7/8/26: Trump Says Iran Ceasefire Over, Bibi Rages Over Turkey, Platner Fallout Continues

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday. I have an amazing show for everybody today. Bro show. People live for the pounds. Which goes back. Actually, no, it's, it's, thank you for having me. That's right. It's Wednesday. After all, people getting a lot of bro shows this week. That's how the schedule goes. The schedule goes. We're going to do our best here. So we're going to kick off Donald Trump, some major comments. abroad in Ankara, basically saying the memorandum of understanding is over, as well as the ceasefire. This follows retaliatory strikes between Iran and the United States. Iran then firing back at U.S.

bases. Probably the biggest exchange of fire since the ceasefire began. I don't even know what the date is at this point. It doesn't matter. Along with probably the biggest news is the revocation of American or sorry, the reimposition of American sanctions on Iranian oil, almost certainly to invite a major Iranian response and perhaps a resumption of the war. Oil markets popping a little bit, but still delusional, as has been the case. Turkey, we're going to talk about that. Ryan and Emily covered a little bit of this on Monday. But Benjamin Netanyahu all over American cable news to tell us why Turkey is actually our greatest enemy. Iran's over.

Now it's all about Turkey. Trump making some comments there. B.B. putting his full thumb on the scale to prevent the sale of F-35. and BB actually saying some of the quiet part out loud. So this will be a major tussle between the U.S. and Israel. Wonder who I would put my money on in terms of winning that fight. We are going to talk about Graham Platner situation in Maine. There is a basically, I mean, I would describe it as a full-blown coup attempt now currently happening in Maine. You can evaluate for yourself, but the executive director of the Maine Democratic Party out this morning, Ryan, saying that Graham

Graham Platner should have absolutely no say whatsoever in who replaces him full-scale civil war between the establishment and Graham Platner in perhaps who will replace him. It does appear all signs currently point to him dropping out, but we're not entirely sure yet. We are going to talk about Me Too. Again, I know that this is a bit difficult, two bros on the bro show who are litigating this, but actually a lot of this is going to be reporting. Ryan has some exclusive reporting that he can show everybody for some of the text messages that led us. up to this exchange between Graham Platner and his current accuser, which Politico had but did not release, which in and of itself, in my opinion, is a media story. It is not how you do journalism.

It is not how to do journalism whatsoever. This is in addition to some new interviews from CNN and others of people who are accusing Graham Platner of improper behavior. And a lot of this is reminding us of the eight year ago kind of litigation through Me Too. And honestly, a lot of the journalistic standards here. And you do not have to in any way saying Graham Platner is innocent or Graham Platner did not act very terribly. But to say, unequivocally, the way the media is handling this story is genuinely irresponsible. So we're going to go through that. And then, Ryan, you've got Kai Newkirk who's going to join you. Sager stumbled into a Wednesday show here. And he's what are all of these socialists doing on the run-down?

All these DSA communists. But this guy, I'm going to make an exception for this dude, because he's currently running for office in Arizona and is, what is he, filed an official complaint with the Arizona Attorney General alleging foreign interference by the state of Israel via a massive spending bomb against him. So any American who's under attack by the Israel lobby, you're out here to support them. And then you have Ryan, a candidate, David Morales. DSA is trying to take over Providence. And as people say, as goes Providence, so goes the nation.

As goes Providence, so goes Bobbins. So it goes providence. Yeah, so it goes providence. Great city, though. Don't get me wrong. Great city. I got married in Rhode Island. I'll always love it. Okay. Before we get to any of that, thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show, breakingpoints.com, if you're able to. But do not forget that we have our incredible newsletter, which is out here right now, which you can subscribe to perfectly for free. Just go to breakingpoints.com. The pop-ups right there. You put your email in and you get the first three blocks. Our premium subscribers, of course, get access to the full thing, which is a written version. basically rundown of our entire show. It has links. We work very, very hard on this product. We're incredibly proud of it. So please sign up and take advantage if you are able to. Although I promise to put a link into yesterday's newsletter and I forgot. I'm going to try to stop doing that. I'm really going to try better. If I say I'm going to put a link in, I'm going to put a link in. Also, one fun thing, today, DropSite News turns two. Wow. This is our second anniversary. I remember like it was yesterday.

I know. I really was. I don't know if it's been super long or. I feel whenever we hit our five-year anniversary, I'm like five years. years. It's like happened yesterday, but I guess a lot has happened too. So there we go. All right, let's go ahead and start with Iran, as Ryan said, some crazy stuff happening there. Trump basically saying the ceasefire is over in Ankara. Let's take a listen. I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people. And they're vicious, violent people. and if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it, as far as I'm concerned, it's over.

I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner. But they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars. We make a deal.

If I make a deal with him, we have a deal, and he goes out, he talks. We make a deal. Everyone's agreed. No nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press. They say, we never. even talked about it. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned,

it's over. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. He says now multiple times. So let's go and put the next one, take a listen, where he talks specifically about the strikes on Iran, describing them as 20 to 1 in terms of what the U.S. received. Let's take a listen. We attacked very powerfully last night, the very dangerous people from Iran, they're sick. There's something wrong with them. We said, go and do your funeral stuff. And instead of that, they start shooting rockets of chips yesterday. And so we hit them very hard last night, very hard. I would say 20 to 1, 20 times tougher. I told them every time you hit, we hit. And of course, they're just dirty players, so they go after everyone, probably including me. I've been number one on their

list for years, and they're a bunch of scum. You want to know that they're scum. And so we don't like them. I don't like them. And they're evil people, and it's the denuclearization of Iran, and we're going to denook it. We're not going to let them because they're crazy, and they can't have a nuclear weapon. And they go around killing people. They've killed thousands. and thousands of our soldiers. They've killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Evil people, we're going to denuk it. This is all, I mean, look, let's put A1 up here just to show you even the shift in language

from the United States. The U.S. Central Command Forces have begun launching a series of powerful strikes against Iran. Note, this time, they don't even say powerful self-defense strikes like they usually do, which in and of itself is a meaningless phrase, to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping, crewed by innocent. civilians in an international waterway. The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. So what this basically comes down to is a complete disagreement on what it actually means to have the memorandum of understanding and

the phrase specifically that says free passage to the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian understanding of the phrase free passage is, yes, you can go through for free, with coordination, with Iranian authorities. The American version of that is we can go through however we want, including through routes set up by the United States military and the government of Oman. Iran is desperately, and is basically willing to blow up the entire ceasefire over, basically, they are threatening to blow up an entire ceasefire over the idea of control over the Strait of Hormuz because it is their ultimate leverage that they were able to exert in this war. The economic nuke, basically, as Robert Pape, has described it here on our

show. And why I think that's very important is just that there is a total mismatch between what the U.S. wants and what Iran wants. Iran wants not only security for itself for all time, but also to increase its overall regional power. So that's why the ceasefire in and of itself, they don't particularly care about taking some more of these smaller strikes, which on Kashim Island or around the Strait of Hormuz. The United States needs an immediate drop in oil prices. Remember, Brent Crude, still around $76 per barrel. The national price of gasoline is still some 370, still a full dollar above where it was before the war even began.

