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- [00:00]
Dave Weigel
Even if he drops out while we're talking, he dragged his feet longer than a lot of Democrats wanted to. I talked to one of the Democrats, Narif Shah, who wants to, who might want to replace him. He hasn't declared yet. He was saying the best moment for him to drop out was when this started. The next best would be any minute now.
- [00:25]
Jane Costen
I'm Jane Coston and this is what areday, the show that thinks President Donald Trump is definitely at the top of his game and Definitely not an 80 year old man who is losing his marbles. For example, here he is at the NATO summit in Turkey today.
- [00:38]
Donald Trump
I told this story Yesterday. We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan.
- [00:45]
Jane Costen
Like I said, top of his game. On today's show we talk about Grand Platner and what's next for the critical race remain Senate seat. Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today. Wednesday, July 8th to me, I think it's over.
- [01:04]
Donald Trump
I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people.
- [01:09]
Jane Costen
Trump did a lot of ranting about Iran on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Turkey today. He threatened to unleash more military strikes against Iran after saying that Iranian attacks signaled the end of the ceasefire. But he later said the most recent exchange of fire with the Islamic Republic did not herald a return to full scale war. Though to me this seems pretty war adjacent. His comments come after assaults on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz escalated into an exchange of fire on Iranian and US Military targets. A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a man in Houston, Texas, after he attempted to evade arrest in his vehicle on Tuesday, the agency said. The Department of Homeland Security wrote in a statement that the man, a Mexican national, was targeted in an operation because he was living in the country without legal permission. DHS said he ignored commands and attempted to ram an agent who fired his weapon in self defense. According to dhs, the man's car struck an ICE vehicle. He died after being transported to a hospital. To be clear, all of this information is from the Department of Homeland Security. So there's that. The shooting comes amid a newly intensified push by the Trump administration to carry out its mass deportations agenda. During the five day period at the end of June, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people. Trump is going to have to say goodbye to the $5 million set aside for E. Jean Carroll, which he absolutely does not want to pay. Sad. The money was set aside after a jury determined Trump sexually abused her in 1996 and defamed her after she revealed the attack. Today, a federal judge ruled that money must be released to Carol with interest. Carroll's lawyers requested the disbursement after the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the 2023 civil verdict. Unsurprisingly, Trump resumed defamatory attacks against Carol while his lawyers considered asking the court to reconsider its decision. For someone who doesn't want to fork over money to Carol, he sure loves defaming her. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Trump on the sidelines of the NATO summit as Russia and Ukraine continue to trade attacks. During their meeting, Trump said the US Would give a license to Ukraine so it could manufacture Patriot air defense systems to help counter Russian missile attacks. The tone of the meeting was markedly different from their acrimonious encounter at the White House last year, and even Trump took notice.
- [03:32]
Donald Trump
We've actually developed a good relationship. It's hard to believe right from the Oval Office to now, we've developed, I think we've developed a very good relationship.
- [03:41]
Jane Costen
Trump said he believes a deal on ending the war is on the horizon and that the US Would work on some kind of security package to provide Ukraine. And that's the news. Let's talk about Graham Blattner. Last year, the main Democratic Senate candidate burst into the national spotlight with a campaign that centers around his supposed working class bona fides and promises to fight the establishment even within his own party. His pretty campaign story got dirty fast. First there were the Reddit posts and the Nazi tattoo. Then there were credible allegations of, quote, unsettling behavior from past partners. But he won his primary anyway, thanks to a base of supporters who believed that he would challenge Democratic politics as usual. Then on Monday, Politico published the most serious allegation yet that Platner allegedly broke into a partner's home while drunk and sexually assaulted her. Since then, most of his big backers, like Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders, have withdrawn their support. As of our recording on Wednesday afternoon, Platner is still in the race, but there are a lot of questions about what comes next. To find out more, I spoke with Dave Weigel. He is a political reporter at Semaphore. Dave, welcome back to what a Day.
- [04:53]
Dave Weigel
Oh, it's good to be back. Thank you.
- [04:55]
Jane Costen
So, Grant Platner has had a weird campaign, to say the least. Stories about his past started dropping pretty quickly as he started hitting kind of the national sphere. And they just kept getting worse. So I feel like an obvious question is, how did this happen? Did his team just not vet him at all?
