francisco. San Francisco was truly one of the.
- [20:07]
Jon Favreau
Great cities of the world and then 15 years ago it went wrong.
- [20:11]
Graham Grant Platner
It went woke.
- [20:12]
John Lovett
But we're going to go to San.
- [20:14]
Jon Favreau
Francisco and we're going to make it great. I can use the Insurrection Act. 50% of the presidents almost have used that. I'm the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. You know that, right? A lot of people say, oh, he's the president, he should no, I'm the chief law enforcement.
- [20:32]
Graham Grant Platner
I'm allowed to be involved in it.
- [20:34]
John Lovett
I didn't know it was happening, but.
- [20:36]
Jon Favreau
I see John Bolton just got indicted.
- [20:38]
Graham Grant Platner
That's a good thing.
- [20:38]
Jon Favreau
He's a bad guy.
- [20:39]
Graham Grant Platner
I don't know what he did, but that's a bad.
- [20:41]
Jon Favreau
He's a bad guy.
- [20:43]
Graham Grant Platner
Stupid kind of a guy, actually.
- [20:45]
Jon Favreau
You know, first of all, it's not 50% of presidents that half the presidents did not invoke the Insurrection Act.
- [20:53]
Tommy Vietor
That one jumped out at me too.
- [20:54]
Jon Favreau
That was not true.
- [20:56]
Tommy Vietor
Fifteen years ago, San Francisco went woke. I'm sorry, sir, do you think that's a good point? Was it a conservative bastion in 1960s? What are you talking about?
- [21:05]
Jon Favreau
He's also not the chief law enforcement officer, that is the attorney General, but I guess because she is just a for him, than maybe he thinks he is. So fine, but let's start at the end there with the John Bolton indictment, which we haven't had a chance to talk about. Bolton has a special place on Trump's enemies list after Bolton published a book about his time serving as Trump's national security adviser. Wasn't favorable. But this indictment lays out a case that seems a bit more serious than the charges against Comey and Tish James. According to reporting by cnn, when he was briefed on the case, FBI Director Cash Patel said helpfully, why isn't this motherfucker in jail yet? What do you guys make of this one? Bolton1.
- [21:44]
John Lovett
So that quote from Patel was, I felt like revealing of, like, why this is. This one is very fraught, right? And it is a bit different than the Tish James one and the James Comey one and others that they've been trying. In those cases, you had prosecutors resign or get fired rather than bring charges they couldn't support. In this case, you had an investigation that was going on for years during the Biden administration into the ways in which Bolton was holding onto classified information for. For a book. But at the same time, DOJ didn't pursue charges during the Biden administration. Trump administration comes in, they look at it and as. And then Patel's like, what the fuck's going on here? We got him, right? We got one of Trump's enemies. That's so exciting. So Bolton is saying it's a political prosecution. Seems like there's a lot of truth to that, especially because there's reporting that some of the career prosecutors felt pressure to get to an indictment more quickly. On the other hand, it seems like there is a much more legitimate case here than there is in those other examples of someone collecting classified information. And so, you know, I talked about this with Leah Lippman for pots of America YouTube last week. And this is really unprecedented. A president brazenly saying, let's prosecute my enemies. There are going to be cases where they're going after people in illegitimate ways, but what happens when there is real evidence against someone and you don't know whether that case would have been brought but for the fact that it's a political enemy? And I just think that is, that is the danger of having a president who's describing themselves as the chief law enforcement officer and directing his underlings to prosecute political enemies.
- [23:11]
Jon Favreau
What did you think, Tommy?
- [23:12]
Tommy Vietor
This whole thing is so weird. I mean, I got this one so wrong. If the underlying facts are true, and there's a lot of reasons we shouldn't trust DOJ or Cash Patel and the FBI guys. But like I assumed, like John looked, for those who don't know, John Bolton's like an old school warmonger. He's like a Bush era warmonger, rock war guy. I assumed he had terrible policies, but that he would be like scrupulous when it came to the rules and not, you know, bringing home classified information, not putting classified information in unclassified servers or in his Gmail or whatever. But it sounds like he did that all day, every day when he was National Security Advisor for Donald Trump. The New York Times wrote the following. After sending one 24 page document about his time as the national security advisor, Mr. Bolton followed up with a message that read, none of which we talked about three exclamation points. One of the recipients wrote back, sh. These were emails or I assume signal, like some sort of messaging app, messages with his wife and daughter.
- [24:08]
Jon Favreau
So did he not think to use the invisible ink imessage?
- [24:12]
Tommy Vietor
I mean, so it's like shocking.
- [24:14]
Jon Favreau
You can't. That it goes away.
- [24:15]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I'm like, to your point, Lovett, like he was sending himself these notes presumably to help himself write this book that was then critical of Trump, which Trump tried to block the publication of. And there was a big court fight and ultimately was published. It seemed like this had been adjudicated and that the FBI had looked at all this stuff. The Trump administration came back, they raided his house in August, they found these notes and printed copies of his diaries and all the shit. And on top of that, it sounds like the Iranians hacked his email and got all this stuff and then started sending him threatening emails where they were suggesting that they would leak the fact that they had all this classified information as a form of blackmail. And so he informed the FBI about The hack, but not about the sensitive information within the hack, which is a little sketchy. I don't know. So it's all really weird. He seems like he's royally, he seems like he made some serious mistakes. I still think it's a political prosecution, but it's quite surprising.
- [25:09]
Jon Favreau
Tehran 1, Bolton 0.
- [25:11]
John Lovett
Yeah, right. But then you think like, well, this is what makes it so strange. It's like because they're all, these are like the sort of the damning moment of like, shh, you know, I sent this stuff. Right. But he's a smart guy. He also took all this information, turned it into a book which he gave to the administration to do a. Not to a non partisan career that.
- [25:28]
Tommy Vietor
Went through the review. Not all the notes he said.
- [25:30]
John Lovett
Of course, of course. But, but, but like the problem. Right. And this is why it seems there's, there's some reason to believe why the Biden administration didn't pursue this is a lot of people take notes that they deem unclassified, that they take out with them. I'm not saying what Bolton did wasn't crazy, but that they take these notes. If you went through the records for any of the book, the materials people are collecting for books, would you find classified information? The answer is almost certainly yes, because every time someone goes and grabs a box from Mike Pence's house or Joe Biden's house, there's some classified material or there's stuff that isn't necessarily part of a classified memo or brief, but that is classified because of the information contained within it. And that is a dangerous thing to pursue. So, like, you're left, like if we, if John Bolton is being politically prosecuted for a crime he did commit, like, that doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be dismissed by the courts because he's being targeted, especially because of his criticism of Trump.
- [26:22]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. I mean, zooming out on the whole thing. What matters is that you, that the government applies the law equally to everyone in the country, regardless of political party or friendship or with the president or if you've criticized the president. Right. And Biden's Justice Department, did they charge Donald Trump? Yes. Did they charge the President's son also? Yes. That would be an example of, okay, some people may have committed some crimes, but it doesn't matter who they are, we're going to charge them anyway. And if that was the kind of administration, then we would all be like, okay, here's the indictment. Let's see what happens with John Bolton at trial. And who knows? But like you can't do that now.
- [27:00]
Tommy Vietor
Equal treatment under the law would argue that Pete Hegseth should be getting prosecuted right now for putting a bunch of targets we were about to bomb in Yemen. Forgot about a signal chat with his wife and his personal lawyer. Right. Like, clearly, there is no fairness in the treatment of these two individuals. That said, I'm just blown away. Just would put this all in email.
- [27:21]
John Lovett
It's nuts.
- [27:21]
Tommy Vietor
And there's like. And it's like the.
- [27:23]
Jon Favreau
The.
- [27:24]
Tommy Vietor
The what you're, like, guarding against and when you classify something as damage to national security. The fact that the Iranians of all places, of all countries hacked his email and got access to all this stuff so bad, how they're gonna find out.
- [27:36]
John Lovett
That Donald Trump's an idiot?
- [27:37]
Jon Favreau
But, like, we can't.
- [27:38]
John Lovett
That's our information. That's a secret.
- [27:40]
Jon Favreau
I didn't handle classified information like. Like you did, Tommy. But just having been in the White House and what they told us about classified information and security clearances, every time there is a classified info scandal, mishandling Trump, Biden, Hillary Clinton, Pete Hegseth. I'm always just like, what?
- [27:59]
Tommy Vietor
Don't bring documents home also, what are you doing? Trump gets reelected.
- [28:02]
Graham Grant Platner
Burn your documents.
- [28:04]
Tommy Vietor
John Bolton, what were you doing?
- [28:06]
John Lovett
What are you keeping this information?
- [28:07]
Tommy Vietor
The other.
- [28:07]
John Lovett
Yeah, it's like, remember when Sandy Berger was sneaking stuff out with stuff in his socks?
- [28:10]
Jon Favreau
Sometimes I feel like the people with, like, the higher the clearance, the dumber they are. Yeah. Or they're like, they're just the most. The more reckless they are with their classified information.
- [28:18]
Tommy Vietor
Rhodes had a good line on this, which is like, a lot of these senior national security people think that they are, like, the key witness to history and they must get it right for the books. And it's like, you can see that in John Bolton. Every media appearance is like.
- [28:32]
John Lovett
Also, he's called his book the Room where it Happened after Hamilton.
- [28:37]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, that's wonderful.
- [28:38]
Tommy Vietor
That's our cringe.
- [28:39]
Jon Favreau
Meanwhile. Meanwhile, Trump just commuted George Santos sentence. Speaking of cringe. After speaking to him personally, Santos is now free and back on Cameo, where I assume he'll be recording a Lessons Learned series.
- [28:50]
Tommy Vietor
And Onlyfans.
- [28:52]
Jon Favreau
And Onlyfans for some lucky viewers.
- [28:54]
Tommy Vietor
That was a joke. But maybe it's a joke preview. Maybe it's a joke.
- [28:58]
Jon Favreau
Who knows? Who knows? Unfortunately, there won't be any mercy shown to the people who were victims of Santos's fraud because Trump said he won't have to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution that he owes. That seems fair, right?
- [29:13]
John Lovett
Look, it's also the, the, the amount of work and effort that the Department of Justice puts into, like, putting together the case they got. He pled guilty. He admitted to his crimes. He wasn't, like, convicted by a jury. He admitted it.
- [29:26]
Jon Favreau
This is why you can be angry about the Bolton prosecution, you know, like, whether or not the facts line up. And he actually did it right like this. Like, he commuted George Santos for what? For nothing. Did he serve a lot of time? No, it's a seven year sentence. It's like three months.
