6/9/26: Trump Booed At Knicks Game, Sports Gambling Scandal, Chris Rabb On Platner Controversy

25:57Do you think that there should be some consideration made for people who have a genuine addiction that they're struggling with? Because it does seem plausible to me, given the fact, again, the number of bets that he placed and the profoundly, I mean, he genuinely has come very close to ruining his entire life over this gambling scandal. You know, do you think there should be some consideration made for people who genuinely have a problem? Well, the thing was, is as I, again, as I'm not a total expert, but as I understand it, he still was being allowed to declare, I think, for the NFL supplemental draft.

26:33So it's not like his entire ability to play was over. It was specifically here in the NCAA, but rules are rules. And while yes, I believe that gambling addiction is real and that people should have recourse and the ability to seek treatment. In fact, I encourage it for anybody who's watching this show. And if you have a problem, that's what you need and you should do. But there needs to be consequences and integrity for the sport, especially with a long held tradition of any violation will result in a genuine ban from being able to play. And I think, by the way, it's not just me. It's really a lot of the other people who are even involved.

27:05So I'm not sure if we have this story, for example, but we've had multiple actually instances of other athletic directors who are apparently considering not even playing Texas Tech or scheduling games against them because they see how what kind of precedent and problem that this is going to set. Not only Texas Tech allowing this play, but also actually creating a situation where they're going to normalize this throughout all of college athletics. I also want to highlight E6 now, for example, and that's really why I wanted to do the segment, is this is one of the few times I would be on the NCAA side who obviously, look, they've conducted themselves ridiculously.

27:42Even I, as a casual fan, am aware of this. But what they show is they're trying to leverage this situation into congressional action. As they say, the NCAA strongly disagrees with the court's ruling in the Sorsby case and is deeply concerned about the damaging, far-reaching, and broadly destabilizing ramifications of this outcome, which undermines and corrupts the integrity of sport. The NCAA is committed to supporting student-athlete mental health, but must continue to aggressively defend against actions that defraud college athletics and threaten competitive integrity, such as betting on one's own sport.

28:15And they're using it, or at least trying to, to push for some sort of regulatory mechanism, which would stop so much of the genuine chaos where we have people and students and coaches being paid and leaving mid-season, and nobody has any idea what their team is going to look like and the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of money that are moving through all of these bank accounts. And the reason why I highlight about corruption and craziness is the level of insanity that we're getting at is, let's put E5, for example, here on the screen. You now have states which are now trying to pass laws which would exempt income tax for NIL earnings for their top college athletes.

28:58This is a proposal by multiple different states simply to remain more competitive in drawing these top college athletes where already the coaches and the players now are drawing insane salaries. The coaches always have, but now the players themselves also earning. I have no problem with college students earning money, but what you are watching is basically a total free-for-all in the system, Which, again, I'm from a college sports town. Like, this is a religion, and it has thrown it into such chaos that there is no governing authority body, no set of rules, no even real standards that is outside.

29:34And then you have judges in some of these cases apparently looking at the area, a lot of Texas Tech fans who are ruling on behalf of their own sports team and setting a really horrible precedent, I think. Oh, that's an interesting point that the judge may be self-interested here. And many of the judges in the appeal are all Texas Tech graduates, just for the record. That NBC Sports piece that you had up earlier that I was talking about, Congressional Action, the author of that piece actually makes an interesting case of, you know, the real answer here may not be in, like, congressional regulation, although that may be required as well.

30:07But if you had the players in a union where you had a negotiation between the union and between the NCAA to establish these rules, establish an arbitration process, establish even rules regarding how payments work to these athletes, then you would have a much more established system with buy-in from both sides versus the way the NCAA operates right now. And it's changed somewhat, but I was an NCAA athlete at one point, is they come up with their own rules just from on high. And because they're a monopoly, like you have no other option. If you're going to be a college athlete, you're going to be under the NCAA.