- [05:15]
Dave Weigel
The vetting question is multi layered because there is vetting that campaigns do. Wall Street Journal was first to report. I wish I was first. But they were first to report that the recruiters who found him, and they found him in part by going and seeing this video about his oyster business, which you can still see on YouTube, they paid for a quick vetting. They did not get into his entire background. A campaign manager they hired talked to his family, talked to his wife, I should say, and heard from her about his problems in the past with women. Not all of it. Heard that he had been texting other women. And the campaign basically stayed committed to Platner with this overarching theory that yes, this guy had made some mistakes, but lots of people have made mistakes. And the Democratic Party has a problem with judging, especially white men, white veterans who've made mistakes in their life. He should be forgiven, just like lots of people are forgiven for screwing up in their life. That's the vetting that they knew about. What has hurt him in the final days of, well, might be the final days of his campaign are accusations of sexual assault that would not come up in a vetting. There's no vetter who interviews everybody's ex girlfriends and asks if you're hiring some of the FBI. You don't comb their entire history for questions about their sexual behavior in the past. That seems to be what's fatal. That wouldn't come up at a vetting. But that destroyed the narrative which Morris Katz, who's key strategist for the campaign, believed in, which is, this guy made mistakes and it's a redemption story. He's being redeemed, just like the whole state needs to be redeemed. That might have worked with, I don't know, 70% fewer scandals just for background.
- [06:58]
Jane Costen
That is not how it normally works for people who are getting recruited to run for the Senate. Like, typically, they're not like, wow, you look great on YouTube. Let's ask a couple of questions and send you out there. Like, typically, it's a big effort to recruit someone and then to check into everything about them.
- [07:15]
Dave Weigel
Yes. And you're aware that other people are doing opposition research on you if you're getting into the race. If you're Janet Mills, who Chuck Schumer convinced to run, ran a kind of lackluster campaign, very lackluster campaign, dropped out, was aware that Republicans were going through her entire history and she's in her 70s and she had a history as an attorney, as a attorney general. They were gonna portray her as crooked in a couple of ways, ask questions about possible drug use. They had a lot of to go into. That's pretty common that you are ready to be totally combed and possibly humiliated by the vetting process. Anyone who's jumped into a vice presidential contest has had this experience. That's the highest level. Typically what happens in politics is that people run for one office, they get a little bit of a grilling, they run for a higher office, they get a bigger one because more reporters are interested, more of the opposition team is interested. Republicans are not doing oppo books on everyone running for state rep. They are when you're running for Senate and Congress. So unusual, but there is this sense that floated over all of this that the world had changed, that Democrats were too antsy about people's personal lives. And voters who had in Maine, especially in the second district, voted for Trump, 40 some percent of the state voted for Trump, that voters have just been less censorious, less worried about people's personal lives. I think that was a very comfortable myth for people to tell themselves because the other progressive priority raised for Senate this year is Abdul Al Said in Michigan. Part of his appeal has always been he's a high achieving smart guy who married his college sweetheart in college, is a Muslim who doesn't drink. Implicit in that is that you're not going to find skeletons in his closet. So there is a lot of excuse making and cope for the fact that Platner had them.