- [29:40]
Tommy Vietor
Was he prosecuted for defrauding a disabled U.S. navy veterans dying service dogs, go fund me. Or was that just an allegation?
- [29:49]
John Lovett
I looked. I'm not. I believe that what he pleaded to was only the campaign finance related crimes, the living off of the money and the defrauding people. And also don't. He did a lot of recurring payments. Like, these aren't like, the money in restitution wasn't for, like, fancy people. It's for a lot of that money is for people that were charged for these recurring donations that they hadn't agreed to.
- [30:08]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah.
- [30:08]
Jon Favreau
The Navy veteran did say in one of the stories that he was, like, sick to his stomach when he saw that this was about to happen. Yeah.
- [30:15]
Tommy Vietor
George Taylor is actually a bad guy. You know, it sucks that he's become this, like, media darling. He's like, doing Fox and Friends and he's like, kind of seen as, like, funny, being rehabilitated. The guy sucks.
- [30:26]
Jon Favreau
If you commit a crime and you kiss Donald Trump's ass, good chance that you get off, you're out of jail. If you say something bad about Donald Trump and you did or did not commit a crime, you're eligible for prosecution under this government. That's where it stands on San Francisco. Trump's been talking about this for a while, though. I'm not so sure that they want us their part. Unless you count Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, who told the New York Times from aboard his private jet that he'd welcome federalized troops and that he fully supports Trump. This is a man who donated millions of dollars to Democrats, one of the big Democratic donors in years past. A few days later, the Times reported, based on internal documents that they'd seen, Benioff is trying to get ICE to use Salesforce technology to meet its hiring goals. Try ZipRecruiter Ice. The day after that, Benioff apologized for asking Trump to send troops and said he realized they weren't necessary after all.
- [31:21]
John Lovett
Amazing.
- [31:22]
Jon Favreau
Peak 2025. Let's just talk about Benioff for a second. What do you think the apology was about? That's what I want to know. Like, did you. Did you mistakenly think that there should be federal troops in San Francisco, or did you just mistakenly say it and your PR people got upset?
- [31:38]
John Lovett
Well, so in that Times interview, the very end of the story, I'm just gonna quote it at the end of the interview, he. Benioff turned to a public relations executive. He could be heard asking why her mouth was wide open. And if he had said anything he shouldn't have. What about the political questions he asked? Too spicy. So I think that gets where the thing began to.
- [31:57]
Jon Favreau
Too spicy.
- [31:58]
Tommy Vietor
Too spicy.
- [31:59]
John Lovett
Too spicy. Picante.
- [32:01]
Jon Favreau
That's so good. A little spicy.
- [32:02]
John Lovett
Little pecan day. Yeah. So it seems like something like there's a story about downtown Los Angeles. There's a street on downtown Los Angeles where a bunch of fruit vendors that have fruit they haven't sold, but they don't want to pay the commercial dumping fee. They just pour it on the ground. They just go. They open their trucks, they dump it on the ground. Huge problem, because it piles up over the week. The trash comes once a week. Big rats. Big rats downtown.
- [32:28]
Jon Favreau
Imagine a lot of flies, too, Chris.
- [32:30]
John Lovett
And so, yeah, and so this becomes a political problem, right? And you have, like, the mayor has to get involved, the city council has to get involved. And they're calling sanitation, and they're calling the police, and they're doing patrols. This just happened a couple weeks ago, but it was getting worse and worse for a long time. So you get the press in there, you get a controversy. You get people to care about it. Where are the cops? Where's sanitation? Who's responsible for this? Because it's politics, right? This is a new problem. You're gonna have to be punitive. You're gonna have to be reparative. You're gonna have to figure out what to do, right? But, like, all of these guys that, like, are on their private jets, like, they don't wanna do politics, right? They don't want to persuade people in San Francisco that they need more policing or that they need to change policies or they've been too lenient on whatever, on drug abuse or on street homelessness, right? They just want Donald Trump Big Daddy to come in and solve it. But what happens when Benioff goes out there and says this? Well, he hears about it from maybe his own staff. He hears about it from politicians he works with, right? Because he's a local leader and his company works closely with the government. Right. What happens is politics erupts all around him, and then all of a sudden, politics prevails and he's like, oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't want Donald Trump to come in and solve all my problems because I talk to the people that are actually part of making this decision.
- [33:34]
Jon Favreau
And also, there's no evidence at all that any of these National Guard deployments have solved any problem anywhere. In fact, San Francisco has a relatively new mayor in Daniel Lurie, who has been doing a great job and actually sort of, you know, handling their crime problem. And again, if it flares up, maybe you want the local police to sort of help crack down as opposed to National Guard troops, who, when they went to D.C. and other places, were literally just cleaning up trash and taking pictures with tourists.
- [34:04]
Tommy Vietor
I'm pretty sure Marc Benioff lives in Hawaii.
- [34:07]
Jon Favreau
Maybe that's when he realized San Francisco has started turning itself around.
- [34:10]
Tommy Vietor
I mean, all the rich people in San Francisco live in an area called Billionaires Row, which is this beautiful place in like Pac Heights where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge. And they're all mad about.
- [34:18]
Jon Favreau
These are your former neighbors?
- [34:19]
Tommy Vietor
My former. I lived in a eight story building in a one bedroom apartment. But yes, they were. I was close to them. I was east of them. But they're all mad about downtown because there's a serious homeless problem and there's like really horrible open air drug use, etc. But the National Guard gonna solve that? Are they gonna be policing fentanyl use in the tenderloin? Like, I don't think that's the way this is gonna go down.
- [34:42]
Jon Favreau
Really. He's just like picking cities now and sending them, and then he's doing the whole Insurrection act thing. So it's like, you know, I mean, the ninth Circuit ruled on Monday that Trump can deploy the National Guard to Portland over the governor's objections. Got a different ruling in the 7th Circuit about Chicago. So it's. That's going to the Supreme Court. But I think the Trump people are thinking like, whatever the Supreme Court rules, we think they're going to rule for us. But even if they rule against us, then we'll just use the Insurrection act and we'll get them there anyway. So either way, they're getting troops in the cities. What will they be doing there? What will they be helping? There's, there's just no plan. There's no, nothing realistic about what they would actually do to help solve anyone's problems. It's just I think a show of.
- [35:20]
Tommy Vietor
Force to fucking scare people snatching nitrous balloons in Dolores park, hopefully arresting some tech guys for talking about their equity loudly at the bar.
- [35:29]
Jon Favreau
I mean, now, now that should be a crime. This is, this is what we need to deploy National Guard to cities for. I wouldn't open it up if there's a Democratic president someday.
- [35:37]
John Lovett
Yeah.
- [35:38]
Jon Favreau
So no word yet on whether ICE is going to shell out for Salesforce, but we do know that they are spending a ton on new tech. The Washington Post reported on Friday that the agency is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on technology upgrades, including an iris scanning app that would be your eye. New surveillance drones and software that allows them to hack into people's phones or track their location without a warrant. Lovely. Remember that Trump's bill earmarked $170 billion for border and immigration operations. So they got a lot of money to play with here. $172 million of which they're apparently using to buy two brand new Gulfstream jets for Kristi Noem. Noem said on Monday that the planes are, quote, necessary for the mission of the Coast Guard, which I guess is to, like, transport her ass around. Yeah, on private planes.
- [36:27]
Tommy Vietor
That's right.
- [36:28]
John Lovett
That's a boat thing. That's a boat. Hey, come on. That can't be right. That's a boat thing.
- [36:34]
Tommy Vietor
Which is under DHS for some reason.
- [36:36]
Jon Favreau
I think the worst part.
- [36:37]
John Lovett
Because of 9 11.
- [36:38]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [36:38]
Jon Favreau
So I think the worst part about the story is that as I was reading through it a couple times, like, DHS and ICE refuse to even say when asked by members of Congress or reporters that they won't hack into the phones of American citizens without a warrant. Like which. Which leads you to wonder, how are any of us supposed to know that our government isn't spying on everything that we say?
- [36:58]
Tommy Vietor
And they could be. I mean, this is the scariest part of them designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization because it allows you to unlock all these authorities to spy on people and do things that are just extra, that are not constitutional. And, you know, I think there was a point in time when spying was a time and labor intensive thing. You like wiretap a house, you have to record everything the person's saying. Someone transcribe it. You, like, piece it together. Now it's all bulk collection and it's all searched with AI and it's.
- [37:28]
Jon Favreau
Thank you, Sam Altman, again.
- [37:29]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, again, thank you, tech. And it's just very scary to think what, you know, dhs, with certain authorities and certain technologies And a big Palantir contract could do. We could all be swept up in this stuff.
- [37:42]
Jon Favreau
Well, it's also like so many of these actions that the Trump administration is taking pretty quickly get challenged in court. And this is like, who's gonna challenge it in court if we don't know that they're spying on us? I don't know what. Like, I know Congress is trying, but you get some Democrats asked hopefully, maybe you get people like your Rand Pauls and your Thomas Massie's that are concerned about this, but like, what the fuck?
- [38:05]
John Lovett
In the examples where like they've grabbed somebody during an ICE protest and they said this person assaulted a police officer and was impeding an investigation, and so we've charged them with a felony and then. Or we're planning to charge them with a felony, that's why we grabbed them, that's why they've been in jail for three days or whatever it may be, and then they just quietly drop it. Right? Cuz they can't back up the evidence. So they scare people, make people feel afraid to be at these protests. And then when they have to present the evidence to a judge, it all falls apart. Like what happens when they start unleashing this kind of technology on a massive scale and sweeping a bunch of people up? Does it ultimately hold up? At some point human beings have to become involved and make an argument in front of a judge for now. But in the meantime, a lot of people are gonna be scared. A lot of people get swept up on it if it, if it is, if they kind of take it to its logical conclusion. I remember when, like in my previous relationship, like Ronan was a journalist and he was dealing with companies like Black Cube and others that were developing these technologies to hack into people's phones. And I remember him talking about how dangerous it would be if this became used by law enforcement in the United States, that foreign autocratic governments were already using it. What happens if it comes here? And I remember feeling like, boy, that's far fetched.
- [39:13]
Jon Favreau
Well, and apparently the Biden administration had a contract with this company that can hack into your phone without you knowing. And when it came to light and there were like civil libertarian concerns about it, they like canceled the contract back in like 21 or 22. And of course the Trump administration probably came to office and was like, what? You canceled the contract? This is amazing. We want this. We want this. In the hands of Kristi Noem and.
