Graham Platner says he's suspending Senate bid in new video

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Good evening from New York. I'm Catherine Rampel in for Chris Hayes. We are on our third day now of waiting to hear if Maine Democratic Senate candidate, Graham Platner, will withdraw from the race after an accusation of sexual assault was published by Politico on Monday. Graham Platner calls those allegations false. Still... he has lost the support of just about every elected official who backed his candidacy and must exit the race by Monday at 5 p.m. according to Maine election law. In that case, the state party would then have two weeks to announce a replacement candidate for the fall election. A person familiar with his team's deliberations tells MS Now that Graham Platner is likely to release a video tonight imminently laying out his future. And two members of the Maine Democratic Party tell MS Now they will propose a nominating convention. to take place this very weekend. They say that five to six hundred delegates would participate and choose the platinum replacement to take on Susan Collins in November. Nira Tandon is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress. Nikki McCann Ramirez is a politics reporter at Rolling Stone. They both join me now. So, Nira, I want to start with you, since I know you have been very engaged in the discourse over what's been happening with Graham Platner this week. We are obviously waiting to hear... whether he drops out. His campaign has suggested that they should have a role to play in choosing who succeeds him. What do you think the lessons are to date for the Democratic Party in Maine and how they should proceed forward? Well, I mean, I think there are almost infinite lessons to learn from this, you know, obvious fiasco. But I, you know, obviously we could vet candidates better. There are all kinds of things. I think the most important thing. is honestly to look forward. And I think what we should all be really focused on. is Susan Collins has been a vote for Trump whenever he's really truly needed it. She is a vote for John Thune as majority leader. The most important thing for everyone to focus on is who is the best candidate to take on Susan Collins. It's unfortunate that we're asking this question at this late date. But instead of looking backwards at the mistakes that have been made by the Graham Platner campaign and others, I would say, I hope everyone in Maine, and that includes the Graham Platner campaign, is focused like a laser beam on defeating Donald Trump by defeating Susan Collins. It is an existential issue. whether Republicans control the Senate and keep on nominating Trump judges and Trump nominees. And that is the most important question, not what faction of the Democratic Party wins out in this debate or that debate, but who and how we prepare to defeat Susan Collins.

As we were discussing, you know, there's this question about the Graham Platner campaign wanting more of a say and who gets to succeed him on the ticket. Is there any precedent for that? I mean, in recent memory, obviously, Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 election. And I think it's very important. I think Maine Democrats are very clearly doing this to take a lesson from that and not allow the person. who is stepping down, who is resigning to dictate what is going to happen going forward, having a nominating convention, giving voters or at least representatives for voters the opportunity to actually come forward and say, this is what our constituency wants, not what the party is telling us to do, is going to be huge to ensuring that at least some portion of the enthusiasm that Graham Platner managed to build, because he did manage to build a very significant movement within Maine. that at least some of that enthusiasm is able to transfer onto whoever succeeds him. How do you think a nominating convention could or should work? Well, I mean, I hope that they're going to try and get people from who are active in the Democratic Party, but who can really represent people from every element of the party and throughout the state. And I think the really important question here is to really think through who are the, who's the best person to take on Susan Collins, not with any blinders or anything else, but Susan Collins is a wily leader. She has. you know, basically gotten people who vote for Trump to vote for her. So the real issue here is who can assemble a coalition who can attract moderate. liberal, conservative, or create a coalition of people who have voted for Susan Collins before and will vote for a Democrat saying enough is enough. I think that is really the crucial question before the convention and for everyone. And you see, you know, you see across the country and kind of swing states and swing areas people really trying to determine who's the best candidate to defeat the Republican. Well, in the case of Maine. It feels like on paper this should be an easy win for Democrats. Donald Trump lost Maine three times, right? Maine is bluer than the rest of the country. Yes, Susan Collins is a formidable, clearly incumbent because she has been able to hold on to this image of being a moderate, despite, as you point out, voting alongside Trump for the majority, the super majority, I would say, of his agenda at the very least. But... Mainers do seem relatively liberal compared to the rest of the country. So, Nikki, what would it take in a candidate? Like, why is it so hard, I guess, to find someone who can defeat Susan Collins, given that, again, Maine is a blue state? I mean, I think it's like every other state that's in contention this year. The timing, the type of candidate your opponent has to be perfect. I think we can't talk about this without saying that.