30:48You default must subscribe to the rules that they lay down. You have no power in that situation. And so it does seem like a better approach would be for the players to be unionized. So, you know, as you do in other professional sports leagues so that there is a negotiation, there is a buy-in process. You have representatives for the players, you have representatives for management and, you know, for the league itself that come to decisions and have an arbitration process to figure these things out. That seems to me like a better situation than what exists currently. You're totally right. I also want to put up this post from Van Lathan, who apparently is a fan of the show, and he had some good analysis.

31:25I'm going to read some of it here. The judge set a very interesting precedent here in the Sorsby case. Part of Sorsby's argument was that the NCAA's hard and fast no gambling rules are BS because of the close ties between college sports and gambling companies. The judge bought that, at least in part, which softens the argument for strict penalties for gambling on games, even games your team is playing in, as long as the NCAA maintains any type of relationship, even through broadcast partners, with gambling. Essentially, the judge has said the NCAA can't really tell you not to gamble anymore because they are also making so much money off of it, tangentially, via these broadcast rights, which are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

32:03That's not the entirety of the judge's reasoning, as he says. This is just an injunction. But that certainly is an interesting development. Now, he's right. Obviously, this can go to appeal. But I think his point is so, so important. And that's why yesterday I was criticizing a lot of these sports podcasters who will come out and be like, oh, this is ruining the integrity of the game. And literally in the middle of it, and they'll be like, by the way, use my promo code, idiot, to bet$5 and win potential$200. And they were like, well, we don't play in the games. I'm like, yes, but you have created this entire ecosystem where gambling itself underwrites why so many people watch the games.

32:38So many people are betting on the games, massively impoverishing. It funds everything, normalized. How do you think Brendan Sorsby even found out about sports gambling? You think he really would have had the ability to place these types of wagers when sports gambling was not legal? No. We all know this. These crazy-ass parlays and other things literally didn't exist. Would he have found a bookie? Maybe to bet the spread. possible. But this level of insanity,$90 ,000 and the number of bets he was making, it simply isn't possible. And that was normalized, created, and is propped up by a lot of these same sports podcasters, the broadcasters.

33:14You have ESPN analysts who are out there talking about how bad it is. Meanwhile, they're still shilling and show the live odds down in their chyrons. I mean, this is exactly why you have to fight so hard against the normalization and this creation of these types of standards when not even a decade ago, they would have testified before Congress and said that betting itself would be ruinous to the integrity of the sport. And now they're literally in league with them. So I apologize if I got any specific details on college football wrong. Like I'm not a big college football person, but I do know many people in my life who are and all of them, including many of the athletic directors, as I'm reading and others are out here saying what a disaster this type of decision is and what the precedent of this will set.

33:57just to show the absolute jungle mentality of all of this with literally billions of dollars that are moving around. It's only a matter of time before something even worse happens like this, like that FBI case that we saw with the NBA. There's going to be so many more in the future, and there's no reason for it. We didn't have to be here. There was no reason to be here. Well, and to depersonalize it from the specifics of Sourceby, who's, I don't think, accused of fixing games or point shaving or anything like that. But if you just told people, like, Like, okay, we're going to have this system where you can bet on, you know, little tiny things that happen.

34:31And again, how many points, whether a player gets injured, whether they sit down at the game, you know, all these like tiny little prop bets and all of these insane parlays. There's going to be tons of money at stake. Everyone's going to be in on it from, you know, the leagues and the journalists and, you know, all the big players are going to be in on it and making tons of cash. you're going to have players some of whom come from not a lot of money who are going to be you know have people throwing money at them to oh just like play a little bit not quite as hard in the second quarter you don't have to change the whole result of the game but just do a little bit less than you would have done get a few like get a get fewer rebounds in this you know particular moment are you going to have players who are going to do that yes of course you are and so that's where that doesn't excuse it.

35:20Like, those players are still responsible for their own actions, just as Soresby's responsible for his actions in this instance. But is that going to be a surprise to anyone that that is what this system generates and creates? Of course not. So obviously it's going to undermine the integrity of the game. Yep, absolutely right. All right, we got Chris Rabs getting by. Let's get to it. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.