- [09:00]
Jane Costen
We'll get back to my conversation with Dave in a moment for more on what happens if Platner drops out. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a date is brought to you by Fast Growing Trees. Did you know? Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers. They have all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs and houseplants, all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. It's like your local nursery, but anywhere you live with more plants than you'll find anywhere else. Whatever you're looking for, Fast Growing Trees helps you find options that actually work for your climate, space and lifestyle. Fast Growing Trees makes it easy to get your dream yard. Just click order grow and get healthy, thriving plants delivered to your door. Their alive and thrive guarantee promises that your plants arrive happy and healthy. No green thumb required, just quality plants you can count on. Plus get ongoing support from trained plant experts who can help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants and learn how to care for them every step of the way. My husband and I love to give our friends and family plants from Fast Growing Trees. They really do make the perfect gift. You don't need a big yard or a lot of space. You can grow lemon, avocado, olive or fig trees indoors along with a wide variety of houseplants, all grown with care and hand selected to thrive in your home. The experts at Fast Growing Trees have curated thousands of plants for every climate and growing zone so customers can find options that truly work for their yard. You don't have to drive around to nurseries or big garden centers taking up your whole weekend and making a mess in your car. Fast Growing Trees delivers expert grown plants with garden center quality right to your door in just a few days. Right now they have great deals on spring planting essentials up to half off on select plants and listeners to our show get 20% off their first purchase when using the code Watt at checkout. That's an additional 20% off. Better plants and better growing at fastgrowingtrees.com using the code WATT at checkout fastgrowingtrees.com code WAD now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use WAD to save today. Offer is valid for limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. What a day is brought to you by Nutrafol. Summer is full of vacations, weekend getaways and spending more time outdoors. And when you're packing for a trip, the last thing you want to be worrying about is your hair. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand and it's the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. Nutrafol's hair growth supplements are peer reviewed, NSF certified for sport and clinically tested. Let your hair be one less thing to worry about. See visibly thicker, stronger, faster Growing hair in three to six months with Nutrafol For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit nutrafol.com and enter promo code day 10. That's nutrafol.com, spelled N u T R-A F o L.com promo code DAYTEN
- [11:56]
Grainger Announcer
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- [12:26]
Jane Costen
I wrote a little song to remind you. Choice hotels get you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar. Have a ball. Bring a date, your squad or even your mom. Book direct@ChoiceHotels.com let's get back to my conversation with Dave Weigel. Plattner's campaign has run into a ton of issues, even before this Politico piece that broke earlier this week thanks to this lackluster vetting and this whole theater theory of change. But for months, it seemed like nothing could shake his support, both on the ground and with national Democrats. But it seems like these most recent allegations of sexual assault are too much. Platner has denied the allegations, but he's also losing a lot of support. I think he needs to drop out. He should probably drop out. It would be better for everybody else if he drops out. Why is he dragging his feet?
- [13:20]
Dave Weigel
So even if he drops out while we're talking, he dragged his feet longer than a lot of Democrats wanted to. I talked to one of the Democrats, Nareve Shah, who might want to replace him. He hasn't declared yet, and he was saying the best moment for him to drop out was when this started. The next best would be any minute now. Why did he stay in the race? Well, in talking about this forgiveness idea, and the Democrats think that there needs to be a little bit less, less, not scrutiny, but a little bit less puritanism about people's lives. That's something that Bernie Sanders believes and that's something that Graham Platner believes. And Sanders was very comfortable arguing that the corporate media, as he calls it, there's a lot of corporate unit for the media. He's not wrong, obsesses over scandal, so it doesn't have to COVID policy. I got the sense talking to Platner over the last year. He agrees with that. I interviewed him after the first stories about his Reddit posts were published by cnn. That was his the argument I was saying was his argument that I've made mistakes. Does the Democratic Party really want to be saying, you cannot serve in office if you've ever screwed up and never had a dark period of your life where you said stupid things online. That is the Bernie opinion. I think that is the Platner opinion, that I should be allowed some grace. And also, you guys in the media care about this, but voters don't. That's also not crazy. Every candidate who's out there gets feedback from voters. And I saw some of this myself when I was in Maine. The people coming out for Platner agreed with that. They resented that they would open their phone or open the newspaper or watch tv, and instead of a Platner speech about the importance of the labor movement, you'd hear questions about his personal life. They really hated that. They thought that was unfair. And there was a bit of 2016 hangover. They remember seeing the Access Hollywood stories and thinking, well, Trump can't win anymore. And then Trump winning. And I do think there has been this overall derangement for both parties about what it is that constitutes a scandal. In talking to Democrats around the Platner thing, too, is when Republicans said they'd be offended, they were offended by something Platner did, and they did a lot. Look at this Reddit post. How dare he say that? The honest answer I'd hear from Democrats is, we know Republicans don't believe that. If this party believed that, they would not have gotten behind Donald Trump three times. If they really believe these things were offensive, they would not be going on these podcasts where people are saying offensive. They don't. Who cares? Was the overall response. And it was hubristic, the classic political hubris.