Trump is historically unpopular. The Republican Party is historically unpopular. It kind of takes, you know, the perfect stew of everything to push those sort of battleground races over the edge. And I think what's important here is obviously Graham Platner needs to step aside. It needs to happen sooner rather than later. But we can't throw out the baby with the bathwater here. Graham Platner was speaking to something in Maine voters about what kind of policies they were looking for, what kind of candidate they wanted. Up until about a month ago, this was a campaign that had some shaky legs, was dealing with some backlash from Graham Platner's past life. But I think one of the things that main voters even told this network was that they weren't looking for someone perfect. They were looking for someone who represented them in Congress. And time and time again, they would reiterate that Susan Collins was failing at that job. So I think it's important here not to look. for the candidate that is necessarily going to tow the line or balance things best, but actually speak to the issues that are mattering to voters, the economy, their ability to interact with lawmakers in a way that feels productive to them. And that is something that I think the Graham Platner campaign did quite well, regardless of how this is going to end and it needs to end. There were a lot of red flags about Graham Platner throughout this campaign. And I think that there was some willful blindness, shall we say. Not from all of us. Not from everyone. Yes, that is fair. But there was some willful blindness from people who I think were charmed by him or liked some of his policies. And I guess the question is, what are the lessons for candidates in other states or for the vetting process in other states so that... You know, there is a balance between finding someone who's an outsider who energizes the base because they don't seem, you know, so fully groomed or whatever to go into political leadership their whole lives. They seem more authentic, whatever that means. But, like, is not an accused sexual predator or has Nazi tattoos or whatnot. Like, what should a vetting process look like that preserves the authenticity, but still screens on character? I mean, look, I think you can step back and say, look, the Nazi tattoo was a red flag, you know? I mean, I just like, that seems pretty obvious, looking back on it. I think it was pretty obvious, I think, at the time, but sure, yes. I guess to me, I think one of the issues here is the stories we tell ourselves. And we all tell ourselves these stories. The plantar campaign told a story. That story was a guy who's... was an oyster fisherman who looked like he was from a working class family. Didn't turn out he was from a working class family, but looked like he was a working class family could project, you know, kind of progressive economic populism and be really popular, really, with a majority of people. And the truth is, when you looked at the polls last week in the New York Times, he was losing working class voters. by like 23 points against Susan Collins. And I think a big story of this whole saga has been, if we want to be just brutally honest, primary voters in Maine are very much white college-educated voters. And they were just thinking, this guy is what would appeal to.

white working class voters. And that turned out to be false. Now, I think he had a lot of great ideas. And I think there's a lot of people who think we should tax billionaires more and we should have more economic populism because there is a lot of inequality. And the system seems rigged. So I totally understand that. But I think a real lesson here is not for us to think this is what working class voters want and project that. But to really honestly listen to them. And I think for, I mean, what I think is sort of a lesson here is a lot of people were telling themselves stories that actually working class people wouldn't care about a Nazi tattoo. And like, they just would overlook all these things. And it really actually didn't turn out to be true. I mean, I think it's also a little bit denigrating to people who are working class to just feel like, oh, they all have Nazi tattoos. They all have these, like, gross. And they would overlook it. You know, it wasn't the working class voters of Maine who were overlooking it. It was Democratic primary voters overlooking it. Because there was, they believed in. He was doing well against Susan Collins for a while. But then after the New York Times, it doesn't seem like he really was. And I think we were doing, a lot of people were doing a lot of wishcasting about this race. And I guess what I would say. is whatever part of the Democratic Party you're from, the most important thing is to really honestly think. Not what do you wish voters of Maine cared about, but what do they actually care about? Because actually politics is about listening to voters and hearing what they have to say and what their needs are and responding to them. Nikki, I also want to ask you about some of the ugliness that we've seen from some... Left-of-center political commentators sort of smearing some of the accusers who have, you know, accused Graham Platner of sexual assault or other kinds of what sort of sound like domestic violence at the very least. And suggesting that this is a smear campaign or conspiracy from the establishment in order to take down a, you know, a true economic populist. What message do you think that that sends to the women of Maine? Oh, it's complete disregard. It minimizes their experience. And I do want to say that I don't think that is in any way or shape representative of how the Democratic Party in Maine feels, how the majority of center-left, left-leftist Democrats feel. I think most people I talk to are horrified by these allegations. And the reality is that whatever amount of vetting you do, If vetting was enough to understand the true moral character of a politician, we would never have a scandal. We wouldn't have Eric Swalwell. We wouldn't have Bill Clintons. We wouldn't have Anthony Wieners or Larry Summers or Andrew Cuomo's. They wouldn't exist because we would know right off the bat how bad they were. What I think happens when a scandal like this breaks. is sometimes, especially for the media class like me, who is very online and pays attention to what people are saying, we get so caught up in the, well, you didn't do this, and you should have said that, and you excuse this, that we forget who this is affecting. Sorry to interrupt. We have a, we have breaking news. We have a video from Graham Platner who is addressing the public. Let's play that. Hey, everyone. It's Graham Platner here.