- [39:38]
Tommy Vietor
Tom Homan, this proliferation of basically spyware for hire is one of the scary things that's happened in the last decade. There's this great group in Toronto called the Citizen Lab where they just, you know, try to help people who have been attacked. But like basically it's a bunch of the industry is really prevalent in Israel and it's a bunch of ex Mossad, ex unit 8002 hundreds intel people who then go into private service and basically recreate the tools available to state actors and sell them to the worst regimes on the planet. And they use them. They claimed it's been the name of terrorism, but they go after journalists, dissidents, critics, Jamal Khashoggi. Right. Like that's what's happening out there. But the other, the scary piece of this for us Americans is that DHS has been fully politicized, right? Like Corey Lewandowski trumps on again, off again campaign manager was is reportedly like the shadow secretary of homeland security, maybe also dating Kristi Noem. All these professionals and career people who would say no are getting pushed out. Like lawyers are getting pushed out, inspectors general are getting pushed out. All the people that would put the brakes on things that are unconstitutional or illegal are no longer in the building in a lot of cases. And like, God help us if you.
- [40:55]
Jon Favreau
Know, Marc Benioff and a lot of the Silicon Valley geniuses. You know, where they could be really useful is coming up with a technology to block this kind of spyware for people that would be a useful thing for America.
- [41:05]
Tommy Vietor
Now you sound like the Antichrist.
- [41:08]
John Lovett
I think it's an awesome.
- [41:09]
Jon Favreau
Me and Greta.
- [41:10]
John Lovett
You just, you turn your phone off. I think that's. That's a good.
- [41:13]
Tommy Vietor
Throw it in the river.
- [41:14]
Jon Favreau
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John Lovett
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Jon Favreau
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- [43:03]
Jon Favreau
The peace president is also very busy bringing peace to our southern neighbors, whether they like it or not. He recently ordered the sixth and seventh known military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea allegedly carrying drugs. The strikes occurred last Thursday and Friday, although we only found out about the seventh strike after Pete Hegseth tweeted about it on Sunday. Trump announced on Saturday that two survivors of Thursday's strike are being repatriated back to their home countries, Ecuador and Colombia, for, quote, detention and prosecution. On Saturday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on Twitter that an attack in September had killed an innocent Colombian fisherman in Colombian waters and accused Trump of murder. Trump then accused Petro of being a, quote, illegal drug dealer with a fresh mouth toward America. A fresh mouth? He said he would cut off aid to Colombia, subject them to new tariffs, and seem to threaten an invasion. Meanwhile, huge amounts of American military personnel and equipment are massing in the Caribbean as Trump continues to hint at some kind of offensive against mainland Venezuela. Tommy, what's the situation down there right now? Is this saber rattling? Is this actual prep for war? Like, what the fuck are they all thinking?
- [44:12]
Tommy Vietor
I'm really, really scared about what's happening with respect to Venezuela. Like, I saw a paper from CSIS the other day that said more than 10% of all deployed US naval assets are currently located in the Southern Command area of responsibility. So remember, we've all been talking for like a decade that China was the real threat and dealing with them in the Pacific, that was the threat we had to counter. But 10% of naval assets are in, in the Caribbean for Venezuela. Like that's pretty disconcerting. And just think about the policy that we just talked about with the bombing of these boats that are allegedly narco traffickers. So the people on these boats are so dangerous and such a threat to the United States that the US military can kill them without a trial, without charging them with anything extrajudicial murder. But when we capture them, we return them to the countries they came from. We don't bring them to the United States to prosecute them. That doesn't suggest an administration that is confident in the legality of what it's doing.
- [45:11]
Jon Favreau
I haven't heard of a legal justification yet for this, except for Marco Rubio saying, well, we've designated Trend Aragua as terrorist organization. But like the US Government designates a foreign organization as a terrorist organization, that does not then give you the right to kill them. Like it's, it's suddenly a war. It does give you right to like freeze finances and gives you some other tools, but that doesn't, that doesn't give you the right to do extrajudicial killings.
- [45:37]
John Lovett
Well, their justification is that because they've described the drug cartels as terrorist non state actors. The members of those cartels are unlawful combatants which they can kill at any time, I guess anywhere on earth, which.
- [45:49]
Jon Favreau
They also can't do because Congress did not authorize that action. Like they, the reason that Al Qaeda got fell under that is because Congress authorized the action.
- [45:57]
John Lovett
I don't think they should be doing it.
- [45:58]
Jon Favreau
No, I'm just saying like it's even.
- [46:00]
John Lovett
Crazier, it's not justified. But the. Forget like not being able to prosecute them. Wouldn't these people have information that you want? You claim that these are the most dangerous people on earth at risk of killing 25,000. This one boat could kill 25,000Americans. You don't wanna ask a couple questions? Yeah. Who do you report to?
- [46:17]
Tommy Vietor
I think the broader challenge is like, first of all they're making up this policy rationale because fentanyl is not produced in Venezuela. It is chemicals from China that get shipped to Mexico, they get turned into fentanyl there that come to the United States. That's how it goes, that's how it works. Everyone knows that cocaine is a problem in southern Colombia. Yeah, but like, yeah, like 60% of cocaine I think is produced in Colombia. A lot of it goes through Ecuador. Maybe 10 to 13% of global cocaine supply goes through Venezuela, according to a.
- [46:46]
Jon Favreau
Lot of demand at Mar a Lago.
- [46:48]
Tommy Vietor
A lot of demand at Mar a Lago. So what this is is an ideological desire to take out Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela. And like, let's just be clear, he's a bad guy. He's a left wing autocrat. He lost the last election and then he stole it. Like, I'm not a Maduro fan. But again, you have 10% of naval assets deployed to the Caribbean. You've got the President having the CIA. He signed off on the CIA taking covert action in Venezuela to do. We don't really know what. You've got the military, like practicing operations 90 miles off the coast of Venezuela and all of Venezuela, the government, the people are preparing for war. Like they think there's going to be an invasion. And if that happens, like Venezuela is a big ass place. It's the size of France and Germany combined. They have like pretty real deal, pretty modern Russian air defense systems along the coastline. Like, everything about this is so insane to me. But these guys, like Trump is like every like 10 flashing red lights right now that he wants a conflict with Venezuela.
- [47:53]
Jon Favreau
I mean, you know who else wasn't a good guy who didn't have a lot of fans in America? Saddam Hussein. Was that a good idea?
- [47:59]
Tommy Vietor
Or Kim Jong Un to take him out?
- [48:00]
Jon Favreau
Vladimir Putin also, like, are we drawing Colombia into this too now? Because he's a lefty president that they don't like.
- [48:07]
Tommy Vietor
Well, Petro was mean to Trump when he was at the un he said something about Palestinian rights, so he like kicked him out of the country. And now, so I guess we're threatening them.
- [48:15]
John Lovett
Yeah. I also worry that one lesson Trump takes away from Iraq and other conflicts is as long as there are no American boots on the ground, you can really get away with whatever. The American people don't see it as a war unless there are American troops on the ground. And so he thinks that he can escalate and escalate. And now all of a sudden we're in some kind of a bombing campaign against Venezuela and we are getting deeper and deeper into this conflict. But it's not going to. He's not, he doesn't worry about the political ramifications of it because he is afraid of putting troops on the ground.
- [48:45]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I think the boots on the ground he probably knows would be crazy. I don't think airstrikes is off the table. I think it's probably pretty likely. And he keeps threatening, like, now we're going to take out the land crossings, which means bombing Venezuela proper. I've talked to people who worked in the first Trump term, who said, like, it really seemed like he wanted to take out Maduro then. And he. Since when he says, like, we should have taken the oil. He sincerely believes that. And Venezuela's got a ton of oil reserves, and I think they think that they could take out Maduro, maybe install some more, you know, US friendly dictator in there, and then things will be better. But I just, I think that's insane. I think it's very likely that if you take out Maduro, there will be power struggles and civil war and the migration crisis that makes the one we've seen to date from Venezuela look pretty tame. And it.
- [49:34]
Jon Favreau
I'm sure we'll welcome everyone who comes from Venezuela and potentially Colombia. Right.
- [49:38]
John Lovett
On the other hand, letting the CIA stretch some old muscles, right? I know a South American coup.
- [49:44]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [49:45]
John Lovett
John Bolton will be like, I fucked this up.
- [49:47]
Tommy Vietor
This is what I'm made for. Someone stuck around.
- [49:49]
Graham Grant Platner
I know.
- [49:49]
Jon Favreau
No longer in the room where it happened. Yeah. Not every country in Latin America is at odds with the Trump administration. One place where the relationship is going swimmingly, for lack of a better word, is Bukele's El Salvador. On Sunday, the Washington Post revealed that in order to gain access to seekot the Salvadoran torture dungeon where the administration ultimately sent hundreds of migrants, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Andre Romero, Marco Rubio promised Bukele that the Justice Department would, per the Post headline, betray US Informants. Tommy, you and Ben covered the story on Pod Save the World. You've talked about it here before, too. But like any new details from the Washington Post Rubio story that you. You think are worth mentioning?
- [50:31]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I mean, I think the very, very quick Backstory is in 2019, Trump set up this effort called Joint Task Force Vulcan, which was this law enforcement initiative that was designed to take down MS.13. As part of that, they arrested a bunch of people from El Salvador, brought them to the US and were prosecuting them. Fast forward to Trump 2.0. And they cut this deal with Naya Bukele, who calls himself the world's coolest dictator, who's the president of El Salvador, where the US Gets the ability to send these men, Venezuela men, mostly to this transnational gulag called Sukkot. And in exchange, Bukele wanted back some of these guys. We arrested the US Arrested as part of Joint Task Force Vulcan from the United States. And it all speaks to the fact that Bukele's government cut deals with the gangs to reduce crime. Basically, he cut deals with these gangs. Some of his people cut deals with where they said, kill who you want to kill, but just hide the bodies better. So it's not a public thing, so it's not a political issue. And the gangs did in political favors. And what we learned in this post report was that Rubio personally assured bukele that the US would hand over MS.13 leaders, even ones that we'd cut deals with to get information. It's like immunity for information or some sort of like treatment for information. So Rubio just like undercut people that agreed to work with the United States.