So you can see is Trump, while he can say all of these things, he can't fully resume the war either. So we're in this very difficult status quo where oil is going to remain high. And in the interim, you have chaos, you know, really in the straight Ryan, you've got shipping slowing down. You had a Qatari-LNG tanker, which got hit, which is a huge, you know, huge deal because Qatar was one of their major mediators. They're much more explosive.

Yes, yeah, exactly. Much more flammable. And we can look at bullet five of the MOU reads, The Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days, only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa, straight of Hormuz. The traffic of commercial vehicles will immediately start.

So Iran is clearly reading that they will make the arrangements using their best efforts. for the safe passage in coordination and in coordination with Oman. Now, what the U.S. has been doing is they've been trying to tell all of these ships, go through the southern passage that is on the Omani side, and do not coordinate with Iran. Iran isn't asking for money, but they want basically, give me your license plate, license and registration. And the U.S. does not want to institutionalize the process of these international ships. working with Iran to go through because that is then effectively seeding the idea that they control it. But if that was something that, if you ask me, that the U.S. wanted, maybe they should have negotiated for that better in the talks.

Like that's where you work that out. So Iran is saying, hey, we didn't get their license and registration. We're hitting them. Now, Trump has a huge problem here. Even 20 to 1 strikes are not going to, persuade Iran that their position should change on this question. Trump has already demonstrated that he does not have the military capacity to bend Iran's will on the Strait of Hermuz. Like, we all watched it happen. And so that leaves either massive escalation and occupation of Iran and complete decapitation of not just the regime, but like complete regime change.

And you install the Shah or whatever. Right. Like, you need... No, the Shah's Filsson, who lives here in Maryland. Yes. Yeah. So there's that, or there's the negotiations. This back and forth, where they fire on ships and we fire on them, does not change the status quo. Right. They still, like right now, if you're a ship, no matter how many times the U.S. has just bombed Iran over the last 24 hours, you still better coordinate with Iran or we're going to get a hit.

Let's put A4 up here on the screen. This is about transits through the street. of Hormuz, you can actually see what they look like in terms of how they have gone down, halted transit, anchored instead of entering the straight. Remember, I mean, whenever we say, oh, is the straight open? It's really up to Iran, and it's up to the insurance company, and then the company itself. The company says, we're not going through, and insurance says, nope, don't do it. Well, then we're not going to. You can actually literally see the circle there where ship is refusing to go through the straight. So we are not even close to resuming normal

I think, and also remember, you know, Iran has internal politics, too. Take a look at the funeral where it was millions of people. And guess what? There is a huge faction of the Iranian government who opposed a ceasefire from day one. Huge faction of the IRGC who said, you are making a catastrophic mistake. They're going to rearm and they're going to bomb us. And according to Treat to Parsi, the internal belief inside of Iran is that Israel and the United States will resume the war within six months, exactly like they did the last time. And so this is all setting

the stage, potentially for a major conflagration or confrontation. This will not happen tomorrow necessarily. It could happen months from now, but on again, off again. We're probably not going to have time to cover the situation in Ukraine. Perfect example. The critical nexus of the battle in Ukraine is now where you have a development of the drone threat. You have Moscow and Ukraine locked in the contest, ballistic missiles, they're flying over the top, and Ukraine having the ability to destroy. strike deep inside of Russia to Russian oil refineries. That's where the strategic calculus leaps to another level. And it's very unfortunate because we have effectively entered forever war territory here in terms of the logic. It's easier to just mow the lawn with Iran.

It's easier for Iran to just constantly, you know, sit there and be like, look, we're not getting, you know, completely pounded by bombs. We can lob a few bombs in the Straits of Hormuz and continue to negotiate over time. That all, that instability in the global market and order is exactly what is diminishing U.S. power will keep having a magnet for the U.S. And it's leading to crazy situations like Asia Pacific abandoning the United States. The European NATO summit, half of it with the European leaders, is about how can we stop being dependent on America? Like, we can't be dependent on these people.

The entire world seeing a pushback. And America not even having the ability, even if they wanted to arm Ukraine today, we can't. We don't have any of the missiles. We used it all. And to add to your point about Iran's, internal calculations. Yesterday, there were two million plus mourners in Najaf, Iraq, for the Ayatollah. So, and the morning in Karbala is expected to be even bigger than that.

So what Iran is seeing is millions of people, not just pouring out into the streets of Iran, but also, also Iraq. So they're seeing themselves, they're seeing themselves, you know, solidify in develop as a significant regional power. And so, yeah, 20 to one air strikes from President Trump aren't going to do it. We can put up A5. The geopolitical implications of this Qatari ship getting hit are significant as well. You know, Qatar had reached some kind of agreement with Iran. And what Iran is showing here is that we may have an agreement, but if you're not respecting the rules that we're setting up to get ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Even your LNG tanker is going to get hit, which everyone here is playing with fire. Like could be an absolutely, you know, could catastrophic attack, you know, for everybody on board, anybody nearby, and also ecologically for the entire region. So far, they've been almost lucky that this is all that's happened so far. put up A6 from drop site. Yes. Up to five ships now may have been hit just over the past two days. The key is there is that southern Omani route, which is as far away from Iran as possible.

You can't really say far because it's like 20-9 miles. Yeah, it's like really not that far. That's the entire problem with the geography. Close enough for drones and hand grenades. Exactly right. And speedboats, if that's something that you want to do too. And so we're just locked in this situation. How will it, you know, resolve, who knows again?

And that's why it's always important to say Trump says it's over. You can't take that to the bank. Trump says that it's back on. You can't take that to the bank either. Right. There's all of these. But I will say... As far as I'm concerned, it's back on.

There are signals that are... So in the same way that the J.D. ascension and Geneva, the Lake Lucerne Summit, it was a positive sign. Like, you can't take back these comments about Israel or any of that. You can't. These are all good. Well, now, we're seeing signs in the opposite direction. So one of the worst signs I saw, Pete Hegseth was on his way to Israel. Visit just got canceled.

Well, a bit of a problem. Why does visit get canceled? You could read it two ways. One, is there mad at BB over his comments on Turkey, which we're about to talk about? One is we're about to go back to war, so he needs to be at the Pentagon. So both of these are, you know, I mean, one would be a positive, one would be a negative. You also have Marco Rubio, who's traveling with the president, not the vice president, who's here in Washington. Well, you've got the vice president away from the president.

you've got the hawkish secretary of state with the president, along with the secretary of defense, two of the people who opposed the ceasefire initially and always thought that it was going to be a total failure. So all of these tea leaves that were reading around who were around Trump and what they're urging him to do, et cetera, all of this currently points in a direction of at least a collapse of the memorandum understanding, which just leads to even more instability, which means stock markets are going to go down. Oil prices will go slightly up, but no way a return to normal. which is what everybody wanted in the first place. Nobody wants this war except for Trump.