I think as many of you know, over the past couple days, I have faced some very serious allegations, and I just want to make it clear. This is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It's not real. It is placed an immense amount of weight on me as I think about what needs to happen now. Amy and I are regular people. We were not looking for this experience. We were not looking to get into politics. We had no desire to run for office. I just want you to think about what you would do as a regular person in a position where a much larger world, large forces. were working against you personally to accuse you of the worst thing that a person could do, and it was not remotely true. I learned about this through press inquiries with no time to truly respond, no time for investigations before a corporate media system. And the political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end. I think it's really important to understand why this is happening in the timeline, why this is happening right now, much like October when the first attack started. Much like the news that was created the week before the primary, there is a reason that this is happening now. I only have until July 13th until I am officially the nominee. This was the last week to try to get me off of the ballot. And that's why this is occurring.

It's not the false allegations, though, that have brought us to where we are. It's the fact that they are being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us. We live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish. That if they begin to succeed, they can be crushed. What we have accomplished here, you made possible. The people of Maine, the volunteers, the voters, the grassroots donors. And I have all the faith in the world that we could win if we could continue to harness that. But the brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us. Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse. to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign. We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function. Larger organizations, the national level party, The bigger donor networks, they have all committed to spending no money in this race if I'm in it. They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine. What comes next? Needs to come from the people. Needs to come from the people of Maine. Needs to come from the voters who on June 9th, at a strength of over 150,000, the largest number in the history of Maine primaries, said no to this kind of politics. Voted for a politics that would actually represent them. Voted against the political system, against the donor class, against the entrenched forces. And I'm not asking for how this process is going to work. I'm not trying to dictate to anyone who it should be or how we get there, but I will say this. It needs to be open, transparent, and democratic. It needs to be reflecting the will and the values of the people that built this movement, the people that showed up on June 9th. People in D.C. need to stay in D.C. Decisions should not be made in back rooms by people in places of political power. Party apparatchiks are not the ones to make these decisions. These decisions need to be made in the open by the people of this state. The people who got us here. This is exactly...

the kind of political system that everyone voted against on June 9th. And for that reason, we need to be assured that it is going to be open and democratic as we move forward. Amy and I struggled about getting into this. Last summer, right around this time of year. We sat down and we looked at each other and we said, if we believe in the kind of politics, we think that we do, we have to do this. Over the past couple days, really yesterday and today, we have had to have that exact same conversation. We believe that for the movement to continue, It can't be made. And for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations. This is incredibly difficult because I know that some will think it's an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not. We're not doing it because of the allegations. We're doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power. And I also feel an immense amount of responsibility to everyone who has worked so hard to get us to where we are.

We went toe to toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the history of the world, and we won. We beat them on June 9th in overwhelming numbers. We did it the right way. We built a campaign. We engaged in electoral politics. We motivated people. We banded together. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change. And we won. And now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it's me. And so we're suspending campaign operations. I want to make clear, though, I intend to file my paperwork to withdraw. The process needs to assure that what comes next is reflective of the Mainers who on June 9th turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics. It needs to be driven not from backrooms, but by the will of the people. And the decisions that come next must come from that.