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37:21PinkCherry.com, because everyone deserves pleasure. So to discuss the future of the Democratic Party this morning, we are very fortunate to be joined by Pennsylvania State Representative Chris Rabb. He is the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District. Welcome, sir, and congratulations. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. We followed your election with interest. You had a lot of powerful forces going against you, a lot of interesting things that happened there. What do you think is the message that your pretty clear-cut, fairly overwhelming victory in this primary sense to the party?

37:57Yeah, it was a stunning defeat of entrenched politics here in Philadelphia, in the bluest congressional district in the entire nation, where we had not had an open seat, no incumbent on the ballot first time in 35 years against a political class that was united against this progressive. And it was a 15 point win. And I think it's a resounding affirmation that organized people beat organized money every time. And you seem to be taking a very I don't know that it's a novel approach, but you've gone out of your way to go and campaign for other candidates, both incumbents who you support, like Summer Lee, who you're likely to serve with in Congress, others who, you know, are challenging incumbents and are running sort of upstart campaigns across the country.

38:47Why has that been important to you? What role do you feel like you are serving and that you want to serve? Well, to be clear, I'm a movement candidate. And that means the movement has allowed me to have a collective victory. And that means that whatever political capital, whatever momentum I have as the presumptive next member of Congress for the city of Philadelphia means I got to pay it forward. And it's also in my best interest. I want to come in with this largest, boldest, progressive class of members in U.S. history. So the only way you can do that is by showing up for others who are viable, substantive candidates.

39:29And I'm really excited about are not just taking back the house i mean there's a big difference between having a democratic majority and having a party that knows how to lead uh in the belly of the beast and in the most adverse times in modern history those are two different things um on the venn diagram of of national politics so i want to make sure that we have a critical subset of democrats who are going to vote in furtherance of shared prosperity and fighting fascism and taxing the ultra-wealthy and having structural changes that the base is demanding, but corporate Democrats refuse to acknowledge or commit to.

40:15You were critical of Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, which became a campaign issue, actually, for you. One of your opponents had some pretty interesting things to say about that. But I'm just curious, since you have won the Democratic nomination, just so people know, Pennsylvania's third congressional district is one of the most Democratic in the entire country. So very much expected that you will be sworn in with the next class of members of Congress. How has the party responded to your victory? Have you had any outreach from, you know, the sort of establishment leaders of the Democratic Party?

40:46Oh, absolutely. They've all reached out to me quickly. And I appreciate that outreach. We got to build relationships. We got to figure out how we can work together. But I would push back a little bit. I wouldn't say I was critical of Hakeem Jeffries per se, but it's just when someone tries to say, will you support him? My answer is, what is any candidate for majority leader, for Speaker of the House? How is their leadership going to resonate with how I got elected to office and who else is running? I don't know who's running. So, you know, I think that's important. It's not about the individual.

41:25It's about who seeks that position to what end. And that has to be aligned with the electorate and the constituents I seek to represent on January 3rd. But I also know that it's a body of 435. You need 218 votes to get anything done. And we have to figure out what we can agree on and the things we can agree on how those of us who are left of the party to move the party forward. And those are things that have to happen simultaneously. So you say you're not a no on Hakeem Jeffries' potential speaker, but you're a we'll see. Yeah, I mean, I need to know who's running, right? I mean, the reality is he could be the only one on the ballot, right?

42:10So it's a non-issue there. But that's not, to me, that is not as important as how we hold whomever is running and whoever wins to account. And that's not based on my personal preferences or it's based on how I got elected. If those leaders work for the members, the members put them in those positions of power, How do we hold them to account and how do they express their willingness to do the things that a larger subset of Democrats in Congress want? And, you know, that is going to be a back and forth. You know, we also have to understand, too, that for the folks we may not prefer in leadership or in office at all, but who are going to be there serving in whatever capacity, for those of us who are there with them, our responsibility between election cycles is holding our own colleagues to account and moving them towards the moral center, not the political center.