And we're down at 90 million barrels are in our strategic reserve. That is, and we released, I think, 6 million last week. So we're still going down. 90 million is nothing. Like you can see the bottom of that. Yeah, the strategic petroleum reserve and much more. Okay, let's get to the Turkey situation. On Deck is built to back small businesses like yours.

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Our Skin, a personal discovery podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to the situation with Beebe and Turkey. I mean, they are full on. So BB is furious right now. Let's put B1 up here. You guys can see it. Trump arrived in Ankara to great fanfare President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even met him on the tarmac, which is such a huge deal. Apparently, he never does that. And this show of allyship between these two longstanding nations is throwing Israeli politics into complete chaos, so much so that Benjamin Netanyahu has now taken to Fox News and CNN, not his own press, to beg the United States, not to resume the sale of F-35 planes to turn.

Turkey, which of course is a NATO ally and more important to the United States in every way than Israel. But here he is saying it will jeopardize not U.S. security, but Israeli security. And that's why we shouldn't do it. Let's take a listen. President Trump is in Turkey right now. He said this morning he will consider selling F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, which is a reversal of a ban he put in place.

You said yesterday that would, quote, upset the power balance in the Middle East. Have you made that clear to President Trump? Yes, I have actually spoke to him several times about it. And I think that everybody understands that notwithstanding the personal friendship that President Trump has with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it doesn't make Turkey a friendly or a friendly state to the United States, to the contrary. It's a regime that's infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States. He harbors Hamas, the Hamas terrorists. He supports them.

He finances them. He's thrown his opponents in jail, all of them. He throws more journalists in jail than anyone can understand. So he's not exactly a model ally of the United States. But even worse than that, he threatens Greece, a NATO ally. He occupies half of Cyprus, another NATO country, and the most important thing, and I put it right on the table. He threatens to destroy my country.

the one and only Jewish state, is number two, says that we have no place among the nations, and you know what that means. And as number three, the Interior Minister says that he's looking forward to be the governor of Jerusalem. Hello, you know, we're a sovereign country? He is considering giving the country these planes, F-35s. Well, as I said, it would destroy the power balance

in the Middle East because Turkey, I think has aggressive aspirations. I mean, they openly say that. They want to restore the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire not only included Turkey, it included many other countries, included Syria, and included pieces of Jim Jordan, included all of present-day Israel, included some Gulf countries. So this is not a force for peace and stability. And if you give this kind of radical regime, that,

admittedly, smiles to America when it is necessary, or smiles to the President of the United States, when is necessary. When you've given that power, you're going to see aggression in its wake. I wouldn't do that. There's so much going on there, Ryan, that you flagged. Number one, he's so concerned about journalists. Wow. Yes. The person who murdered a bunch of journalists. He's very concerned about journalists. Second, Turkey is occupying. Anti-occupation. Anti-occupation. End the occupation, says Benjamin Netanyahu. Yeah, you might as well be a Ryan Grimm's. Defend journalists and end the occupation. And a little quiet part out loud is this would threaten Israeli air superiority in the region.

That's what it's all about. That's the whole thing. She calls a balance. That's the opposite of a balance. It's the imbalance. The imbalance is balanced to the Israelis. The Israeli right to them is the right to not only have their country to have whatever

you would define as Palestine, is to have half of Lebanon, is to have half of Syria, is to bomb Qatar at will, is to bomb Iran at will. is to be, why would, what was the purpose? Nobody can have the capacity to fight back. Nobody has it. Why? The Israeli demand was Iran cannot have a ballistic missile, which is capable of hitting Israel. Not anything on nuclear weapons. Is it ballistic missile capable? Why? Because they need no balance whatsoever. So they can take over whatever they want. These Iranians are like, look, we'll ship the nuclear weapon or nuclear material out of the country. Nope, not good enough. Why? Because they don't have, they can't have the ability to threaten Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or any of these, Haifa, any of the other cities. in Israel. That's what it's actually all about, this entire thing. And so when he says this about

Turkey, which we all know, they've been saying it out loud now for what, for the entire war, basically they're like Turkey is next from Neftali Bennett now to the prime minister. This is purely about breaking up the U.S. and NATO. And I'm no defender of NATO, but if we're going to break up NATO, it should be on our terms, not on Israeli terms, okay? And it should be a lot more about why should we defend North Macedonia or whatever, you know, Montenegro. as opposed to, well, Israel wants to bomb Turkey and that's a huge problem. The irony, of course, is that by launching this war, Trump has made himself much more reliant on Turkey and much more reliant on the Gulf countries because he needs them, because we no longer have any

weapons, to actually restore some sort of regional balance. But he's still the superpower person on top of that. So he both has to court Recep Tayyip Erdogan and court Benjamin Netanyahu. He has this rogue actor over here, and then this NATO ally over here with a population which hates Israel, with a fiery passion, he really has hate them right back. And I just think it demonstrates exactly the sheer instability of our alliance here with Israel. And also, I mean, what can we even say about CNN, just inviting this propaganda commercial on for why he shouldn't be able to buy F-35? She didn't even challenge, but why do you deserve Israeli air superiority in the region? Did you even think to ask that?

Right. It's crazy. Yeah, nothing. And so then watching, oh, and last point, so we'll get to put a B6, Benjamin Netanyahu said he jails his political opponents. Indeed, the mayor of Istanbul is the largest opposition figure is in jail with like trumped-up charges. But meanwhile, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu has thousands of his political opponents in administrative detention.

in torture chambers in Israel. But so it'll be, it's interesting to see how Trump navigated this. Listen closely to how Trump talks about the F-35s and his relationship with Turkey versus a certain other ally that he doesn't name, but is quite clear who he's referring to. It's going to be four. President, are you going to sell F-35s to Turkey? And what about the legal restrictions? Well, it's a decision we're going to make.

we have a very good relationship. I would think that many people, I can tell you, many people, including the people sitting right here, think, why wouldn't we do that? We have a better relationship with Turkey, and Turkey's been in many ways much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal. So, yeah, something certainly we would consider.

It's a great plane. It's the best, currently the best plane by far. And it's certainly. something we will consider. Yeah. Now, that's probably a double swipe at Europe and European countries who he's always dogging for not being loyal enough and not defending him when he went to war with Iran. But given the context of Benjamin Netanyahu's 24-7 in a public cable campaign against Trump doling out the F-35 to Turkey, to have him say, no, these guys are loyal, unlike some other people who, I'm not going to mention.

It's pretty difficult not to believe that he's also including Benjamin Netanyahu in that. Who he feels, or he at least has been saying publicly he feels like has been an obstacle to his agenda in the Middle East lately. But at the same time, like, how can we see the collapse of the ceasefire and not bet on Benjamin Netanyahu? By the way, you know, we didn't even put this on a show. Shame on. Guess what Israel also did today. Bomb Lebanon. Bomb Lebanon, right?

Which the Iranians are like, hello, hello. Paragraph one, ceasefire on all fronts. It's totally nuts. And so you look at this, you see the Israelis who are bombing Lebanon. You have this attack basically on the Trump administration full blown from Benjamin Netanyahu on American cable news. And what does the president say? Nothing. I mean, every once in a while, he'll give an interview when he's like, oh, BB, I'm the boss. And that's great. Okay, it's nice to say. But BB's not stupid. He knows exactly how to reach Trump through U.S. cable news. He's fully activated all of his allies.