All we were asking for was health care, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas. We were asking for a fair system. We were asking for an end to the corruption, the end to the money in politics. We were asking for real democracy, and we did it the right way, and we won. But now the ball is in the court of the Democratic establishment. My name... might be on the ballot right now, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine. And on November 3rd, it needs to belong to the people of Maine. And the next Democratic senator for Maine needs to belong to the people of Maine. They need to reflect the will and the values of the people of this state. I love this state. I love Maine, and I love manors in ways that I can't really describe. I'm immensely proud of what we have built, and I have the utmost faith that we will continue to build, and we will continue to move towards a better future. From the bottom of my heart, Thank you. Thank all of you. And keep fighting. We're going to win someday. Well, that was Graham Platner, officially announcing that he is dropping off of the ballot for Maine Senate or for, excuse me, for federal Senate from Maine, but taking zero responsibility for any of the scandals and more troubling things in his past that have destroyed that campaign. Instead, blaming, let's see, corporate media, the political establishment. Lots of hate for the political establishment, saying that we banded together. We did it the way we were told. We were supposed to make change and we won, and now they are not going to let us have it. So lots of finger pointing and blame and not taking any responsibility. Note that whoever he conceives of as the political establishment, you do have many of his once allies, including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, also calling for him to drop out people who believe.

Many of the same policy ideas, believe in many of the same policy ideas that Graham Platner himself says that he was taken down for. He also said during that... 10-minute video that all we were asking for was health care, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas. We were asking for a fair system. We are asking for an end to the corruption. So lots of allegations that he was being taken out by nefarious forces that are forcing him to suspend his campaign. rather than the drip, drip, drip, drip of scandal after scandal that has dogged his campaign and that have littered the last few months with red flags. I want to bring back in our guests at the table near a Tandon from Cap as well as Nikki McCann Ramirez from Rolling Stone. So, Nikki, what did you make of that mini documentary that we just watched? I think it's clear that whoever was advising him in media has left the campaign at this point because that's not a statement you let your candidate put out on their own. I also think when I see something like that, my question is always, who is they? Who is they? Is it the AFL-CIO? Is it the main Democratic Party? Is it, you know, the dozens of allies you have who have abandoned your campaign? I think... Graham Platner would have been much better served by a two-minute video announcing that he was suspending campaign operations. He could deny the allegations. That is his right. This has not been proven in a court of law. They are allegations. But this screed. I don't think does anything to help transition out toward a new candidate to bolster sort of the idea that this process is going to go forward, that he supports having his voters who he claims to care about, continue to be represented by someone who holds their same values. I think the thing here is that Graham Platner time and time again. was given chances by the voters of Maine. I know a lot of voters who live in Maine, friends of mine, who swallowed a lot of stuff who were deeply uncomfortable with the stories coming out about Graham Platner. And they swallowed that and they voted for him because they thought that in the slate of candidates before him, he was the best chance to defeat Susan Collins. And the people he has let down the most, aside of the people who he allegedly criminally assaulted are the voters of Maine who believed in him, who gave him their time. their energy, their votes, who invested their belief that they could actually have a better government in him. And he let them down by not being honest with them. It wasn't that he wasn't honest to us, to the media, to the donor class, is that he wasn't transparent with his voters. And that video, I just, I don't know. It just, if there was any respect left for me, it's kind of gone after seeing that there were so many ways to bow out of this race that weren't that.

