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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing at the block. I'm with Katherine Rampel off of receipts, who appears to be in, I guess, Ms. Now, corporate offices. I can't tell. Where are you?
- [00:11]
B
Yeah, definitely not home.
- [00:12]
A
Okay, I'm not home.
- [00:13]
B
This is not what my. My humble abode looks like. This is what my office looks like.
- [00:17]
A
Thank God. It's driving me a little crazy. We're here to talk about Graham Platner, who about an hour ago dropped out of the Senate race in Maine. This was a long time coming. Well, I guess not that long. Several days coming.
- [00:31]
B
And he did it with a long time coming.
- [00:33]
A
It should have been a longer time coming. Yeah, but it happened. Everyone was expecting at this point. It's just sort of a matter of when, because he had this July 13 deadline to get to. He had an 11 or so minute video explaining why he was doing this. A lot of preamble. I think roughly seven minutes in, he got to the news, but there was a lot of letting stuff off his chest. And before we get to portions of it, Catherine, just your first impressions of it.
- [01:00]
B
Taking no responsibility for any of the events that led to this. Just like the drip, drip, drip of scandals even before the accusations of sexual assault, which he denies, we should be clear. You know, he flatly denies. But even before all of that, you know, the Nazi tattoos and the sexting with women who were not his wife and rited threats, like, no responsibility for any of this. Instead, he blamed the corporate media and the political establishment for trying to keep him down and trying to kill his movement. He at one point rambled on about how, like, all he wanted was health care for the people and, you know, an end of corruption and et cetera, et cetera. And it's like these are all. This is all he cares about. But, like, I think there was no mention of Susan Collins or Donald Trump in any of this. So if someone.
- [01:59]
A
There was a mention of Susan Collins.
- [02:01]
B
Oh, there was. Excuse me.
- [02:02]
A
Where he did say they would rather Susan Collins win than see the movement thrive or something like that.
- [02:08]
B
Okay.
- [02:09]
A
It was, it was a notable line. I, you know, it was. I watched it. It was, I want to be charitable here or let me off my shirt. I want to be as charitable as I can be. Okay. Obviously, this is not. This is a tough period of his life. Putting aside the fact that he buried himself and deserves this and that he made the mistakes and frankly, that his behavior was abhorrent and deserves condemnation and he shouldn't have been a senator. I have to imagine this is an incredibly difficult period to go from being the adulation of so many people to being a pariah. That's my charitable version of this. My honest, less charitable version of this is that this was a really bad video. That it did very little. That it did very little to take accountability for anything. In fact, it denied responsibility. It did very little to sort of accommodate and even acknowledge how the people who legitimately felt victimized by him feel now. It did little to sort of acknowledge that he let people down. Right. Like, he gave a lot of people hope and then kind of crashed and burned. And, like, those people are, you know, probably feeling pretty gloomy right now. And he didn't really address that in a profound way at all. And it did little to bring the party together other than to, like, give some guidelines. Yeah, he took the party.
- [03:36]
B
Yeah, yeah, he liked the party.
- [03:38]
A
On the party. I don't mean by the party, I don't mean the Democratic Party. What I mean by that is, like, it did little to set the predicate for them to have a successful campaign in Maine. Like, it just didn't do that. So, anyways, I don't know. It was. It was a rough watch. Why don't we play the first part where he actually makes the news about suspending the operations?
- [03:56]
C
We believe that for the movement to continue, It can't be made, and for that reason, We are suspending campaign operations. This is incredibly difficult because I know that some will think it's an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not. We're not doing it because of the allegations. We're doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power.
- [04:39]
A
The structures that are being taken away from us by those in power. That really stood out to me.