And the other thing is, now that Trump says as the ceasefire is over, the neocon tonguebath is about to come back full in force. Oh, Mr. President, the greatest and the strongest president. You didn't make any mistake here with the ceasefire. Don't worry about it. And at this, you know, you basically have like fifth columnists here in the United States who are agents of the Israeli government. Like, let's put B-10 up here, Mark Levin.

Look at this. I mean, this is basically propaganda on behalf of the Israeli government's position. Breaking news. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prepared to join forces with Iran against Israel. The president has mentioned several times he talked Recep Tayyip Erdogan out of entering the war on the side of the Iranian regime, meaning he talked Recep Tayyip Erdogan out of going to war with the U.S. and Israel. I really think this needs to be explained in detail and fully pursued. If a NATO country was going to join the enemy in our war against Iran, we need to know all about it.

The president is rightfully condemning the support of NATO countries, but in the case of Turkey, it was prepared to fight us, question mark? Can you imagine Recep Tayyip Erdogan using our military equipment against us? Now this thug will have our F-35s. By the way, Israel has F-35s. And we're praising the hell out of this guy like is our best friend. We need to know a lot more about this. I mean, what they do is, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu puts out the talking point, then the entire neocon industrial complex comes up behind him. It's a pressure campaign.

And as, you know, Bruno Masias, he's a commentator, I deeply respect. He called this years ago. I remember him saying it. He said, the death of NATO will have nothing to do with Ukraine. It will have nothing to do with Russia. It will be an Israeli war of aggression on doing. And, I mean, he could not have been more right. I really, one of the most prescient predictions I have ever seen.

And on the Lebanon strikes, if you know, it was a drone strike on a vehicle down in southern Lebanon. It hit a school principal, her mother. a foreign domestic worker, you know, like an au pair or something, and then a Syrian citizen that were all driving this car, which had been trying to return to its check on their home down in southern Lebanon where Israel has destroyed most of the homes. Yeah, so, and then finally, do you want to talk about this Egypt thing? I wanted to give you that opportunity here.

I know that was something that was so horrible. Yes, we can put this next element up just, just, B-9 guys. One of the most sadistic and insane things, I feel like I've ever seen. So the Egyptian Relief Committee was organizing, they put out a bunch of TVs so that people could watch in Gaza the Egypt-Argentina game, which trying to give people a little bit of life, a little bit of joy in as bleak a scenario as you could possibly imagine. an hour before the match, Israel kills the committee's PR guy. Yeah. Like, just let them watch the game.

Also, Israel would have been happy because Egypt was completely robbed in that game. I mean, credit to Argentina, an incredible comeback, but Egypt had this one of the greatest goals in World Cup history called off by some stupid VAR call. And then Argentina does the exact same thing, goes coast to coast, who also trips an Egyptian player in the box, and they don't get a call for that. So Israel could have just been satisfied with the Palestinians who were rooting for Egypt being disappointed in how that unfolded.

Instead, they have to kill the PR guy who's setting up the big screen TVs. It's just so just depraved. Like, there's no word for it. I agree. And that's why they deserve regional airspace. superiority. That's the balance of power they're talking about. That's what they're doing with their balance. That America deserves and should backstop in the region. Smart. Okay, let's get to Graham Platner.

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I'm Holly Fry, and our skin exists precisely because of stats like that. Because more people than ever are living with conditions like psoriasis and hydrodinitis superativa. And most of them are doing it alone, without answers, without community, without anyone to tell them what the heck is actually going on. You know, not that many people knew about it. And I felt kind of alone. Like, am I an outcast? That's where we come in. We talk doctors. We talk appointments that are, well, a disappointment. We talk about the flare-ups and the breakthroughs.

Then we dive deep into the wild, occasionally gross, always fascinating history of how humans have tried to understand our skin over the centuries. Spoiler alert, we did not always get it right. Listen to season three of Our Skin, a personal discovery podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner has still not resigned the nomination, but Maine Democratic Party executive director, Devin Murphy Anderson, last night posted a video urging that he do so and telling him in his campaign that he will have no say in who is chosen to replace him or how that candidate will be picked. Let's roll a little bit of Murphy Anderson here.

Hi, everyone. I wanted to provide you all an update on the U.S. Senate race here in Maine. As you know, the Maine Democratic Party has been working around the clock to develop a process to replace our U.S. Senate nominee that is open, inclusive, transparent, and fair. The integrity of this process

is just as important as the outcome, and we are committed to ensuring that Democrats across our state can have confidence in both. Unfortunately, Graham Platner's team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner's team

that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like. We have also reiterated that Graham Platner must drop out of this race so that Democrats in Maine can focus on defeating Susan Collins this November. We look forward to making this process public as soon as Graham Platner formally withdraws from this race. And so the Graham Platner campaign responded to this, and we can add this in post, campaign official told Sahel Kippur, quote, The Graham Platner campaign has reached out to the party to try and understand what this process would look like. At no point has the campaign tried to, quote, put its finger on the scale. Over 150,000 Mainers voted for this movement, and over 15,000 Mainers volunteered their time and energy to it.

While Graham wouldn't want to be a part of the process, he would, want to make sure the voters and volunteers make this decision, not the political establishment, unquote. Can I say what it is? This is a coup. Well, that from the executive director, to say we're not even going to answer their phone calls, they did win the nomination. He won more votes.

Look, can we just say, I'm not some Graham Platner fan. I literally said... Can vouch. Guy does not like Graham Platner. It's not that I hate Graham Platner. I've always thought he's like a Brooklyn cosplay. leftist as some sort of working climate i think his background uh bears all of that out okay and so i'll save that i tell you so for later but to me this is a principal matter like this man won more votes

in the democratic primary than anyone in main history and the main democratic party who is that lady by the way i don't remember anybody uh voting for her across the state think so she run for anything does she run for anything maybe look maybe i'm wrong maybe she got voted like i'm not familiar exactly with the bylaws of the main democratic party i know that one person who's got more votes than anyone in the history of a main Democratic Party, and to say that he should have no say whatsoever in how the next person, if he were to step down to replace him, is totally insane, insane. Because his volunteers, his people, his campaign are ultimately the ones who beat a sitting governor in the Democratic nomination. You don't force her out of the race.

They beat the DSCC. And then to say that if he's going to step down, which he doesn't have to do, that he should have no say in the process is, I mean, it is as anti-democratic as it possibly could be. Because, Ryan, you and I both know they're going to try various different ways to make this seem open, superdelegates or televised debates, like nothing beats voting. And they can't vote again. So it is, by definition, going to be an anti-democratic process. They could do at least a caucus-level situation. And what Graham Platner seems to be saying here, is I'm not trying to force you to take who I want you to take.

Now, if an establishment candidate was getting pushed out of the race, by the way, they would appoint an establishment replacement. There would be no controversy about it, no question about it. It would be done in 12 hours. But an establishment candidate is not getting pushed out of the race.