Yeah. I do want to get your thoughts, Nira, but first I want to go to MS Now Capitol Hill reporter Kevin Fry, who is live on the scene in Bangor, Maine. Kevin, what are you hearing on the ground from voters about how all of this has shaken out in the last few days? Yeah, I mean, look, it's been about a month since I was here last. And at that point, that was right after the New York Times sexting scandal. And a lot of folks were willing to, you know, as was just being mentioned, digest this and say, okay, we're going to accept the narrative that he is a changed man. As we talk to folks over the last day and a half that we've been here, it is very much flipped. We've turned the corner. The red line that no one could really identify necessarily a month ago had been crossed. The Rubicon had been overcome. And that was because of the reporting in the last two days. So this felt like where we were inevitably tumbling toward. Now, as we've been talking to voters, they would like to see what they described as a quick and a transparent process. They want to see this as being democratic. And several folks that we spoke to were quick to name drop folks, including Troy Jackson. They see him, at least a couple of the folks that we talked to, was kind of picking up at least the policy aims that may be plotted. was espousing, but certainly without the baggage that he carried. Now, some of the news within the last two hours or so beyond this Graham Platner statement is that we now have at least a preliminary sense of what this process is going to now look like, now that there is going to be a vacancy on the Democratic line ahead of November's election. And that is that the Democratic main Democratic Party today, members of the committee, met about 100 or so of them, discussed exactly the steps forward. And our understanding, standing from talking to sources that we're on that call is that this looks like it's going to be about 500 to 600 delegates meeting for a convention, time to be announced. But the counties are supposed to, we're being told, start working on figuring out who those delegates are going to be to send them to this centralized meeting. And from there, they'll work on electing a candidate. Obviously, one of the tensions that we're expecting to see and that we've witnessed over the last few days is between kind of the party establishment versus those that believe that they need to basically post. the establishment in the eye. That could also be interpreted as more progressives versus moderates. There are different ways of kind of interpreting this depending on who you're talking to. But that is at least how voters are kind of responding to what we're looking at with the prospect of an opening and how the party is at least at the moment preparing to navigate it. Kevin, thanks so much for your time. I am sure we will be heading back to you later this evening and in the coming days to hear your insights on what people are saying on the ground and how this convention of source is going to shape up. Thanks so much. Nira, so you watched this 10-minute video as well from Graham Platner, refusing to take responsibility for any of the things in his past. He certainly has the right to defend himself against some of these. criminal allegations, but not taking any responsibility for how his campaign has ended up. Do you think that was helpful for the party to move forward and to defeat Susan Collins? I mean, I guess I'd say, look, this whole situation is a horrifying tragedy on so many levels. And the people I feel the worse for...

are really the people in Nikki is talking about. The people who were betrayed by Graham Platner. I mean, he's angry at the world, but it's his own actions that have caused this situation that we're in. And I feel like the fact that he takes zero responsibility of that can really enrages me. But I do, I feel the people I feel the worst for in this situation are people. who felt hope about this campaign. And I do think the process has to ensure that people who felt hope in this campaign, in his campaign, and about change in Maine, have a voice in that process. I mean, what I found sort of really disturbing about this video is there's so much more ire to, like, Democrats nationally, than two people he never mentioned, Susan Collins or Donald Trump. And I find it sort of tragic that after all the destruction and wreckage, you know, he's going out by basically trying to torch Democrats. And just as a reminder, like, he did win the primary. But it's his own actions that have caused us. And you don't have to ask me, you can ask Bernie Sanders, Senator Warren. Congressman Ro Khanna, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, these are his allies in the fight who recognized what happened here was horrifying. And genuinely, I hope that in future there can be more acceptance and actually trying to build back because, you know, this is a, you know, he's caused a lot of pain to a lot of people who put their hopes in him. And those people are the ones who need to find hope again. And I think it's his responsibility to be part of, like, you know, not destroying everything around him, but actually helping build support for whoever the nominee is in the future. Yeah. I mean, and I should, again, say he has flatly denied the allegations of sexual assault, among other things that have other accusations that have been levied against him. But I will say that the other people that I feel terrible for, not only... Because of the things that they say. Are the women. The women. Yes, it's not just the voters. It's the women who had to basically parade these awful periods of their lives or what they, you know, allegations that they have made at the very least before the public in the media because they felt like it was their civic responsibility to tell people. And they're getting viciously attacked by people. It's really ugly. And, you know, you're absolutely right. They are the victims of this whole situation. should never have had to bear this burden. Yes, as well as one of his campaign staffers who has been smeared because she resigned early on. But anyway, I hope that there are a lot of apologies coming to some of those women. Nira Tandon and Nikki McCann Ramirez, thank you so much for your time tonight. Coming up, this is not the only thing going on in the world today. Believe it or not, Donald Trump also made a mess of his NATO summit in Turkey. That's up next. Here's what happened when one journalist reported on DEI programs. I decided to just focus on the University of Michigan. I obtained internal documents that showed that the school had spent about a quarter of a billion dollars on DEI programs. I spent two weeks in Ann Arbor talking to everybody I could find. The unintended consequences of these programs, they had sort of left everybody dissatisfied. And this expensive machinery the school had built just imploded.