- [51:51]
Jon Favreau
And this is not just about like, oh, we should have been nicer to the gang members that we who cut deals with us and we're informants. Donald Trump has, you know, reliably informed us for two administrations now that Ms. 13 is incredibly dangerous and that we've got a. And they're, they're walking among us and they're, you know, they're murdering Americans. And so we've got to crack down on MS.13. So what do we do? We have the Justice Department and FBI trying to build cases against MS.13, try to flip MS.13 members so that they can give them information that would help them, you know, sort of capture other MS.13 members and instead we make a deal with a government that has let MS.13 members roam free and kill people quietly in their country and just sort of ruined the cases that all of the law enforcement officials in the United States spent years building against MS.13 with these informants for what? So we could send them to the Gulag, where they then were sent back to Venezuela after that. Like this was for nothing. So they could just have like snuff films of people being tortured and scare everyone about the, about ckot. Like there was no benefit to any of this.
- [53:06]
John Lovett
The. There was 60 Minutes did a story about this over the weekend. What it was like being inside the Department of Justice while this was all unfolding and you had this incredible amount of pressure to get these planes into the air, which included lying, if not just misleading a judge about what was happening in real time, all because it was so urgent to get these planes off the ground as quickly as possible.
- [53:31]
Tommy Vietor
Planes of Venezuela men.
- [53:32]
John Lovett
Planes of Venezuela men to El Salvador off the ground as quickly as possible. And it all came to what? Just nothing.
- [53:39]
Jon Favreau
Nothing.
- [53:39]
Tommy Vietor
It just speaks to like, look, so what we just talked about was Trump threatening to invade or, you know, sanction leftist leaders in Latin America and his right wing buddies, Pukele, Javier Milei in Argentina. People go to CPAC and kiss his ass. And are willing to do his bidding on immigration. They get favors, they get, you know, gang members who could turn on them, return to them. They get 20 to 40 billion dollar bailouts if you're an Argentinian. So it's a league of autocrats, completely personalized foreign policy.
- [54:10]
Jon Favreau
It's the illusion of order and control. And in reality, it's just a corruption racket and fuck everyone else. You don't real, you don't get real protection. You just get, you know, Trump and Bukele and everyone's having the illusion that they are tough on crime.
- [54:24]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. I mean, and look, Bukele did like reduce the homicide rate, but he did it by like indiscriminately throwing thousands of thousands of people in jail without charge, many of whom did absolutely nothing wrong. And they're just rotting in hell now.
- [54:39]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And apparently also letting gangs just kill people, but quietly so that we don't have to report it.
- [54:44]
Tommy Vietor
And letting gang leaders walk free if they help him politically.
- [54:47]
Jon Favreau
Let's talk about one more Trump has so far failed to resolve. The Friday meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was apparently not as, quote, cordial as Trump claimed. The Financial Times called the meeting volatile, the Washington Post tense, and CNN acrimonious. But every outlet confirmed that Trump pressured Zelenskyy to give up a critical region, the Donbas, to end the war as quickly as possible. Coincidence of all coincidences. Just a day earlier, Trump had spoken with Russia's Vladimir Putin, who again demanded part of the Ukrainian territory. So in about a month, Trump went from saying that Ukraine is, quote, in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form and pondering whether to contrib Tomahawk missiles to telling reporters on Monday that while Ukraine could win the war, he doesn't think they will. Tommy Trump has taken both sides of this one a lot. But it's pretty clear he's more easily swayed by Putin than by Zelensky or at the very least the last person he talks to. What do you think that's about? Is it more he loves the Autocrats or is there something else going on where he's just.
- [55:47]
Tommy Vietor
I don't know, man. The more times this happens, my head goes to straight up 2017, it's Mueller time conspiracies. Because there's just no making sense of this.
- [55:57]
Graham Grant Platner
Oh, oh, right.
- [55:57]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, yeah.
- [55:58]
Tommy Vietor
It's just.
- [55:59]
Jon Favreau
It's bad. My mind goes to. He's an idiot who I know everyone can ever. He's a feral genius at Marketing and communication, but he's an idiot when it comes to the last person I talk to, I'm persuaded by. And Putin's gonna butter me up and say this to me, and so I buy the talking points. Then I'm gonna be pissed at Zelensky.
- [56:17]
Tommy Vietor
Yes, yes. But, like, he just had the Alaska summit in August. I think going into the Alaska summit, Steve Wykoff, his, like, Swiss army knife golf buddy turned diplomat, had met with Putin and came away with a totally inaccurate impression of Putin's policies. Like, he thought he, Putin was ready to make a bunch of concessions. That didn't happen. So then they go to the meeting in Alaska, and Putin gives on nothing. Apparently spent like, two hours lecturing Trump about, like, you know, 17th century Ukrainian history and all the bullshit Putin does all the time. And Trump nearly walked out of that meeting and then canceled the lunch and left early and, like, to save face, had to pretend that things went okay. But it was disastrous. And he was angry. And that was why he started sort of talking up the Ukrainian side afterwards and, like, saying, like, oh, yes, we could support a security guarantee if it comes from Europe, and we could be a part of that in some sense, or at least sell them weapons. And then he set up a bunch of fake, like, in two weeks deadlines, like, I'll let you know in two weeks if. If Putin's tapping me along or not, or whatever it was. And so. So nothing happened. Nothing happened. And then in the lead up to this meeting, there was all this conversation about giving Ukraine Tomahawk missiles, and Trump played along with that, only to just let one phone call completely change his mind. I just don't get it.
- [57:35]
Jon Favreau
Well, I wonder if. I mean, Putin probably knows that that meeting in Alaska did not go well, or at least his advisors do, and maybe they. Or he came up with a new strategy to deal with Trump. It's like, next time, instead of lecturing him about the history of Ukraine, maybe you just say, hey, I want this war over too, and I just want a little land that we won fair and square. And then I want to give them the rest. And I don't know. I think Trump is easily, easily persuaded.
- [58:00]
John Lovett
Yeah, he's easily persuaded. He's also sent out there flattered. He's also directed, and not in a sort of nefarious way. He's directed by his staff about what he's meant to be doing in this moment. Right. But you can make sense of a lot of what's happened since he's become president a second time. If you take out this strange aberration of him suddenly becoming basically a neoconservative for like, what, like two weeks on Iran? No, on Ukraine. When he goes and he says, actually, I think Ukraine could win and we're gonna get behind them. Right? Like, you can take that out. And then he would have been like, you know, like, he's valueless. He doesn't care that Putin is the invader. He accepts the Putin language on, like, what happened here and that he accepts that this is some sort of long standing conflict that could only be resolved by both sides making concession because, oh, my God, they hate each other. And this is. I'm going to be the one to end it. There was just this strange moment where he suddenly sounded correct and said the right things according to all the kind of foreign policy establishment types. And you have to wonder, like, did someone say, hey, you know, we're trying to get something in these negotiations right now. Can you go out there and, you know, signal that you'd be willing to be harder on Russia? And he only has two set. He only goes 100. You know, he doesn't have. He's not a subtle man, but, you know, you can't make sense of it because he's not a sensible person.
- [59:15]
Jon Favreau
Meanwhile, the eighth war Trump claims to have resolved briefly roared back to life on Sunday. Israel cut off aid to Gaza for the day and launched a series of deadly airstrikes after saying two of their soldiers were killed. Although Hamas denied involvement, both sides accused the other of violating the ceasefire. But as of this recording, both also maintain their commitment to the deal, with aid reportedly flowing again on Monday. Vice President J.D. vance is also expected in Israel on Tuesday after Trump's Co Peace Prize winners Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spoke with Netanyahu in Israel on Monday. What's your sense of the fragility or strength of the deal, Tommy? Do you think it's a big deal or.
- [59:52]
Tommy Vietor
It's hard to say. Look, I think my fear is that Trump will primarily view success as being getting the hostages back, and that's all he'll care about. And so if once a week, the Israelis breach the deal, bomb some targets in Gaza, restrict aid, refuse to open the Rafah crossing, he might just not care about that. And again, like, this is what's been so frustrating about the coverage of this deal generally, like, I give him credit for doing a ceasefire, getting a ceasefire and a hostage release, nothing about this is a permanent rethinking of governance in Gaza. None of it's about Palestinian Determination. There is nothing about a next generation of leaders. For the Palestinian people, it was just this little narrow thing, which is a big and important piece of it. But Gaza reconstruction is going to be a generational project. It hasn't even. The war's not really ended, the war's not over. And figuring out how that next part can begin is going to require, like, Hamas disarming some sort of stability force, like all these other steps. And it's just, it's kind of bumping along.
- [61:01]
John Lovett
Yeah. You know, it certainly hasn't been a 3,000 year peace as he claimed it would be. It wasn't even, what, like, maybe three days. And so it's like, is it a ceasefire at this point? It's kind of a secession of hostilities you hope holds. But it's like Trump's ego then gets wrapped up in the fact that he considers himself a peacemaker, and he looks at any ways in which that's violated as like an ego wound to him. So when there are the videos of Hamas killing people inside of Gaza, he defends it in a deeply strange way, like, oh, those are criminals. Don't worry about that. Until he realizes it's getting to the point where it's reflecting poorly on him. And then he says, oh, we're going to actually eradicate Hamas if they break the ceasefire. And so, like, he, like everybody dealing with Trump knows that it's about, it's about how it looks to him, about him. Yeah. And so, like, Netanyahu will suck up to him and figure out a way to try to make him think it's Hamas's fault if it falls apart. By the way, there were, like, you know, like, Israel is claiming that Hamas is breaking the ceasefire. Hamas is going to claim Israel's breaking the ceasefire. Meanwhile, like, it's not a peace deal because it's just a brief ceasefire, because the fundamental conflict in the region remains. And by the way, in the west bank, things are getting worse in real time as well.
- [62:17]
Jon Favreau
I mean, what Trump wants more than anything else is for this conflict to just go away. Yeah, he doesn't care about peace. He cares about, like you said, the perception of peace.
- [62:25]
John Lovett
Yeah.
- [62:26]
Jon Favreau
Like, that's all he cares about. And honestly, that's the same with Ukraine. He just wants the war over. He doesn't care if the Ukrainians are screwed. He just wants the fucking hostilities to end. Or at least he can say that he helped end them. This is all he really wants.
- [62:40]
Tommy Vietor
What's the Nobel Prize? He wants a Nobel Prize. He wants to be called the Peace faker. He wants us to all buy his line about, you know, stopping eight wars, even though it's all made up.