Graham Platner is. Graham Platner is not even saying he is insisting on like Troy Jackson or Shennebello's. What he is saying is that he wants to make sure that there is an inclusive process that as many Democrats who participated in the primary process are able to participate in. And that could be a convention in Portland

that has many conventions in every county where there's a democratic... This is easily something that can be put together. And so he's just asking, and this is within the power of the main Democratic Party to put together, it would be a kind of a shotgun thing, probably it'd be hard to pull off an entire primary, whether you count every single vote.

But you could do a caucus-type situation. They could figure something out in Graham Platner's campaign is saying, what are you thinking? Because to your point, they don't want this to go into Janet Mills' office or her office. Because it's fair. And they just come out to smoke signal. The voters rejected her.

They explicitly did not vote for her. Like, you cannot do this, in my opinion. This is why, I mean, look, I think so much of Graham Platner and a lot of the Democratic left, I don't know what is going on, but like, you know, their whole brand is fighting. This is the time to fight guys. This is how you got steamrolled under Biden. And this is basically why you have no power. This is why Bernie dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday, never fought and did anything. Allegedly this is the time to stand up. Everybody just immediately was like, oh, yeah, Graham Platner's got to go, but nobody demanded any sort of conditions. And the main Democratic Party said he's in no position. to demand anything. Well, he's literally in a position to demand anything. It's like, I really feel like I'm taking

crazy pills, Ryan, because a lot of it, like from Zohran Mamdani to Bernie to any of the Rokane, to all the movement leaders, everyone started with he's got to go without the next part. The next part should be, and the person who he, who succeeds

him, should be as similar to him as possible. And they've given up all their leverage, and now these people are right back in charge. I really think if you're anti-establishment, Democrat in Maine, you should be outraged. By the way, this is playing out. Right. There are three kind of ways you can handle serious, huge allegations like that in the moment. One is to say, we need to wait for a couple of days here to get more information about this. I want to hear from all sides. Two is to say, okay, you know what, our guy is done.

we're going to negotiate a surrender here. Let's work on the terms of what this surrender looks like. Three is just complete and total surrender. And they went with basically number three. So let's put up C2. So this is Bernie Sanders. He says

he tweeted, I have spoken with Graham Platner about the best path forward for Maine. In light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside. Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York was asked as well about whether or not Graham Platner should stay in the race. He has a lot of the same kind of consultants on his team as are with Graham Platner and staffers.

Let's roll C-1 here. Given that you have a sort of ascendant role in the Democratic Party, could you talk about the main Senate race? Do you think that Graham Platner should drop out of the race? And do you have any intention of endorsing any candidates in competitive races outside of New York, Abdul El-Sayed, or anyone else? I believe that it's time for him to drop out of the race. And when it comes to my own endorsements,

I've made eight endorsements at the state and federal level. They've all been right here in New York City. I'm incredibly excited at the fact that they won their races, and that's where my focus is for now.

I think the focus of today should be to respond to the gravity of what so many of us have read, and I think that the only appropriate response is for the campaign to come to an end. And we put up C5 here. This is from Dropside News, Nathan Bernard. He interviewed a ton of volunteers for Graham Platner. And the overwhelming, almost universal consensus from them was that Graham Platner either no longer should have a shot at staying in the race or no longer does have a shot in the race. And that either way, the upshot is the same.

But they want Troy Jackson, who we were talking about earlier and talked about yesterday on the program. a logger, who was the former State Senate president, who ran for governor. It finished a very close, there was a very close third. It was Hannah Pingree, Shenabello's, and him as well. And Ralph Shah had, you know, ran competitively as well. Meanwhile, Jared Golden and put up C6 here. Plattenor ran as an anti-war candidate. Jared Golden

cast a deciding vote to kill a war power's resolution in the U.S. House. As his thing was he's the maverick in the conservative district who, to his credit, continued to get elected

as a Democrat in a Trump-leaning district to his discredit. One of the ways he did it was by constantly voting for war. So to try to replace a guy whose energy clearly came from his passionate opposition to forever wars and to the genocide in Gaza with somebody who's passionately on the other side of that would be apparently maybe that's something that's okay with the main Democratic Party but it's hard to believe that that's not just

guaranteeing defeat in November. That's what I want to ask you. Am I overreacting? Like does the current process point in the Troy Jackson you know path? Because could. But see, this is where, this is kind of why I think that the left is not, you know, far be for me to like give advice or whatever, you don't have to listen. But, you know, the whole point was supposed to be we fight. That's why we go with Graham Platner. That's why we're going to abandon our woke shibbolets after the New York Times store story and be like, no, we're sticking with our man. This is it, right? We're all in because this is about fight.

And then you not only do immediately give up, you ask for nothing. And you basically give the establishment, the bat, which to bash your head in, which if you're spending any time on Twitter right now, and you really should, go monitor the accounts of all of the pro-establishment people, near Atandon and Matt Iglesias and Josh Barrow. And I'm not saying this in a disparaging way. They have a, you know, they have a more of a adversarial, more like centrist's view of how the Democratic Party should be. They are using this moment to not only go after Graham Platner, but everybody who backed them. So Morris Katz and the, and I'm sorry if this is too. inside baseball, but this stuff matters. They're currently using it to try and blacklist the, what is it, fight agency, which found

Graham Platner. So they're like, see, these people have horrible judgment, right? See, these people cannot be trusted. That's why I said, not only is it a coup, it's a purge. It's a simultaneous effort by a lot of the establishment Democrats. And so when you immediately give up all your leverage, now you have nothing. Because Graham has both not fought back, even though, I mean, again, the biggest indication to me that he's guilty, or at least guilty

to something, is he's like, okay, I haven't heard from him. Hands up. Yeah, he haven't heard from anything. He's canceled his events. He stopped all of his spending. He basically, you know, conceded from day one that he was like, we're going to assess the future of our campaign. He's hanging out at his home,

you know, doing nothing from what we can see right now. And then it's not just him. It's all the movement leaders that I listed. And you're basically allowing the establishment to burn you, which you know, if it's 2020 after BLM, that's one thing. But it's today where you guys are actually winning primaries. You do have some leverage. And I see nothing. I think this is a shameful incident,

honestly. And they're even, they're even, I've noticed trying to use it against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. I've noticed that too. It's like, wait, hold on a second. What on earth does Abdul El-Sayed? And also, good luck trying to, like, Graham Platner's name ID in Michigan is probably not very high. Like, this is inside stuff that, like, freaks like us are following pretty closely. But Abdul El-Sayed, like, what are you doing? You're going after him just because he shares some politics with Graham Platner. No, it's completely... I got my own beef with Abdul, who, by the way, is hopefully coming on the show next week.

We're going to talk a lot about property taxes. Yes. I mean, I'm beefing with him over this, too. I mean, I'm not, like, I haven't argued with him, but I would. Yeah. We'll get into it. We'll save all that for later. No spoilers.