If you're a journalist, you are not on anyone's team. All you're trying to do is figure out as many of the facts as you can gather. The facts are going to guide you to where the story lands. You're not taking sides. I'm Nick Confessori. I'm an investigations reporter for the New York Times. Journalists like Nick follow the facts wherever they lead. They go where news breaks, get answers firsthand, and publish what they find. That's fact-based reporting. Seek it out if you don't already. You better eat your Wheaties today because there's a lot of news to cover. Money. Time for the business. All eyes on the new Fed chair. The economic fallout from the war is a temporary power. The president is now a major crypto industry operator. Is this White House for sale? Politics. Is there an energy to respond to this aggressive gerrymandering? It has never been more important to be informed and engaged. Money power politics with Stephanie Rule. Weekdays at 9 a.m. Eastern on MS. Now. After making a laughing stock of the National Mall, the national birthday, and the national men's soccer team, Donald Trump took his humiliation tour overseas, traveling to Turkey for a NATO summit in which he managed to find new ways to embarrass himself and, unfortunately, the United States. The president sat next to the NATO Secretary General and declared that the U.S. was cutting off trade with Spain for some reason. Spain is a wasted cause. We don't want to do any trade business with Spain anymore, by the way. I'd like you to cut it out. Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. They don't participate. They don't pay. I don't want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain's list, including visits. Okie-doke, he also threatened to abandon Europe altogether if they don't agree to give him Greenland. Trump also pressed play once again on his unpopular costly war with Iran as the U.S. military unleashed new brutal attacks that they described to one reporter as, quote, punishment not proportional. Is the ceasefire over? Is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead? It's a very interesting question. To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them any with their scum. I told this story yesterday we had 111 missile shot. by the Islamic Republic of Japan. JCPOC. What a terrible, what a terrible deal. I call the Obama nuclear waste deal. Their electric manufacturing facilities, right? They're electric plants where they make their electricity in there. We will, we have to, we'll take them out. Even with all of that bullying and threatening, the 80-year-old president found time to rest his eyes, shall we say, during a roundtable with other NATO leaders, leaders who absolutely adore Trump, at least according to Trump. If you could have seen the respect and the love in the room, and it's love really for the country, for our country, I don't want to say me, because you'll say, oh, he's so conceited, he's such a conceited person.

But they do. I mean, you know, they like the job I'm doing. They said, we love, sure, we love you. He's a grown people saying that. Isn't that nice? That sounds a little like a stretch, but it is true that Secretary General Mark Rutte has spent a lot of time trying to massage Trump's ego, so much so that reporters took notice. You sit next to Donald Trump in moments where he talks about conquering Greenland, talks about lashing out at allies like Spain, starting trade wars. Things that it doesn't seem like the old Maraude would approve of. Does this have any effect on your self-respect when you sit next to him like that and say nothing? When it comes to Greenland, I already explained. We had the meeting in Davos. And I said, I agree with you. But it comes to Russia, when it comes to China, gaining access to the high north. But let's do this together. We have NATO for this. Let's work together on this. This is exactly what we are doing. But behind the scenes, more and more NATO leaders appear to be planning for life without Trump in the United States. According to new reporting this week by the Wall Street Journal, American allies have begun pushing the gas pedal on an unprecedented experiment in de-Americanization. Authorities from France to the Netherlands are quietly removing U.S. tech from their systems and urging civil servants to no longer use Microsoft Teams or Office, the journal reports. The paper also reviewed a classified assessment from a Southern European Intelligence Agency saying that when you deal with the U.S. government now, quote, you are not dealing with an administration that has processes. You are dealing with a single, volatile individual. Here's the thing. Donald Trump's entire art of the deal is to take negotiations almost to their conclusion. And now Trump is learning not just with Iran, but with some of America's closest allies, his closest allies. That means he's bargaining from a position of no leverage. Congressman Adam Smith of Washington State is the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, and he joins me now. Congressman, the president says that everyone in the Atlantic Alliance loves him. Meanwhile, of course, they're all apparently planning for a future without America, or at least without American leadership. What is your top line reaction to what we saw today in Turkey? Well, it's a continuing problem that President Trump is focused on himself and unhinged from reality. He is not connected to the real world. Remember, we won the war against Iran, and Iran conceded to all of our demands. Gosh, I lose track at this point. I think it was like two months ago that he first made that claim. So while Donald Trump is rambling on about the world that exists in his mind, The world that the rest of us, the real world, are dealing with, is in deep trouble because of the spectacularly bad decisions that he has made, like starting the war with Iran, like breaking, well, damaging the NATO alliance by threatening Greenland and other countries, you know, which gave aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin at a time when we really need to be behind Ukraine. So the biggest reaction is we have a president of the United States who is not connected to reality.