- [62:48]
Jon Favreau
And it's like, who's going to make deals with the United States or let the United States broker deals when Trump's word is, you know, worth shit? Because, like, he only wants to get through the next news cycle and get a few good headlines like no one. All right, when we come back from the break, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner. But two quick reminders before we do that. Alex Wagner's great new series, Runaway country goes live this Thursday, October 23rd. This show is all about talking to the regular Americans who are actually being affected by the Trump insanity. It's excellent. Very excited for everyone to hear it. Make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. Also, love its special series Bravo America, about how reality TV drives our culture and our politics. Drops every Tuesday in the love it or leave it feed. Who'd you get this week I talked.
- [63:36]
John Lovett
To Parvati Shallow, one of the great survivor players of all time. She was raised on a hippie commune, becomes one of the most renowned villains of reality television in part because she was a smart woman, which was enraging. But she talks about what it's like to be seen as a villain. Chuck talks about what it was like to be a woman in reality TV as reality TV and our culture started being more honest about the way women were being treated on and off screen. It was like a fascinating conversation which is out right now.
- [64:09]
Jon Favreau
Check it out on the Love it or leave it feed or on YouTube. Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. The holidays are upon us and businesses are hiring for seasonal roles. Everything from haunted corn maze workers to lead elves and real bearded Santas to snowplow drivers. Okay, that means that people with certain skills, experience, or even a special license are in high demand and not easy to find. Whether you're hiring for one of these roles or any other role, the best way to find the perfect match for your role is on ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try it for free@ziprecruiter.com Crooked ZipRecruiter's matching technology works fast to find top talent so you don't waste time or money. You can find out right away how many job seekers in your area are qualified for your role. With ZipRecruiter's advanced resume database, you can instantly unlock top candidates contact info. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. We've used ZipRecruiter here at Cricket and boy has it helped. Really help us find great a lot of resumes. Sorting the resumes is.
- [65:11]
John Lovett
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Jon Favreau
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- [65:35]
Tommy Vietor
OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow, gaps on Deck's loans up to $250,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trust pilot reviews, On Deck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes@ondeck.com depending on certain loan attributes. Your business loan may be issued by Ondeck or Celtic Bank. Ondeck does not lend to North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. My guest today is a veteran oyster farmer and Maine Senate candidate, Graham Platner. Graham Grant to see you.
- [66:14]
Graham Grant Platner
Thank you very much, Tommy. Thanks for having me here.
- [66:16]
Tommy Vietor
Thank you for doing the show and thank you for bearing with 15 minutes of Amazon web service. Amazon related tech problems at the jump here. It's been very fun. Thank you. Jeff Bezos. Okay, I want to cover a bunch of stuff with you, but first I just wanted to ask you about this kind of flurry of news reports about Reddit posts you made between 2009 and 2021. There's an Axios headline this past week that, that described the week for you guys. Is Bernie Back? Main Senate candidate melts down. So maybe by the end of the conversation we can fact check that headline too and you tell me if that's how you feel. Yeah, Axios. Yeah, they summon it all up for you. Primary in June. So the first Reddit post I wanted to ask you about is from 2013. So someone wrote on Reddit, what is one question you've always wanted to ask someone of another race? You responded, why don't black people tip? I work as a bartender and it always Amazes me how solid the stereotype is. Every now and again a black patron will leave a 15 to 20% tip, but usually it is between 0 and 5%. There's got to be a reason behind it. What is it? How did you feel rereading that post? And what's your response to people who hear that and think that is like textbook racism and it's offensive?
- [67:27]
Graham Grant Platner
One I was legitimately asking the question. I mean, that was the point of the thread, was to ask the question. Amusingly enough, I remember this time when I had first started bartending and then I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was black, who was a bartender, who did a great job of walking me through structural injustice and the fact of feelings of lack of agency. There were a whole bunch of reasons. And after that I was like, oh yeah, that makes absolutely perfect sense. It was certainly not meant as a malicious thing. I was asking the question because that is. That was kind of the point of the thread, actually.
- [68:04]
Tommy Vietor
So you're saying that this is not something that you were shitposting about? This was not something that you felt. It wasn't meant to be a commentary. It was a question you were sincerely asking on a Reddit thread because you thought there might be some sort of cultural explanation or something? Is that what you were saying?
- [68:22]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah, there was a. I grew up in Maine. I had never bartended before. I was living in Washington, D.C. and I mean, I honestly, I reread a lot of the comments for obvious reasons. Many of them, I'm like, oh God, that one, I must say, like, I mean, I was legitimately curious and it was not, certainly not meant in any malicious way. And I got an answer soon afterwards in reality, from an actual person, but got it.
- [68:50]
Tommy Vietor
Okay, so another one that's gotten a lot of attention is there were posts from 2013 where it seemed like you were playing down the challenges faced by members of the military who were trying to report sexual assault allegations. The first post was, in today's current climate, when every whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a feature length film, anyone who actually thinks the military is purposely covering up rape to save a career of some goddamn captain is clearly both an idiot and junior enough in rancor life experience to think it matters. And then there was another post where you suggested that the way to avoid getting sexually assaulted was not to get blacked out drunk again. What do you say to someone who hears those comments and feels like it's minimizing a very serious problem, if not suggesting that the victims are the ones to blame for sexual assault.
- [69:32]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah, I mean, they would be correct in that. I mean, I didn't know what I was talking about at this point. I had just gotten out of the infantry. It's important. My time in the service was in the infantry at that point. It was an all male branch. I had only recently separated. And my frame of reference was that world. And that was not a world in which, frankly, I had very little interaction with women in the service. Very soon after, actually this time frame, when I started going to college, I became very close friends with a number of vets, female vets at George Washington, and all of them had a story. And I very quickly changed my tune. I think you'll find, even not that much later in my Reddit history, me acknowledging that that was a moment in time in which I had not yet been exposed to things and I had a opinion or I had thoughts that were colored by my experience in the service, but my experience in the service was frankly limited. And I mean, that's. When I reread those, I see me not knowing what the hell I'm talking about.
- [70:44]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. And, you know, sort of beyond, like the substantive concern with the comments you made, I think is a political one.
- [70:51]
John Lovett
Right.
- [70:51]
Tommy Vietor
Like, as you know better than anyone, Maine is a really important Senate race. And Democrats are worried that if you're the nominee, like Susan Collins or The many super PACs that support Republicans will spend 50 million, $100 million on negative ads featuring a bunch of these Reddit posts. There's ones where you call yourself a communist. There's ones where you call police officers bastards. There's one where you say that rural white Americans actually are racist and stupid. What do you say to that? And how do you combat that?
- [71:18]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah, I mean, first, I mean, those were definitely. That was me trying to get a rise out of people on the Internet. Those are not reflective of my. Those weren't even reflective of my opinions back then. I would say that it is a little rich hearing about this right now, when just last week there was a pro Susan Collins ad run with Janet Mills in it, saying nice things about her. It is a. And I also, quite frankly, think that as I go around the state of Maine and talk to people, which we've been doing, I mean, the past month has been me on the road, going all over the place. As I interact with people directly, as I hold town halls, as I get. Get myself out there, more people are going to recognize that this is not at all the. The person that they have. They've come to know and come to interact with in reality. So, I mean, I look, they're going to call me a communist. They always call us communists. They're going to call us socialists. They're going to call us wacko lefties. They called Hillary Clinton a communist. Like, there's, in many ways, there's no, we're not getting away from it. I also think that a lot of that's kind of run its road. And the way that you combat it is the way that you combat, frankly, a lot of this negative, negative nonsense online is you just interact with people in reality, in a state like Maine with 500 to 600,000 voters, and we have a year before the election, we can do that. We can really go out and spend a lot of time interacting with people. And that's exactly what we're doing.
- [72:56]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I saw, I was talking to a couple of people who oppose your candidacy, who are working for other organizations or candidates, and they said to me, like, look, these Reddit posts, some of them are from that long ago. There are more posts that are out there that we know about that have not been written about yet. And kind of the suggestion is, what else do we know about this guy? The argument is, you're unvetted, it's too risky to nominate you. What would you say to Democrats who share that anxiety?
- [73:23]
Graham Grant Platner
There is nothing that I can remotely think of that is out there that is any worse or really any different than what has come out. I mean, I post on the Internet for a long time when I was in a point in my life where I was looking for a lot of, I would say community, looking for an outlet. I had an immense amount of disillusionment, an immense amount of anger. I used the Internet as a place to, to find an outlet for that, which I think is fairly normal. But there is, I mean, if that is their concern, then they can go find more stuff. But, I mean, I've honestly racked my brain about what I've not lived a very. I mean, I haven't lived a boring life, but I haven't lived a very complicated one. I've never been close to money and power. I've never had the opportunity to, like, screw people over in an awful way. I mean, I was in the service. I certainly struggled afterwards. But even then, I mean, my struggles were my own. They didn't impact other people, they just impacted my life negatively. And the time that I was active on the Internet was the exact same time that I was active on the Internet. And that is that part of my life. It's no surprise to me that I was no longer active after 2021, because that's, frankly, my life kind of began to get good. For those who are worried about me not being vetted, there is just nothing that I. Besides, like, stupid Internet comments. Besides. I mean, honestly, I've never robbed anybody. I've never beaten anybody. The only violence I've ever used is, frankly, violence that the United States government asked me to go conduct. There is very little, and I certainly was never close to money and power, which I think is also. Things are pretty simple when you live a simple life.
- [75:14]
Tommy Vietor
But, yeah, I do. I really want to ask you about your time in the US Military, your thoughts on bigger picture things, but I did want to just sort of ask you about all the shitty stuff that's getting you thrown your way, because I know it's, you know, it's been an intense week of sort of. It's clearly like some sort of opposition research switch was flipped, Right? There's been a lot of incoming, and I've heard a couple more sort of strands of attacks. So for one, you know, you made this video, it's about five minutes long. It's on Twitter and other platforms explaining the Reddit posts and talking about how when you got out of the military, you had kind of like crude humor and crass language that was the hallmark of the infantry. When you were in the Marine Corps, the NRC interpreted those comments as you blaming your fellow servicemen for the Reddit posts. So that was sort of one strain of, I guess, attack on the attacks. Second, I've heard that there's a whisper campaign questioning whether you should be getting disability benefits for your bad back or your bad knee, because you also released a campaign video where you're swinging kettlebell.