So, Abdul's been married for 20 years, it looks like, he's two children. So, you know, good for him. I don't think he has anything to do with his behavior. Also, you know, plug for, you know, non-traditional Sharia. If you don't drink, none of this will happen to you. That's just my, well, my personal plug. But you've got to look. Not totally, but it reduces the likelihood.

Soft Sharia. So if you live a soft Sharia lifestyle and you don't drink, you don't gamble, and you don't run around and chase promiscuous sex, you will not have people who have accusations who against you, who would have thought. So Zohran Mamdani and Abdul, see, you know, you got two Muslim guys and they live clean. This is what clean living can get you. But my general point here about the way that this is all playing out is it seems abundantly clear that the democratic establishment is on a high I have not seen them on in quite some time. Like they really, like the left was having an ascendant moment.

They had Zohran Mamdani between Zohran Mamdani and then those three New York City primaries. Oh, and Colorado. This was a big deal. This was a big, big, I would say two months. And now this was actually, in my opinion, the real testing ground. Because when in a blue seat in a blue state, okay, congratulations. Knocking off a Republican swing senator in a swing-ish state like Maine, which has consistently voted for Susan Collins to have a full-blown, like, non-compromising in terms of the

DSA ideology, to be able to win that state, would have. been an absolute earthquake in politics. Like, again, it's one thing to beat a Democrat. It's a whole other thing to actually beat a Republican whenever you're running on that strategy. And that's why to give up all of that leverage and to basically hand it all back in the silver Graham Platner to the main Democratic Party who is setting these standards. I mean, you tell me, Ryan, I don't see a single prominent movement leader going after this main Democratic woman, right? I haven't seen one, be like, actually, no, he's going to have a say, because he seems so talking. So I do think it, I think it's a very dangerous moment, like for democracy.

And especially if you, how could you, how could the number one lesson from Biden not be democracy is good? Actually, democracy is good. It is because that, the failure of that is what led to your devastating loss in November of 2024. Let's talk a little bit out the way the press handled this. On Deck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team or bridging cats, cash flow gaps, On Dex loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A-plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews,

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Autoimmune skin conditions are actually on the rise. Cases are climbing nearly 20% every year. I know. Terrible opener for a podcast ad. But here's the thing. I'm Holly Fry and our skin exists precisely because of stats like that, because more people than ever are living with conditions like psoriasis and hydrodinitis superativa, and most of them are doing it alone, without answers, without community, without anyone to tell them what the heck is actually going on.

You know, not that many people knew about it, and I felt kind of alone, like, am I an outcast? That's where we come in. We talk doctors. We talk appointments that are, well, a disappointment. We talk about the flare-ups and the breakthrough. Then we dive deep into the wild, occasionally gross, always fascinating history of how humans have tried to understand our skin over the centuries. Spoiler alert, we did not always get it right. Listen to Season 3 of Our Skin, a personal discovery podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Politico and CNN omitted a key detail from its reporting. around the Graham Platner sexual assault allegations we have learned.

Let's take a listen to how Jenny Rascott, the accuser of Graham Platner, described how the evening began in her interview with Jake Tapper on CNN. It was a night where him and I were texting back and forth, and he had taken something that I said as an invitation, and that's not how I meant it, and I quickly clarified. And he sent a message back indicating that he would come over and I said no don't come over like I'm not in the mood don't come over and I was more stern with that message and then I didn't hear back from him so I thought that that meant he got the

message or gave up on it or whatnot okay saga so there was no follow-up from Jake tapper if you if you listen closely there that she said we were texting back and forth and he took something that I said as an invitation to come over this is they'd been dating off and on for about two years at this point. The follow-up from a normal person at that point is... What did you say? What did you say? Right.

Like, what was the thing that you said to him that he misunderstood? Now, let's take a look at how Politico reported this. This is D-8. This is how Politico first reported. So Razakot told Politico, she connected with Graham Platner on the dating appellate. Bumble in 2019 and had consensual relations with him prior to the night he allegedly assaulted her. That night in late 2021, she said she had exchanged text messages with him and told him not to come over, saying she wasn't in the mood for company. Later that evening, she said she realized when she heard

a sound on the stairs that he had let himself into her house, which was unlocked. Graham Platner came up the stairs, Rassikot said, to where she was on a couch. He got on top of her and kept grabbing her, she said, while she repeatedly told him to stop and that she wasn't interested. So Saga, you read that, and most people in Washington who read that, they're like, that sounds like he broke in to the house, like uninvited, and then began a violent assault of her. Nowhere does Politico mention what she mentioned to CNN there, that she had said something in the text message exchanges that, that he mistook as an invitation.

They just say, and elsewhere in the article, they say he was, quote, uninvited. It turns out, and we have learned, that Politico definitively, at the time of publication, knew precisely what Jenny had texted to Graham that he, according to her, mistook as an invitation to come over. And we know this because the Washington Post also interviewed, Jenny Rassikud. And Jenny told the Washington Post because she's being honest. She's laying out all of the details, which is how it should be. You lay out all the details and then you let the readers, the public, the voters say, okay, we have all the different facts. Here's how we interpret this scenario. So good for her for being transparent. I totally agree with you and I want to say that

up at the top. This is in no way an attack on her. This is about how I believe that the media is hand list. She was transparent about this. She doesn't right. She doesn't have the text messages anymore. Graham Platner apparently doesn't have the text messages anymore. So we're going by her memory of what they are. And to her credit, she divulged the details of the text messages from that evening. And to the watch. So they, she divulged it to the Washington Post. The Washington Post reaches out to the Graham Platner campaign in for comment, good for the Washington Post. In their request for comment, they mentioned that Jenny had been texting him talking about a massage earlier.

And so the Graham Platner campaign sees this, and they go back to Politico. And they say, apparently there's some more context here about the back and forth. Like, do you know about these text messages? The reporter then exchanges messages with the Graham Platner campaign. Those messages have been now circulating in main politics, in main political circles. I obtained a copy of those. I was able to authenticate them with sources with knowledge of them. And here is what the Politico reporter said to the campaign.

Jenny Raskot had been, quote, texting Graham Platner about needing her glute massaged. That detail didn't make our story. Right. Glute massage. So within about a half an hour of getting this glute massage text, Graham Platner is in the house. Now, she says... She says she followed up. No, no, no, don't come, don't come.

Because he texted back. So he's wasted, clearly. He gets this message. I need my glute massage. Right. He comes over. And he's text back. I'm coming over.

And she's like, wait, wait, don't come over. She says, don't come over. right right this is Maine he's not taking the subway like so he's driving

drunk drunk driving drunkenly driving over there yes comes into the house and then it gives but and then he's she says he's grabbing her on the couch

where's she's saying no right where's he grabbing her like is he like immediately starting like the glute massage or whatever right anyway um with Washington Post to its credit

uh included a version of the detail we could put up um Washington Post it D7 One night in November or December, December 2021, she said she texted him to say that she could use a massage. She said she did not intend it as an invitation, but he interpreted it that way, immediately replying to say he would come right over. She said she wrote back twice telling him not to. The post was not able to review the alleged messages or independently verify them.