- [15:43]
Jane Costen
So I'm saying this now on Wednesday, it seems pretty unlikely that Platner will just stay in the race. CNN is already reporting that he's, quote, trying to navigate an exit from the race. So you mentioned that there are already people who want to get in if he does drop out. What is the process for replacing Platner with another candidate?
- [16:01]
Dave Weigel
Yeah, Maine Democrats have a lot of freedom in selecting a new candidate. If they wanted to, the party committee, the state party committee, people who are permanent activists whose names are not famous could just meet and say, we have a new candidate. Hop a missed candidate. They are clearly leaning towards some sort of open process that would involve candidates doing interviews, candidates showing up in public, candidates campaigning in some way. Shah, who I mentioned, wants at least one debate between these candidates and then some voting process. Who'd be involved in the voting process? That's even tbd. Would it be people who are Democratic delegates who showed up at the convention a couple months ago. Would it be a caucus with multiple sites where the party has to count the ballots? This would all have to happen before July 27th. But that's the answer is that this is being shaped by the process. There are candidates who want to run saying, if I run, I hope it's like this. Nobody wants it to be a closed door meeting that picks a candidate because all this. Also I mentioned 2016, the 2016 hangover, the idea among Democrats that when the party selects a candidate, it is bad, it is anti Democratic, very powerful for, I think multiple wings of the party and they want to avoid that impression.
- [17:09]
Jane Costen
So we're in a weird moment where a couple of months ago Platner was seen as Democrats best shot to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins. But even before the Politico stuff came out that was kind of up in the air, the polling had started to change because voters heard about all of this stuff and started to go, what does this entire debacle do for Democrats chances in Maine this November if he were to drop out and there would be a new candidate?
- [17:33]
Dave Weigel
Yeah, I hate relying on betting markets, but I agreed with them in this case that you saw people put more bets on a Democrat beating Susan Collins when this latest iteration of the scandal happened. Because there is a precedent, not a lot of precedent for a party ditching a candidate, putting in a new guy who wins. There's precedent for that not working. There's precedent for it working. Like we have an example from 2002 where Bob Torricelli is running for reelection as senator from New Jersey. He decides he can't win, he drops out and is replaced and the replacement, Frank Lautenberg, wins. When it was much closer to the election, we were in a much different media environment. They're looking now at what would happen if on July 28th we have a new candidate. That new candidate would get some vetting in the media, but they'll probably be somebody who ran for governor and they got that vetting already. What if they are reintroduced from this campaign for governor? They ran TV ads, people kind of knew who they are and they're more of a generic Democrat against Collins. The partisanship of Maine right now, the popularity of Donald Trump right now suggests that most Mainers would like to elect a Democrat. So they actually feel pretty good about what would happen when the cameras pack up and leave.
- [18:43]
Jane Costen
Dave, as always, thank you so much for joining me.
- [18:47]
Dave Weigel
Thanks for having me.
- [18:48]
Jane Costen
That was my conversation with Dave Weigel, political reporter at Semaphore. Before we go. We are somehow only halfway through 2026, and what a six months it's been. Trump started a war in the Middle east just to feel something. Elon Musk became the first trillionaire, and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turned into a metaphor for democracy. If Crooked podcasts have helped you make sense of the chaos, made you laugh, or simply made you feel something, there's no better time to check out the Crooked Store. We're locking in and gearing up for the midterms, so pick out some merch that reps the shows you love and the movements keeping you hopeful. New pieces are added all the time. Head to crooked.com store now. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, ask again, what is Donald Trump talking about? And tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just about Trump at the NATO summit discussing rankings on TikTok.
- [19:41]
Donald Trump
But it just. The numbers came out just a little while ago and I was number one. Some ridiculous number. I never heard of numbers like that. But number one. And all these entertainers, they're number 27, 29. It's crazy. I don't even understand myself.
- [19:56]
Jane Costen
Like me, what a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe@crooked.com subscribe I'm Jane Costen and I also do not understand Donald Trump, like, at all. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Kaitlyn Plummer, Emily Foer, Erica Morrison and Adrienne Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Kanter. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America. East.
- [20:29]
Grainger Announcer
Granger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog. H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 247 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you you keep production
- [21:03]
Jane Costen
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- [21:06]
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- [21:18]
Jane Costen
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- [21:20]
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