- [76:14]
Graham Grant Platner
And by the way, that's what the kettlebell is for, the bad back. I mean, I've done years and years of physical therapy, and maintaining a strong core is legitimately what keeps my herniated discs from putting me into crippling pain. Like, it's a. I mean, it's amusing to me. It's not amusing. It's infuriating, actually, to have people, like, question my disability rating, question my. I mean, the reason that I'm doing well is because of the help I got. That's the point. That's the purpose of therapy. That's the purpose of support. Like, to look at someone and say, oh, my God, look, they're living a good life. Because after we provided them support and continue to give support for Them to live that good life they're living. It is absurd. Like, what's the. I don't like, what's the pitch here? We're supposed to, like, strip benefits from disabled veterans, that we're supposed to, like, look at people with multiple combat tours with banged up bodies and struggles from trauma. We're supposed to look at that and say that you're not supposed to get help. This is something that actually deeply angers me. It took me a long time before I was okay with asking for help, because coming out of the infantry when I did, and you can ask any infantryman that came out of the wars the time I did, this was not a thing that we did. There was a taboo around it, there was shame around it. There was this idea that if you did, you were going to no longer be able to get a job, that you'd be ostracized by society. And the fact that I got through all of that and when I go to serve again, when I go to run for office in my state, my own party comes after me saying that I am not deserving of the life that I've been able to build with help from the VA because of my military service. That, that, that gets me pretty pissed.
- [78:27]
Tommy Vietor
The suggestion seems to be you shouldn't get better. You know, that's right.
- [78:31]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [78:32]
Graham Grant Platner
Or the idea is, is that by getting better, you're then how. Just better. And you're no longer in need of the things that got you better. That isn't how any of this works. It's not how physical therapy works. It's not how normal therapy works. It's. It is all for me to run and do this and put myself out here as a. Essentially a very regular person. My wife and I do not live an extravagant life. We have not lived a life of power and wealth. We have not lived. We've lived a very simple one. And this to us feels like a way of giving back in doing something good for the state of Maine and for the world in some ways. And. And by doing that, I get attacked by Democrats about being a disabled veteran. What does that even send as a message to other guys who might be. Or men and women who are disabled veterans who might want to get involved. This is brutal. Getting your life ripped apart and having people go after your military service and go after your struggles afterwards as some political football. It doesn't feel good. And I don't think anybody's gonna look at that and be like, oh, I wish that would happen to me. And I mean, if the Goal here is to keep disabled veterans from running for office, then they should keep it up. But that seems like a pretty ridiculous goal at a time where the Democratic Party seems to be hemorrhaging demographics of all kinds. You think you'd want it to make it more inclusive, not the opposite.
- [80:05]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. I would argue, too, that, you know, there's someone who's. I've never served in the military. I've worked in politics for a while now. I, I have noticed that I feel like veterans get held to a higher standard than almost anyone else when people are looking at their record.
- [80:18]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [80:18]
Tommy Vietor
It's like, John, did John Kerry throw his medals or not? It's like, well, you know, he served in Vietnam and got two Purple Hearts.
- [80:25]
Graham Grant Platner
And, you know, they were his mother.
- [80:27]
Jon Favreau
Right?
- [80:28]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah.
- [80:28]
Tommy Vietor
Tim Walls, similar thing. It's like, well, you know, he was in for 20 years. Let's pick apart his record. Anyway, thank you for addressing that, though. And then, you know, finally, like, this one, I, I is probably equally as offensive, but, you know, this other person I was talking to said, he said, this person said, you're being called a Blue Falcon on Internet forums, which I never heard that term before, but I think the suggestion was maybe you were blaming your service or your PTSD for the Reddit comments rather than taking responsibility. And I just wonder what your thoughts were on that line of attack.
- [80:59]
Graham Grant Platner
Of course not. That's not what I mean. That's literally not what I said. I do think explaining the fact that I struggled with alienation, isolation, and the effects of PTSD after my military service, and that's why I was on the Internet, frankly, getting in fights with people and shitposting. That's. I'm not trying to blame anything else, but I do think it warrants explanation and that it was a dark time in my life, man. Like, I'm just gonna be straight up. I didn't. I was not doing good for a couple years there, and it took me a long time. Even after I moved back to Maine, even after I started settling, it took me a long time to really begin feeling settled again. And like I said, it's no surprise to me that I stopped really using the Internet around 2021, because that's when I'd settled in. I got back from Afghanistan. My last trip was in 2018. So I get back from Afghanistan, summer of 2018 for my last time over, fully disillusioned, fully convinced that the whole thing was utterly pointless and that that got me really, really cynical for a number of years. And it took about A year and a half, two years for me to settle back into, frankly, society. And I'm lucky. I'm immensely lucky that I come from a small town, that I moved back to a small town, that I'm very connected with my neighbors in my community and my family. I got to meet my wife. I mean. I mean, like, life got good.
- [82:30]
Tommy Vietor
Is that what pulls you out of that sort of place of despair?
- [82:32]
Graham Grant Platner
But also, I mean, like, there was a time. I mean, there was a time there where I was really down on this whole project. I was really down on, like. Because I just. I saw everything as a complete waste. Like, I got very nihilistic. I got very critical. And then you, like, settle in and you reconnect with human beings in the real world, not on the Internet, but, like, in the actual world, and you build a community and you find yourself connected with folks. And that entirely rebuilt my faith. It rebuilt my faith in America. It rebuilt my faith in our ability to be what we say we want to be. It rebuilt my faith in people. And I got that because I got to move back to the place that I was from, and because I got the support that I got from the VA to put me in, frankly, a much better place, both materially and mentally, and. And I got support and help. That's what got me through it, and that's what allowed me to reconnect, and that's what gives me, frankly, the immense amount of hope that I have to undertake this project. This is. I'm not doing this from a place of, like, cynicism or a place of. Of ego. I'm doing this because I honestly think we need to do something different. We need to try a different kind of politics. What we are doing right now is clearly not working. There is so much resentment. There's so much hate in coming from a tiny town where a lot of my neighbors and I do not agree on politics. And yet we're all friends. We all know each other. Everybody still supports each other. For me, I see in that, the way forward, and that colors my politics, and it colors how I'm running. And to have people, like, look at this whole experience that I've gone through in my life and want to throw it in my face, and to know that it's coming from the same political establishment that, frankly, made me go fight in these wars in the first place is, like, doubly infuriating. It's like, you made me go. I volunteered to go do this stuff. You sent us off. You took advantage of us. You took advantage of our patriots patriotism. You took advantage of our willingness to sacrifice ourselves, of our willingness to take part in this stuff. And we come back and struggle and then we for years struggle without help and then finally get help, finally rebuild a good life, finally find like a place of real community and depth and a connection to this world. And then to have that exact same apparatus take that whole experience and try to weaponize it. It's disgusting, man. It legitimately infuriates me.
- [85:17]
Tommy Vietor
I can understand obviously people's votes and quotes and life experience is going to be part of a political campaign, but the oppo research world gets pretty fucking disgusting at points. And I think you're kind of hinting at that. Speaking of which, in kind of a non traditional campaign move, your team actually shared some opposition research on you with me. It's a video from, I believe, a decade ago. Let's just watch an excerpt and then we should talk about it. First of all, what we're watching there was Graham wearing just his boxer briefs, Marine Corps silkies.
- [86:15]
Graham Grant Platner
Those are Marine Corps running shorts.
- [86:17]
Tommy Vietor
Pardon me, Silkies. First of all, great song choice. Tell us what's happening there where you are. There's probably some listeners who are very confused and the reason we are showing this video is because at the very end you can see a tattoo on your chest. I've been told that some of your political opponents are telling reporters that that tattoo has a Nazi affiliation. And I would like to know, is that accurate? Are you a secret Nazi?
- [86:39]
Graham Grant Platner
I am not a secret Nazi. Actually, if you read through my Reddit comments, I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism. Right. And anti Semitism and racism in general. I would say a lifelong opponent. The video is from my brother's marriage to his wife to my sister in law who I was serenading. I told them that my wedding gift to them would be my embarrassment. And so I performed a lip sync version of Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball to my sister in law on the day of her wedding to my brother. And the. And now of course, that embarrassment, which was mostly just held internally in the family as we always watched that video at family events and laughed, is now shared with the world. So I feel like I'm just going to give them a wedding gift for the rest of my life, which is great. I love them. The reason, by the way, the reason of this video, Saturday was their 10th wedding anniversary.
- [87:42]
Tommy Vietor
Oh, congrats.
- [87:43]
Graham Grant Platner
And my sister in law was showing everybody the video.
- [87:47]
Jon Favreau
Nice.
- [87:48]
Graham Grant Platner
And. And I was like, oh yeah, there it is, there's me being, being embarrassed, but what we also. Yes. So in 2007, I was a machine gun section leader with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8 Marines. We were on the 22 MU, and it was my third deployment. My previous two had been to Fallujah and then Ramadi. 2006 and we went ashore and Split Croatia, myself and a few of the other machine gun squad leaders. And we got very inebriated and we did what Marines on liberty do and we decided to go get a tattoo. And we went to a tattoo parlor in Split, Croatia and we chose a terrifying looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and you know, skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military, military thing. And we got those tattoos and then we all moved on with our lives. And I actually joined the army after that where I got, you know, I had to go to MEPs, I got screened. Later on I got a security clearance and a full screen when I went to work for the State Department as a contractor doing security for the ambassador to Afghanistan in 2018. And I've also just lived my entire life like a regular person with the skull and crossbones on their chest, which by that I mean taking my shirt off, performing Miley Cyrus songs in front of my extended family and to my sister in law and just taking my shirt off at the beach.
- [89:20]
Tommy Vietor
Right, presumably going to the beach.
- [89:22]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah, I mean, I went to college, I went to the gym, I did all the things. And at no point in this entire experience of my life did anybody ever once say, hey, you're a Nazi. It never came up until we got wind that in the opposition research somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo. And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I've not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years.
- [89:54]
Tommy Vietor
You're a self described communist, but also a Nazi.
- [89:58]
Graham Grant Platner
I will say the fact that I've managed to go from communist to Nazi in the space of four days, according to the people who are trying to, to whatever do this to me, I find to be quite a spectacular turn of events.
- [90:12]
Tommy Vietor
But you know, well, like Miley, you've got range. Okay, so like you came into this, you're just like, you're a normal guy, you want to make the country a better place. Did you know this was going to happen? Like, did you go to your staff beforehand being like, look, I was a Reddit shit poster for a long time. There's some things that are going to come out. Let's delete this old account. Like, let's get ready for this. Or has this just been a gut punch of, like, stuff you've forgotten you'd written coming back at you?