Marascaut said she later deleted them soon after the incident. Post didn't include the glue part but did mention the massage to their credit. But because the Politico published first, nobody – I didn't even know the Washington Post reported on it. Exactly. And I think that's why this is important. So there's the most important part. And let's just zoom out. Because this does potentially explain why a drunken platinum enters the home. Right. It stops there because that's where the rest of the evening and her account of the evening, it no longer accounts for. But it does explain a detail. I think what was. key to the understanding generally that all of us had was that it did genuinely appear as if

Graham Platner had been told explicitly not to come over there, understood that to be the case, broke into the home effectively, entering a home unannounced and which either whether it's unlocked or not is a full-blown crime. I mean, and I do think that that's part of why we need to assess this very seriously. The very definition of what Jenny has alleged here is a full-blown, sexual assault, Class A felony in the state of Maine with the statute of limitations for 20 years. That's what she is alleging, which carries a significant prison sentence for like decades, potentially in prison. And that is my understanding of how I need to evaluate what is being alleged here. I want to make that clear. Now, if I were then to submit to due process or any of something like that

in a trial, and I saw something like that, it would significantly change, again, my understanding of how the event were to begin. This does not in any way say that she is lying about what then transcribed. Also, we should not take away agency from Graham Platner, who is wasted out of his mind, five years ago, mind, not 20 years ago, five years ago, absolutely blacked out drunk, and then clearly in a position where he has had been in several of these types of encounters, which have been described from Lindsay Fifeield to others, women or ex-girlfriends who have talked to the media. he put himself and had terrible judgment, terrible behavior, and put himself in a situation

where something like this could happen, which was obviously very traumatizing to Jenny herself in terms of her understanding, the Facebook messages about consensually careless. That's why I think this is a media story. Right. Because I think that the irresponsibility of not reporting that led to an understanding of how the event transpired, which is not fulsome with the general. And maybe it seems like you and I are splitting hairs, but the reason why I think it's really important, and when you learn this, it really struck me is it really reminded me of how a lot of

the Me Too cases in 2017 and 2018 transpired, in which it was very obvious. It was purely on the, you know, word of one person. You could have contravening evidence of what obviously was a complicated encounter or something where, look, there's genuine, you know, misunderstanding or, a different takeaway and which people's lives got totally ruined. And I do think that in this case, like with Graham Platner, look, it looks like he's on the track to resign. And when he does, from what we know about his finances, if his rich parents don't bail him out, he has no money. And he will be branded, let's call it what it is, a rapist for all time. And that is kind of what we're talking about, beyond the political implications, but the character of the person. I don't think he has particularly

good character personally in terms of the way that he's acted here. But, you know, politics is not a character context. If it was, it wouldn't be good. We wouldn't have Trump as president. I say all of this only to say that the way that CNN did not follow up that question and Politico did not include that detail, that is willful in trying to craft a narrative. That's not what we're supposed to do. That's why, and that's part of why I appreciate the show.

We talk back and forth. We add different context, detail, understanding. And for them, you know, by printing it the way they did, I mean, as a journalist, I think the ultimate job is to always include as much understanding an event as possible, especially one. There's just something like this. Jenny is alleging a full-blown felony, punishable by, you know, a decade or plus or whatever in prison. That merits a serious understanding of how we're going to put in all the detail as much as possible as if then were go-to-trial, since they knew the direct implications of, of their story at the time that they wrote it. They knew exactly how it would unfold.

And what's so interesting, like we were saying earlier, credit to Jenny for volunteering this information. I totally agree. Perhaps she thought that maybe Graham Platner still had the text messages, but either way, she... Yeah, she did not hide anything. She did not hide this at all. It is the media that decided that this was not a relevant detail to share.

And like you said, none of what we're saying here is intended to say, oh, well, everything afterwards is justified. No, of course not. The question is, is it a relevant detail that should have been shared with readers so that as they are analyzing how they feel about the situation, they can take it all into context? Exactly. Does it give you any clues into how Graham Platner was interpreting whether or not there was consent, whether or not he was invited over? I don't, Politico affirmatively wrote in its article that he was uninvited. Right. You could say he was disinvited by the subsequent text messages. Uninvited is false.

Yeah. Like it is just flat out false. That was an invitation. Yeah. And that is the key, and it adds even more to this interview, which never thought I would say this, a decent job of questioning here of Mika Prisinski, and Adam Wren, who's one of the boarders. Real quick before we do that. So I asked Jake Tapper if he's aware, if he knew.

Yeah. I asked why didn't you do a follow-up of that? But more importantly, did you ask her off-camera? Did you know that she had said I need my glute massage in the text message, that that was the thing that he, quote, unquote, mistook as an invitation? He did not respond. Okay. I asked Politico for comment.

They are saying that they're working on a response. When that response comes in, we'll put it in the newsletter, and we'll put it in the notes underneath here. If it comes in before we finish taping the program, we'll put it up. OnDec is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDex loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A-plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews,

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Listen to season three of Our Skin, a personal discovery podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to Mika Prisinski here talking about, or sorry, pressing Adam Wren, one of the reporters who was on this story. Let's take a listen. What aspects of this story brought it to the level of publishable? Yeah, you're correct here, Mika. There is no police report in this case. We spent a lot of time talking to Jenny, you know, asking her for corroborating evidence. she shared that she had confided into a number of people, including her therapist, in almost real time.

And we reviewed email exchanges between she and her therapist referring to what she called this sexual assault. And her therapist sort of acknowledging that this had happened to her. We talked to people who she confided in in the months after this happened. And we asked her why she didn't file a police report. And she described sort of the insular nature of where she lives in her corner of Maine that she shares with Graham Platner. And she, you know, debated sort of how to handle this. And we found ultimately the number of cooperating pieces of evidence to support her story in a way that we could report it. So what are some of those corroborating pieces of evidence?

So you've got conversations with her therapist and people who she confided in. Any conversations with Graham Platner at the time of it where she said, because apparently as part of this story, she says she even confirmed to him that this was not consent. Do you have that? What do you have that actually connects this literally? Graham Platner to raping this victim. Yeah, she reached out to him the day after via Instagram and essentially, you know, told him that, you know, she didn't want to hear from again.

She told him that morning as well. And, you know, we, we looked at messages that she had sent to others in the months after this happened through social media. But you were able to see those DMs. She tried to recover those DMs. We were not able to review those DMs, but she described them to us. We also, long before he was a public, before he was a political candidate, we saw her essentially explain to others that he was, quote, in her words, consensually careless. So I do think that that interview is important because, you know, and, you know, cut me off if I'm sharing.

too much, but when you shared before the story came out, one of the key details where I was like, wow, this is devastating, is you told me the therapist verified her comments. And that didn't happen. Right. That wasn't in the story. That's pretty important. That was the rumor before the story came around was that the therapist could verify that at a time before he ran for office that he, she could verify her allegation. And that's not what happened. And they reviewed emails, you know, between her telling the therapist that had happened. In June. In June, June of this year. In June of this year.