just rambling in a variety of different directions while we have very serious problems that we need to address and that are getting worse on his watch. You mentioned some of the problems that are getting worse on his watch. Trump spent his afternoon posting videos of explosions in Iran calling it retribution and threatening more. He told us this war was over almost a month ago, I think, at this point, and the peace deal was basically done. So what are you hearing from the military, the White House, about when these new strikes will end or what they are intended to achieve? Well, first of all, the military is doing what Donald Trump tells them to do. So, you know, they don't tell me what a specific end date is. They basically say, here are the targets. We're hitting the targets. We're taking them out. We are succeeding in that. But that's been the fundamental flaw in this war from the very start. Trump believed that if he dropped enough bombs, it would break Iran and Iran would concede to our demands. That was never. really likely to happen because all Iran has to do is survive. Yes, we've sunk their Navy, we've blown up a lot of their Air Force, we've blown up a lot of their missiles and their missile launchers, but all Iran needs to do is maintain enough military capability to threaten the region and enclose the Strait of Hormuz. We do not have the capacity absent an all-out war that nobody would support and might not even work. to actually just break Iran. So dropping more bombs isn't going to get us to that place. We had a golden opportunity after Iran had been weakened from the 12-day war with Israel, what's happened to Hezbollah, what's happened to Hamas, the collapse of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. We had the best opportunity in front of us to negotiate the best deal possible. Instead, Trump started this war and with the false idea that, like I said, somehow he could drop enough bombs, break them and win. That was stupid, costly, and now he doesn't know how to get out of it. Congressman, before we go, I believe you were listening in as the rest of us were to that Graham Platner announcement tonight. I'm just wondering if you can share your thoughts about what is going on in Maine right now. Yeah, there's several big things. First of all, Graham Platner's a bad guy. Okay. I mean, forget these. I mean, sorry, don't forget these allegations. They're incredibly serious. But the stuff that he's already admitted. You know, sexting people in the workplace, the Nazi tattoo, the racist comments and other unhinged comments that he made on Reddit back in the day. He's not a good person. And he is using the anti-establishment feeling to basically be a demagogue. That's what he tried to do. And I think the danger here, and I really like Nora Tandon's comment that he goes out trashing Democrats. You know, we're trying to stop Trump. Look, I am firmly of the opinion that Trump is trying to execute a fascist takeover of this country, not to mention the foreign policy disasters that he's engaged in. We need to stop him. But people like Graham Platner are grabbing on to the anti-establishment feeling and spending as much time trashing Democrats. And don't get me wrong, the Democratic establishment needs to get a lot better.

You know, we have not done as good a job in campaigns as we should have done. We have not done enough to basically deal with income inequality as country. That's fine. But don't sign up for any demagogue who comes along and don't use it as an excuse to trash the group of us who are trying to stop Trump. Make us better. People like Graham Platner want to tear down Democrats just to elevate themselves. And I think, you know, the allegations that came out showed the type of person he is. And he's just trying to demagogue his way into personal power at the expense. of a very well-organized movement trying to take down Trump. Look, I got Graham Platner texts way back when saying, I'm the only one taking on Trump. How come nobody's standing up? Millions of people across this country, some of them, part of the Democratic establishment, are going after Trump day in and day out effectively. We can't turn on each other. We have to build a strong movement to stop what Donald Trump is doing. Graham Platner took us to a dangerous place. I'm glad he's gone. And I hope we get a better candidate because Maine is a Senate seat. We need to win. I alone can fix it. Where have I heard that before? Congressman Adam Smith, thanks so much for your time tonight. We'll be right back. For almost two months, a group of anarchists camped out in a tiny park in New York City and turned it into an anti-capitalist village. You might know it as Occupy Wall Street. But that was 15 years ago. And today, we return to that park to ask, what happens when ordinary people harness collective power and try to change the world? From Future Hindsight, this is Occupy, an unfinished uprising. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Is the ceasefire over? Is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead? It's a very interesting question. To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them, but 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. Now that Donald Trump has thrown the ceasefire agreement with Iran out the window, Americans who have spent months suffering from costs spiking from this war with Iran are about to feel the pain in their pocketbooks all over again. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist who authors the sub-stack Krugman walks out. He joins me now. So Paul, can the global economy absorb another disruption in the Strait of Hormuz after months of Iran choking it off?