- [90:37]
Graham Grant Platner
I'm an elder millennial. I am well aware that everything I wrote on the Internet exists. I know what the Way Back machine. I mean, the idea that, like, I went through years on the Internet and now think that, like, there's some way to make that go away is absurd. So. No, I mean, look, I knew they were going to throw. I knew that they were going to throw the book at me. Right? Like, I knew that we are up against the machine. We were told not to run this race. I was specifically, like, we were sent messages saying we were not supposed to do this, we had to wait our turn, we didn't have permission, and that if we did it, they were going to try to just destroy my life. And that is what they are trying to do. I will say the Nazi part Did not. Did not see that coming. Sorry, that one's out of right field, I guess. But the. Yeah, I mean. I mean, I was. Yeah. Early on, like, look, I posted on Reddit for years. I'm sure I said some dumb stuff. It was also a dark time in my life. I also used to, like, get drunk and post on Reddit because that was fun when I was angry and alone and pretty sure that accounts for most of my bad behavior. Again, not. Not trying to make excuses. It was me. I did it. And the things that I said that I. I mean, there are things that I said, there are words that I use that I'm utterly horrified by. And I'm not blaming anybody else, but. But the idea that, like, that. That a person cannot, like, evolve and grow from years ago is, I think, pretty laughable to the average human being, especially this day and age. Everybody's posted something. Something stupid on the Internet.
- [92:20]
Tommy Vietor
But, yeah, look, for what it's worth, I also appreciate that you wanted to come on here and talk about this stuff and just have a shitty, uncomfortable conversation, because how else are you going to move through this?
- [92:31]
Graham Grant Platner
The thing that people hate about this. I mean, like, regular thing that I've hated about politics for a long time, is that people are not real. Right. Like, there's this whole thing. There's a show that gets put on. It's this. It's. It feels so devoid of emotion. It feels sort of devoid of depth. It's always driven me insane. And, like, we. I knew some of this stuff was going to come. I knew that I was going to have conversations like this at some point. And I think the way to deal with this stuff is you take responsibility for it. You offer explanation. You also. You also show how it isn't you anymore at all. And I think, frankly, I mean, I'm very proud of the person I am today. I'm very proud of my politics. I'm very proud of the work I've done in my community for years. I'm very proud of the relationships I've built. I'm proud of my marriage. I'm proud of all of these things. And I don't get any of this without having gone through all of that. Like, I don't. I don't think that we need to come up with bigger structural solutions to our problems without getting disillusioned. I needed to get disillusioned before I thought that maybe the thing that we have now is not the answer like it is. And then I needed to get really disillusioned. And then I had to rebuild some faith. I had to rebuild hope in my community, which came from actual, like, work. Work and therapy. I mean, if there's one thing I can say, I went to therapy for years. I still go to therapy. Super helpful. It's great. More people should do it. Makes you a better person, makes you all around happier. Gives you a lot more tools to engage with thoughts and feelings that you otherwise don't have tools for. So it's a. Like, I'm not embarrassed by any of this stuff. I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm embarrassed by things that I said, but I'm not embarrassed by my life. And I'm more than happy to talk about it openly.
- [94:34]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. And I appreciate that. Last question on Internet comments. You never posted on the website Nude Africa, right?
- [94:40]
Graham Grant Platner
I did not. Okay. I avoided that one. Thank God. Oh, boy. I remember that story.
- [94:49]
Tommy Vietor
Mr. Mark Robinson, we miss you. Okay.
- [94:52]
Graham Grant Platner
You're a soldier, I think.
- [94:54]
Tommy Vietor
Wow, you have a good memory. So you enlisted in the Marine Corps. You deployed to Iraq in 2005. You got back. You later enlisted in the army, and then you did this additional tour of duty in Afghanistan. Can you just, like, can you tell us about what were those deployments like for you? What did they teach you about yourself and about the United States? Like, take us through that. That journey?
- [95:14]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah, my. I joined up in 04. I was 19, and I joined the infantry. I. I wanted to fight. I wanted to be a soldier since the day. I mean, as long as I can remember. I wanted to be a soldier. I joined the Marine Corps because the Marine Corps had the reputation as being the Marine Corps. I mean, if you want to fight and you join the infantry and you join the like, that's. Everybody knows Marine Corps combat Infantry. That's where the action is. And I did not get disappointed. I joined in February of 04 and I was on my first deployment in January of 05 outside of Fallujah. We operated from Abu Ghraib Prison. I was. We just used it as a patrol base. I wasn't involved. This was after Abu Ghraib prison area. Nasr was Salaam Al Karma, pretty much the area to the. To the east of Fallujah proper. We were there for seven to eight months, came back, was home for five months, and we redeployed to Ramadi in. I believe it was February of 2006, February or March. And then I spent eight months in Ramadi. And that was the most intense of my deployments, hands down. Ramadi 2006 was.
- [96:39]
Tommy Vietor
Notoriously horrifying time there, right?
- [96:42]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah, yeah. And I was Kilo Company. The company I was with. We were tasked with the defense of the government center, which was. Was the. It was the capital building of Al Anbar Province. So essentially anybody that had a grievance with the occupation came on down to the gov center and expressed your. Expressed your unhappiness generally with RPGs or mortar rounds or direct fire. So we. It was an intense deployment. It was very violent. It was an immensely violent city at the time. Al Qaeda in Iraq had really consolidated itself with. Within the city at that point. So there was just an immense amount of violence against us. Immense amount of violence that we were committing. The civilians in the city suffered immensely from frankly, just being in the middle of all of. Was hard. It was a very, very hard deployment. I don't think you'll find anybody who fought in Ramadi in 2006 who will say otherwise got back from that deployment. At this point, I was a. I was a corporal. I'd served as the machine gun section leader. And I had the opportunity to either get out of the Marine Corps or extend for a few months and redeploy with the. With my unit. And so myself and frankly a bunch of the guys with the. With two deployments under their belts who are all in leadership roles at this point, we pretty much all extended so we could stick around for that. For that next deployment, which we thought was going to Afghanistan. And then it wound up being the Tutu Mu, which meant that we Primarily bounced around the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, did some anti piracy operations off Somalia, went ashore in Kuwait, did some training in support of some stuff in support of. Mostly, though, it was going to go into liberty ports, which means you pull into a port and Marines and sailors get to go ashore and have an evening ashore and get to drink and party, which is fun when you are 22, 23 years old and at that point suffering from an immense amount of trauma. So there was a lot of heavy drinking back then. I mean the infantry is always historically a heavy drinking place, but, but going ashore and partying pretty hard, getting tattoos, that's, that was kind of the, the bulk of it. Got got home from that deployment, got out of the Marine Corps. I've been accepted to college, George Washington University in D.C. started the GW, promptly realized that I was, I was, you know, not like I was not ready for that. I, it was 2008, the war was still on, buddies were still deploying. I really felt like I was kind of not, not pulling my weight. So I wound up going to reenlist in the Marine Corps. But I have sleeve tattoos, forearm tattoos. And the Marine Corps changed the rules 2007, they changed. Lamar ADMIN. Yeah. So no more sleeve tattoos. Even though I got them all in, they're literally Marine Corps tattoos. Eagle, globe and anchor. It's my, it's O331, my mosquito.
- [99:54]
Tommy Vietor
But what a stupid fucking role.
- [99:55]
Graham Grant Platner
Okay, well, if any Marines are watching this who are in around the time I was in, they're all nodding along because they know how stupid fuck. It's like it drove everybody insane. Needless to say, couldn't reenlist into the Marine Corps because of my sleeve tattoos. Went to the Army. Army doesn't care about tattoos showing on your forearms. And so I joined the army as an 11 Bravo and infantry as well and went to a long range surveillance company and became a reconnaissance and surveillance team leader and then deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, 2011 in support of a, of a rifle company from Iowa. And I served as a rifle team leader and a rifle squad leader in northeast Afghanistan. Got back from that deployment in 2011 and got out of the army in 2012, so.
- [100:43]
Tommy Vietor
And so I mean, you served in both of the post 911 wars. I mean, was your. And the takeaway was the same in each theater, just sort of like disillusionment with the mission, the cause, the purpose.
- [100:54]
Graham Grant Platner
So when I got, when I was, when I got back from my, when I got out of the Marine Corps, the big issue was That I had felt we were doing things wrong. I. I believed in coin. I believed in counterinsurgency doctrine. I really thought that there was this kind of, like, intellectual way of fighting the war. War where we were going to connect with civilians, we were going to build relationships, build this whole thing, and that we were going to. And when I went to college, that was kind of my idea. I was like, okay, I'm going to, like, engage with these more intellectual concepts. This is going to give me a better foundation. I'm going to go back into the military with this. This foundation. So we do this right. When I went to Afghanistan in 1011, and at this point, I'm going back because I. I think that we've learned the lessons. I'm hearing all the words from. From the. General Petraeus and General Mattis have written the counterinsurgency manual. Like, oh, and it's all right. I'm reading it all. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is what we're doing. And then I went to Afghanistan, and we were doing the exact same. We called it different things. We use different words. It was the same. It was just metrics. It was like, how much money did we spend? How many people did we kill? How many. How many buildings did we build, even if they're now empty and nobody's using them? It was like, all. Nobody ever asked, like, how much better off are the Afghans in this part of Afghanistan than when you got here? Nobody was ever interested in that question. It was just all these metrics. And I was just. I. I left that. I left in 2011. My mom could. I got home from that deployment, and I was like, we need to leave this place yesterday. Like, we are going to lose this war. This was in 2011.
- [102:40]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [102:41]
Graham Grant Platner
I'm like, there is no. There's. Nobody knows what we're doing. There's no plan. I mean, it's just a. It's a. It's a joke. And that was when I began to get. In my criticism. I began to get incredibly critical of U.S. foreign policy. I began to see it as everything I had taken part in. Felt like it had zero value. Then, you know, 2014 rolls around or 15, and then, like, Fallujah Ramadi fall to ISIS. Yeah. And I was like, all right, like, what was like, I'm. I'm just like, what was the point of any of this? This was like, the most, like. And I took part in this. Some of these deployments were just immensely violent. And, you know, I. I watched friends die. I watched friends get Seriously injured. We killed people. I mean, like, it was a very. These were. I mean, I wasn't. I wasn't. J.D. vance. You know, like, we. I wasn't, like, writing up. I wasn't writing up, like, a. A report on Camp Volusia. Like, we were fighting the war. And I still struggle with this because I still have an immense amount of pride in my military service.
- [103:53]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [103:54]
Graham Grant Platner
And I'm still very. In many ways, it was, like, one of the things I was best at, and I'm very proud of that. At the same time, I don't know what. I don't know what happened in Ramadi in 2006 that made life better for the people of Sullivan, Maine. And I don't think anybody's ever going to be able to convince me that there was anything.