After she started working with, she had a friend, ex-boyfriend, who backed up her story. So that, you know, that's there. And the Facebook message is there, too. But I don't know. I mean, the therapist detail was kind of important. And I can read from the political article. So this is about the, this is the, Politico describing the therapist. Rassico showed Politico recent emails with her therapist.

They say recent. My understanding is this is June, like, you know, weeks ago, in which Rassikov. explained she was talking to the media about her relationship with Graham Platner and the essay slash R, using an abbreviation for... In the message, Rassicoat was not ready to go public and was seeking help corroborating her account in conversations she was having with reporters on condition of anonymity. Her therapist responded that Rassikot shouldn't have to speak publicly about a traumatic incident in order to be believed without referencing details of any particular incident.

The therapist, who Politico agreed not to name it her... request, declined to comment when reached on Monday. So if you hear Adam Wren from Politico discussing it, the therapist confirmed that they discussed this. That's not what they wrote. But they should have written that in their article that. So he is saying something which did not appear in their story, which is why I think, again, this is where the rumor mill actually got past what was written. Because when I read that and I'm assuming the editors, you know, something like this, you go through with a fine-tooth comb because your ass is getting sued if you get a single detail wrong. So she wrote,

So she wrote, basically, you remember me sharing these details with you. And the therapist wrote back with a general comment on how women should be believed and she should be believed and she should be, you know, applauded for her courage. That's not the same thing. That's not confirming. And they don't report it in their article as confirming, but then they say in interviews that they did, which is, again, we're in an era where people are losing trust in media. And what are we doing? That's why I finally want to do D5. Let's do D5 here and put it up here on the screen.

This is from Lindsay Fyfield, who you'll recall, she was the conservative activist who originally was one of the people named in the New York Times story. And I actually think it's very worth reading what she says here. She says, I actually understand why Democratic leaders didn't take our stories seriously when the Times reported them in June but are taking them seriously now. It was by design. The line most shared from my piece was the claim that Times could quote not corroborate my story, despite talking to two of my friends. I gave them contact

information for five friends. They called the two who I clarified not to know about the abuse, but they would be able to affirm our relationship, timeline events, etc. They simply did not call the other three. I also gave the names of all my former roommates who remembered him stalking our row house, which was five row houses down from his, and waiting for me to return. I gave them screenshots of messages between these roommates and I discussing it. I gave them the names of other men I dated who might have remembered him following us around the hills, showing up on my stoop, where we walked home from days to confront us. I gave them emails to my landlord, urgently ending my lease and moving to an apartment across town, and diary entries talking about it all time

marked. I told them that during premarital counseling, I'd spoken to my ex-fiance about the abuse because I had to explain to him why I reacted with terror anytime he lost his temper. They said, oh, no, we don't need to bother him or my priest. Besides, I had written about it in my diary. As the weeks dragged on, I stopped trying to give them evidence because the amount I'd already give them seemed to overwhelm them, and I thought it meant that they had clearly more enough to verify my every claim. My friends might not have known the details, but they affirmed that, yes, I had told them he was abusive. Besides, they assured my part in the reporting would be small. I thought my details would only serve to affirm Jenny and the other anonymous woman.

Jenny and I, having never met or spoken, both shared with these reporters, terrifyingly similar details of intimate partner violence, coercive control, and cycles of abuse. The third unnamed woman did as well, but tell me again how they could not corroborate. there are two things that actually happened here is it's very clear they told her she would be a small part of the story. She ends up being, in my opinion, the flagship part of the story, right? Similarly, she actually did provide them a decent amount of evidence. It's, and this is speculation on my part.

If by telling her that she's going to be a small part of the story, they probably did the same thing to Jenny. And Jenny is her entire reason for coming forward with this allegation now is that she says she was furious at the way the reaction happened to the New York Times story, which elevated Lindsay Fifeield's allegation and the dismissal generally of her because of her previous role as a conservative activist. And so their spiral here is that if the Times had just done its job, if they had reported what she says here, by the way, Jenny also says, I told the Times all of this off the record.

and if they had gotten her to expound on that and get her on the record, and properly get her on the record and put all of this in a fulsome story, this could have all been done before the primary. And then none of this would be happening in some weird, you know, extra-democratic way where he's got to drop out

and then they're going to have to put him. This could happen before the primary, right? The voters would have had the information, new candidates, Troy, or whatever, could have declared. People would have actually had a chance to vote. And so I think that the two primary villains here, New York Times for the way they handled this, and then CNN and Politico, all three of those, because they did not present. And Graham for being a dog. Well, yeah, right.

When I say primary villain, I'm talking about the process. Right, right. Yes, I know. I know. Yeah, Graham, I mean, again, I said it before in our previous block. Take it as a lesson, guys. Clean living.

Clean living will get you a clean life. And if you want to run for office, you know, you shouldn't be acting like that. And that's final thing. I said it yesterday. That's why I think he's loadsome because he told people nothing else is coming. And you were rolling around like this

four or five years ago, maybe even 10, 15 years ago, like Lindsay Fivefield says. There could be more that we don't know about. There could be more that we didn't talk about. And people stuck their necks out for you. How many millions of dollars did you raise? Millions.

People donated to their hard earned money to you. And you fucked them over, man. You really did. And he's got to live with that. You know, not which is what he did, these women. He betrayed all these supporters trusts. And I don't know if he even remembers this text message exchange.

And I reached out to him for comment, having heard back. So I don't even know. And as far as people I've talked to him, he may not even know about the existence of these text messages, the glute thing. Because he was, it seems like he was blacked out. According to Jenny, the next morning, he rolled over and put his arm around her. She's like, what are you doing? Like, do you not remember what happened last night? And he's like, no.

she's like, and she's like, get out. And yeah, I mean, his handling of all of it is awful. He never responded, according to her, he never responded to her message being like, dude, you raped me. And that was a thing. Come on. That was a thing that he's knocked for over and over.

Ghosts these women. He's drunk. You know, he's acting totally out of control, manic depressive. And he acknowledges that even five years ago, that was, he was gradually. And that's my final thing where people. People are like, how could you have known? And you couldn't have known. So I'm not blaming you or anybody.

But, you know, the tattoo, the adrenaline junkie behavior, the black water, and all of that. It's a type. It's an archetype, which anybody who's ever interacted with people in the military, they know. They know well. Some people liked them for that. And I understand that. But it does come with a significant downside for anybody who, you know, is like this. And so, you know, look, if you want to be a public servant, part of that is you not only have to withstands,

scrutiny, but you need good character, you need good judgment. And I don't think I would have said that five years ago. I don't think the character in judgment, or sorry, character especially, was all that, was all that important to judgment. But I've actually changed my opinion, quite a bit on that. And as Bob Donnie showed, if you're going to take on the man, oh, man, you've got to be squeaky clean. And it completely, no skeletons or any of that in the closet. Because you're right, if you're the man, you can have plenty of skeletons in there. They don't care. But if you're not, you know, look, and that's not. And that's not. an endorsement of the way that the situation is, it is kind of unfair, considering how many

disgusting cretons are here in Washington, probably who have done the exact same thing. Yeah, the acting class cannot count in such behavior. Yeah. Great point.

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