Well, yeah. I mean, the, you know, global depressions are really kind of hard to engineer. And modern economies have a lot of ability to cope given a bit of time. And one thing you can say is that we've been living with the closed trade of Hormuz for a number of months now. So a lot of the world has already found workarounds. All of that said, this is ugly. We were just starting to get a gradual decline in gasoline and diesel prices. We're starting to see some loosening up. And now all of a sudden, it's back again. And there's a lot of indications that there are other pressures out there. If you look at the inflation picture, what a lot of economists that I talked to were looking at was that it looked as if we were developing a lot of inflationary pressure aside. from the oil market story. So now we come back with this and it's sort of exactly what the doctor did not order. Yeah, other things that the doctor did not order. Trump also said today that he wants to cut off all trade with Spain for some reason. Is that possible? No, that was, that's another level. I mean, Trump has done a lot of threatening and tariffs and so on, and they've been mostly ineffectual achieving what he wanted, but he was at least able to, you know, make good on the threats. The story now is that this is something that is not going to happen. We can go into at some length, the reasons why even with Trump bypassing a lot of the normal rules of law in the United States, this is not going to happen. He's not going to be able to shut off trade with Spain. So this is bizarre. I mean, this is... Yeah, we're going to cut off all trade with Spain and also going to make everybody wear their underwear on the outside and speak Swedish. I mean, this is crazy stuff. This is someone who's just totally lost it. And for me, the most chilling moment was he said this to Scott Bessent, the treasurer secretary and said, I want you to cut off all trade with Spain. And Scott Bessent said, yes, sir. So here we have somebody who's clearly non-composementist, who's not in making any sense at all, making bizarre threats that are not going to happen. Even in America today, this is not going to happen. And we have everybody pretending that he's actually making sense and in charge, and that's scary. Well, even if we can't cut off trade with Spain, there have been stories about how other European countries are trying to limit their engagement with us. The Wall Street Journal recently had a story about European countries working to de-Americanize, removing American tech from their systems, you know, for civil servants, among others. What do you think the consequences are of that, economically or otherwise?

Again, you know, there's a lot of, there's a great deal of ruin in a nation, as Adam Smith said. So this erodes U.S. position. What it really does is the United States has a lot of had, a lot of power, just from our sort of centrality. Everybody dealt with us. Everything worked through the dollar. Lots of people bought our stuff because you needed to be in on the American market, the American networks. Now that's over. I mean, now the United States is a rogue nation. We're still big. We're rich. We're productive. People. want to do business, we'll have to do business with us, but they're doing as little as possible. And unfortunately, this lasts a lot lower than Trump. Even if when Trump is gone, it won't be the old America because the whole world knows that America elected this guy twice. So we will never be trusted in the same way, and we will never really recapture the role in the world that we had. It's amazing. I mean, the fact that Europe regards us as basically, you know, in the same league as China. I mean, even what's happening in Iran right now, I mean, the United States appears to be bombing not with a strategic goal, but as a form of punishment. That's what Vladimir Putin does. That's not supposed to be what America does. And finally, before we go, I wanted to ask you about the quandary that the Fed finds itself in. Donald Trump, of course, nominated his new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. with the understanding that that nomination, that confirmation of this new person in this position would lead to lower interest rates. But how can the Fed cut rates now, especially with the inflation concerns that they had, even before the war started back up and this punishment campaign started back up? Yeah, Kevin Warsh really cannot deliver. Whatever Trump thinks he promised he cannot do. Remember, he's only one vote on the Federal Open Market Committee. Even if he decided to push for this interest rate cuts, which are totally inappropriate now, it wouldn't happen because the rest of the board would vote against him. And I don't think he's even going to do that because he needs to keep some respect. So I look at Kevin Warsh, everything I see. I keep on thinking of the dog that chased the school bus and caught it. And now what? I mean, everything worse says right now is, you know, this is getting way too deep into the weeds. But if you try to read his statements, it really sounds like he's trying to find ways to not actually answer questions about what he's going to do because he has no idea what he's going to do. Well, or he doesn't want Donald Trump to know that he's not going to cut interest rates, but that's neither here and where there. Paul Krugman, thanks so much for your time tonight. That is all in on this Wednesday night. Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness. I'm Shaquille O'Neill, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. As should doctor about Zepound or Zipatine, the first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

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