- [104:17]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, yeah. I think you're struggling with something that, like, everyone who worked on these conflicts struggled with. Look, I think there's an argument the war in Afghanistan should have ended after Osama bin Laden was killed.
- [104:27]
John Lovett
Right.
- [104:27]
Tommy Vietor
There's all these windows when I think we should have ended that war. I think everyone who talks about these wars struggles with what you're struggling with now, which is like, how do you honor the service and sacrifice and patriotism of the people who went overseas and fought and did something incredibly brave and noble with the end results, which are apparent to all of us, which is the Taliban currently running Afghanistan and, you know, ISIS coming back in Iraq and all the challenges that we don't need to relitigate.
- [104:56]
Graham Grant Platner
But, you know, I will just say this, too. You know, I went back in 18.
- [105:00]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that, because you went back. So you were. You get out of the army, you go to school for A While in D.C. you go back to Afghanistan to work for. As a security contractor for the State Department in Kabul. I think it was with a company called Constellus.
- [105:12]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah, Constellus is. Concellus, essentially bought up all of the old security companies that used to provide these services. So it used to be, you know, back in the day, there was, like, Triple Canopy, Blackwater.
- [105:24]
Tommy Vietor
Right.
- [105:26]
Graham Grant Platner
Soc, smg. They're like a bunch of. They all vied for the same contracts over time. Amusingly, just like everything else, ownership got consolidated. By 2018, Constellus had pretty much bought up everything. So they were. They were. They, like. I worked for a company. My first contract was a company called IDS International Development Solutions. And then within, like, a month or two of being in Kabul, that promptly turned into Triple Canopy, but it was all constellas it was the exact same company. They just kind of, like, changed the. You know, it's all. I mean. And this was when my disillusionment became, like. I went from being disillusioned to just being nihilistic. Because there I am in Afghanistan, seven years. Seven years after the last time I was there. But now I'm on the ambassador security detail, and now I'm, like, seeing things from the higher level. I mean, last time I was there, I was an infantry sergeant, right. And now I'm here, like, interacting with the NATO leadership, US Military leadership, the diplomatic leadership, the UN Leadership. Nothing had changed. Seven years, Nothing had changed. No new ideas? No. I mean, it was like, you know, they reframed things. They had new projects. Everybody had a new project that they were doing all.
- [106:48]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [106:48]
Graham Grant Platner
And the only thing that it was happening was we were expending an immense amount of taxpayer money on all of these projects, including, like, the contract I was on. I mean, I look at this. I look back, it all seemed like a big job program, frankly. I mean, like, just a way of moving taxpayer dollars into the pockets of all these security and defense companies. Because I. Because nothing I was saying made any sense. It wasn't moving us any closer. It didn't. I don't even think anybody knew what they were trying to move closer to. I lasted about six months. I quit that job. I quit in July of 2018. It was. I was there for six months, and I was like, this is. This is the dumbest goddamn thing. I can't. I cannot. I was. I could not be engaged with the system anymore. I was fully checked out, and then I went back to Maine. Like, I bought a boat. I got into oyster farming, and I essentially never looked back. Until now, quite frankly.
- [107:57]
Tommy Vietor
I guess my only question was, how.
- [107:58]
Jon Favreau
What?
- [107:58]
Tommy Vietor
You know, after, like, these really demoralizing tours, the final one in Afghanistan, what made you think, like, okay, one last shot, maybe as a security contractor, like, that might be the right thing for me.
- [108:10]
Graham Grant Platner
I was utterly lost and had no idea what to do with my life.
- [108:13]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [108:14]
Graham Grant Platner
Like, the one thing that I was good at that I knew I was good at, the one skill set I knew I had was being a soldier carrying guns in war zones for the United States. That was, like, the last time I'd been good at anything that I, you know, that I felt I'd been good at something. The last time I'd felt confidence in myself and my skills was doing that. Like, I had. I spent the intervening years going to college and being, like, having a Lot of untreated ptsd, having a lot of. And the struggles that coincide with that. I was lost. And I went looking. I went looking for answers in the one place I thought I could find them, and then very promptly was like, oh, well, that's just clearly not going to do it. And then I went. And that was when I decided that I probably had to start looking in totally different places, like, say, becoming an oyster farmer in my hometown, which was never on my list of things to do with my life. But also neither was running for U.S. senate.
- [109:08]
Jon Favreau
So.
- [109:08]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah, things go in weird directions.
- [109:10]
Tommy Vietor
Things get weird. I have two. Two more questions for you because I've kept you for like, nearly an hour now. Is there an oyster farming season? Are you out there all year round?
- [109:18]
Graham Grant Platner
Yeah. So for in my part of Maine, it's fairly seasonal. We start in April and we usually finish up the season by January 1st. And then between freezing your ass off. Yeah, it's cold. Wintertime's. Wintertime's cold. That's what. That's what clothes are for. The. And then January through April is fixing all the equipment that broke during this. I mean, it's farming. You have an. You have a harvest season, a growing season, and then you have your off season in which you prepare all the gear and all the stuff. I mean, it's the ocean. The ocean is destroying everything constantly. Boats, their natural habitat is at the bottom of the sea, so we have to constantly coax them along to stay up with us outboard engines. I mean, there's always stuff to work on in the winter. So wintertime is very project kind of focused. And then April through January is when we're kind of in like. Like, either it's. I mean, it's very. I'm not going to get into details. It'll take hours. But the. But there's. There's a lot of kind of ups and downs to how. How the oyster season works. But it's.
- [110:22]
John Lovett
It's.
- [110:22]
Graham Grant Platner
Dude, it saved my life. It absolutely like being able to become connected with. With like the sea, making a living on the ocean by myself. I mean, I spent so many of those early years on the boat alone, which, frankly, was like, just everything I needed. And if I hadn't done that, I. I would. I would not. I would not be where I am. Without question. It was. It's a. And it's growing food. I love farming. I love farming. I. It's like, it's such a beautiful thing.
- [110:54]
Tommy Vietor
So it sounds cool and it sounds fun. I'm just a huge wimp. And being on a boat in Maine in January sounds challenging, but you're clearly tougher than I am.
- [111:02]
Graham Grant Platner
Well, there's it also. It feeds my inner infantryman that still enjoys a little bit of suffering.
- [111:08]
Tommy Vietor
So yeah, you like you embrace the suck. Big, big picture. Final question. What is broken with the Democratic Party today and how are you different and how do you want to fix it?
- [111:18]
Graham Grant Platner
First and foremost, I think the Democratic Party has, is no longer representative of Democrats. So when, I mean, I've spent the past month going all over the state of Maine holding town halls, I don't meet a single Democrat in real life who thinks that raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for health care is a bad idea. I haven't met a single Democrat who thinks that we shouldn't be thinking about big structural changes in like the, in the, in the way of like fdr. I mean, Democrats across the party believe in the party of working people. They believe in it being a party that represents justice, a party that represents decency and making this whole society work for everybody in it. That is what Democrats believe. Everywhere I go. And I firmly believe that if the Democratic Party was run by the majority of the people in it, it would be that party. I think the real problem is at the highest echelons in leadership. It is not that party in the higher echelons. It is a party that is very concerned about the donor class. It is very concerned about its relationships with fundraising and money. It is very concerned with holding on to personal power and not expanding power and frankly, empowering people to build power through organizing, which is something we're really focused on. On my campaign, I just think it is entirely the people driving the decision making at the highest level. They do not understand the moment in history they are in. They do not understand that there is a deep, deep need from the electorate, from the American people for real answers. Big, heroic structural change. The kind of stuff that gave us Social Security, kind of stuff that gave us Medicare and Medicaid. That's what people want. Because the crises that we are facing, they are huge. We are not talking about stuff that can be fixed with a block grant here or a tax credit there. We need to be thinking big again. And so many people in this country want that. And they understand that they are living in a system that has been built to screw them. And it's been built by these same people. It's the same people that sent me to Iraq. It's the same people that sent me back to Afghanistan. The same people that over and over and over again. Do not show up to fight for big, courageous change for American working people. That's what people want out of the Democratic Party. That's why I am a Democrat. It's why I'm running as a Democrat, that I believe in that kind of Democratic Party. And that's what we're trying to build. And yet the leadership of the party sees that across the country, sees candidates across the country that represent that. And its only response is to crush them. Its only response is to try to bury people, rip their lives apart, call them communists and Nazis within four days of each other. Just try to, like, embarrass, embarrass people, I guess. And we're not going to get working people into politics. We're not going to get a politics that represents everyday Americans, all of whom have lived complicated lives, all of whom who have lived lives that are based around evolving as people. We're not getting that. We're not going to get that. If this is what the party does and we have to beat them, that's the only. I mean, for me, that's the only option. We have to build power and we have to beat them. And that's why I like all of this stuff. There's nothing these people can take from me that I actually treasure in my life. They can't take the town of Sullivan, Maine, can't take my boats, my oyster farm is still there, my friends are still there, my neighbors are still there, my wife, my. My, my family. That's the stuff that I take seriously. All this other stuff, you can, like, rip my life apart. Call me whatever names you want, insinuate whatever you want. But I'm not in this for myself. I'm in this because we need to do something totally different. And if the sacrifice that's required is getting dragged through the mud, then so be it. And I'm staying in this thing because of that, so.
- [115:49]
Tommy Vietor
Well, Grant Planner, thank you so much for, for doing the show. I really appreciate your time and for being willing to talk about all this stuff and hope to see you again soon.
- [115:57]
Graham Grant Platner
Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.
- [116:04]
Jon Favreau
That's our show for today. Thanks to Graham Platner for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new POD on Friday. Talk to you then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricut Pod Save America is a Cricut Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Ken Kellman, Kirill Pelaviev, David Toles and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
- [117:13]
Tommy Vietor
It's Cybersecurity awareness month and LifeLock is.
- [117:16]
Jon Favreau
Here with tips to help protect your.
- [117:17]
Tommy Vietor
Identity, use strong passwords, set up multi factor authentication and report phishing scams. And for comprehensive identity protection, LifeLock is your best choice. LifeLock alerts you to suspicious uses of your personal information and also fixes identity theft. Guaranteed or your money back. Stay smart, stay safe and stay protected with a 30 day free trial@lifelock.com Specialoffer terms apply.
- [117:42]
John Lovett
Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult.
- [117:47]
Tommy Vietor
Life skill to teach?
- [117:48]
John Lovett
Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications. Kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight today@Greenlight.com podcast.