- [04:44]
B
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This whole thing was just, like, no responsibility for any of it. Again, even the stuff that he now admits, like having the tattoo, although he's kind of been fuzzy about the timeline for when he knew about that. Like, even if he flatly denies, as he has, the allegations of criminal behavior in the form of sexual assault, there's other bad stuff that has come out that is maybe not crossing the line into criminal, but, like, certainly has shown bad judgment and bad character, and apparently none of that mattered at all. Right. The only reason why this campaign has flamed out and he is now dropping out is because there's a conspiracy of establishment people and corporate media forcing him out. That's. That's the narrative here. And you know what? If I had seen a transcript of this speech and didn't know who said it, and you told me it was Donald Trump, I would be like, you know, it's like a little more coherent than a Trump speech. But sure, the themes are there.
- [05:49]
A
Of course, you're not the, you're not the only one who felt this way. Yeah, let's put up a tree from David Axelrod. In the end, Platner chose as a closing act a page right out of Donald Trump's dodgy.
- [05:59]
B
There you go.
- [06:00]
A
I deflect refused responsibility. Play the martyrs slam. Your accusers planner built an admirable movement, but there was nothing admirable but the way he said goodbye. I disagree. On one important note, Donald Trump never would have left a race ever, period. Wouldn't have bowed out, wouldn't have said, I'll see you later. That's not Trumpian. So there is that one important decision. Yeah. The corporate media thing is kind of interesting. Let's play the clip about corporate media because that is like the classic sort of boogeyman if you want to like, not take responsibility. Here's him talking about corporate media
- [06:33]
C
with no time to truly respond, no time for investigations before a corporate corporate media system. And the political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end.
- [06:58]
A
So I just, I have a little bit of a bone to pick, a big bone to pick with this one. Like just let's start with the political establishment act as judge and jury and executioner. Like, he had a lot of the backing of the establishment. Yes, I know Chuck Schumer wanted Janet Mills, but in the end, there was a whole host of very prominent senators who had to rescind their endorsements because he screwed up. I know that we don't like to think of Bernie as political establishment. Fine. Punishment. Elizabeth Warren was there with him. I mean, Ruben Gallego, other people, countless Ro Khan. Like, these are very prominent Democrats. At some point. They are what you would call the establishment, even if they don't want to admit it. And then the corporate media system, it's like you live by it and you die by it. Right. So he got incredibly flattering coverage, which prompted, which came with his rise. And for that reason, he probably gained the virality that helped him become unknown, to overtake Janet Mills. And the idea that he wouldn't be scrutinized when he was on the doorstep of the Senate, that people wouldn't look through his past to get a good sense of his character really is sort of A remarkably sort of naive or selfish admission because you're asking people to trust you. That comes with the territory. You do get scrutiny. I don't know how much time he got to respond to these stories, but, like, the idea that the corporate media turned him because they were asking about whether he treated women, like, appropriately or maybe.
- [08:39]
B
Or raped someone. Yeah.
- [08:41]
A
Is an absurd idea that you shouldn't have that type of scrutiny. It's basic.
- [08:47]
B
Yeah. I do wonder how did he not have the foresight to realize some of these things were gonna come out Right. You know, he kept lying about stuff, or certainly appeared to be lying about things that were, like, relatively easy to fact check or falsify. This happened again and again and again about things related again to the tattoo and his Reddit posts and timelines of things that didn't quite make sense. And it's like, when people lie about the little stuff, that's often a sign that they might be lying about bigger stuff. But how did he not. How did he not recognize that some of these things were going to come out? And I will say my big question about all of this is not just about Grant Graham Platner not recognizing some of these unflattering and, you know, allegedly criminal things would come out. But, like, the people around him who wrote that. Yeah, I know who rode that gravy train. Because, look, he. He's a very grand planner, very charismatic guy, can raise a shit ton of money or had been able to raise a shit ton of money pretty easily. You know, had these adoring crow, lots of small donors, and people who either didn't vet him to begin with or vetted him belatedly found out bad things stuck by him and, you know, were obviously not financially incentivized to encourage him to drop out of the race. Even as the scandals mounted and it put Democrats chances of not only winning that seat, but winning the Senate at risk. Like, what did they know and when did they know it? I have been hosting a show on Ms. Now where we had Morris Katz, who is one of the senior advisors for Graham Platner among a group of populist left insurgent politicians who have been running this year and challenging not just people like Susan Collins, but Democratic incumbents. And we asked him on the show some version of like, can you assure voters that nothing more is going to come out about Graham Platner and how he treats women? This was like two or three weeks ago. And he wouldn't answer.
- [11:16]
A
Platter himself said that to Chris Hayes. Right. Like Chris Hayes the day after the, or whatever, several days after that first New York Times story came out, pattern went on Chris Hayes show. And Grace was like, look, everyone's just sort of holding their breath. Yeah, wondering, wondering if something's gonna new will drop, like, can you assure him? And he more or less said, yeah, nothing else. There's nothing else.
- [11:36]
B
Well, I, if, if I remember correctly, I think he said nothing else that should worry people or something like that. I don't know if it was that. It was like, I don't know if it was that an interview or some other time. But he had this weird caveat disclaimer which was a red flag, right? Like you don't just say, no, nothing else is going to come out because I'm a good guy. It's like, well, nothing else that's like that bad. I mean, I'm in the camp of like, I kind of drew the red line a long time ago with the Nazi tattoo. I understand that a lot of people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that like maybe he didn't know. And I think it's possible he didn't know when he got the tattoo, but at some point over the intervening couple of decades he did. And at the very least it shows. It doesn't mean he's a Nazi, but it shows like bad judgment, which is not a character, character trait that I particularly want in a senator. But you know, he, he really did electrify crowds and I think people were willing to overlook a mountain of red flags as a result. And we're like pretty vicious to anybody who pointed out there were some red flags. And I don't know, I just hope that there's some soul searching and I
- [12:49]
A
think, I think there will be. But I'm, I, I like Sarah and I were talking about this Longwell and Tim too. I think there will be some soul searching. But it's hard to see a future where like a charismatic out of nowhere upstart who presents well and goes viral doesn't like catch on and get people excited again. It's just, that's sort of the nature of politics. My fear is that, and I don't want, and you know, honestly, maybe that makes me sentimental about this stuff. Like I don't want that to not happen. Like, I kind of like the idea like that someone can just kind of come in and do things and not have political background at the same time. Though there's two, there's other two conflicting thoughts that I have. One is that we got to stop sort of treating political experience as a scarlet letter. Like, there's. I think going through the ringer helps. And I also think having relationships in politics and knowing how it works and knowing how to get things done really helps. And, you know, it. It's not a bad thing to, like, know how to make progress in politics. And so I hope it's not, you know, we can recognize that. And the other thing is, I do want. I do wonder if the next time someone would sort of do a genuine record who doesn't have political experience does run people be like, oh, no, like, we can't risk that again, because a grandpa.
- [14:06]
B
I think that there should just be some vetting, you know, like, it's a small. I mean, there were so many red flags here, and a lot of it got written off. Off in this sort of patronizing, condescending way was like, well, he's working class. Which, by the way, I'm not totally confused.
- [14:26]
A
He was.
- [14:26]
B
He was. You know, he went to Hotchkiss and he went to some other fancy private school in Maine. Yeah. And, you know, just whatever. Like, we can litigate his socioeconomic status, but I feel like there was a lot of, like, people who were, you know, the east coast elite establishment that he claims to hate, like, writing off. Yeah, well, writing off a lot of these red flags is like, of course he's working class. Like, who. You know, that's just something, you know, working class people say racist things and have Nazi tattoos and have, like, toxic alcoholic relationships with. With, you know, prior.
- [15:06]
A
Did you. Romantic partners Never. Did you never say, I guess I'm a little bit of a sucker, but did you. Did, you know, you never bought into the idea that, like, okay, like, he obviously had, like, very troubling traumatic experience serving overseas and, like, totally. He, like, kind of had a difficulty getting out of it, but he's like, you know, people improve, people get better. I. I bought into that. And I actually don't think that's neglected here necessarily, or negated, I should say. But obviously, you know, he's. It was more than just a troubled experience.