43:11And that is something that people should want their newly elected incumbents to do because, listen, we have a clear villain here. You know, it's Trump. It's MAG extremism. It's fascism. It's late-stage capitalism. It's any number of things. But we can't make our colleagues the enemy. They may be not on the same page with us, but it's our responsibility to make them do better. And we have seen some progress when we have, not myself quite yet, but others in Congress, get some of their colleagues to stop taking APAC money. That's a win. And we need to respect that. And we also need to understand that that comes with certain risks for the people who have been funded by folks we don't believe they should be funded by, which also means we need to support them if they are truly understanding of why that dynamic is so problematic.

44:08I wanted to get you to weigh in on what's going on right now with Graham Plattner up in Maine, because I do think it has some important fissures here in terms of the direction of the Democratic Party. You know, his ideological program and yours is not exactly the same, but you're more or less in the same lane and have similar views of the world. And certainly, you know, have been clear cut, clear throated opponents of genocide, of AIPAC funding and the influence of the Israel lobby. He has faced a number of allegations, some of which he has acknowledged that he had a very rough go of it after serving in the military, that he had a drinking problem.

44:43He has PTSD, that he engaged in toxic behavior and relationships, other aspects of which he's completely denied. There was an allegation from a Republican political operative that he had grabbed her by the shoulders forcefully, that he had yanked her by the hand out of a cab, that he had put her arm behind her back and pushed her inside of a room. Again, she says this occurred, he denies it, and the New York Times was unable to confirm it. I wonder what you make of the allegations and also what has been seen as extreme scrutiny into his life that doesn't seem to be matched with a level of scrutiny into others who do not challenge the oligarchy and do not challenge, you know, AIPAC and the status quo on Israel as aggressively as he does.

45:27Yeah, you know, this is challenging for me because I've felt that folks who have been identified as hardscrabbled, populist, left of center, white guys, get far more leeway than folks like me, black progressives. And that's a double standard that is largely based on race. And I think that's a conversation we need to have. If I had some problematic tattoo that related to white folk, I don't think I would be viable, even in the majority black district, because I think the money would not be there for me to run the campaign I needed. I think there's a clear double standard that the left has to talk about as it relates to our racial politics and what is acceptable.

46:19And, you know, I also have PTSD. I have actual PTSD. And I also have political PTSD because in this state, we elected a fake populist in Fetterman. And when I feel Fetterman vibes, I get very, very nervous. I don't know Plattner. I've not followed his race closely. I've had, you know, a grueling 10 month campaign I'm just coming out of. So now I'm really seeing what's on the landscape of opportunity in the House and the Senate. But I do think we need to hold space for folks with genuine grievances. And we need to have a process for those folks who are expressing legitimate concerns about the behaviors and choices of candidates.

47:08but to do so in a way that is in the spirit of restorative justice, as opposed to the spirit of the politics of personal destruction. And I think that is something that is really, really necessary, because what we don't want to do is to silence or erase the voices of people who have felt real harm, particularly women. but we also have to make sure that we do not feel that there's a class of candidate that has to be perfect there are no perfect candidates and we also have to make sure that those candidates acknowledge their faults everyone has them and how we work through them so if he said i have a you know it's i understand when someone says i made a bad choice as a young man and i was struggling with addiction and that sort of thing.

48:04We need to hold space for that. But you also may have intervening years or decades where you did not do any further introspection about what you've done so that you can feel a sense of atonement that other people can value as legitimate long before you ever considered public office. We can hold those two truths at the same time. So you don't believe he's done sufficient atonement to have sought public office? I don't know. I don't know. But I think that is something that needs to be addressed before November 3rd. Absolutely. Isn't that up to the voters to decide? Well, it's not just voters who decide who's a viable candidate.

48:45Viability is also based on how much money you raise, what your platform is, how you come into. Are you a movement candidate or are you a candidate who says the right things in the right political moment to be aligned with a movement that shows considerable political power? I don't know. I have not watched his candidacy that closely to answer those questions. But those are conversations that need to happen within community and not on social media. So he, just to be clear, he was a movement organizer in Maine, which is how he came to the attention of people to encourage him to run for office. The primary is today in Maine.

49:27His, you know, opponent, Maine opponent was the former governor or current governor, sorry, Janet Mills, who has suspended her campaign. You know, she is not particularly ideologically aligned with you. You know, she's more much more supportive of our status quo with regard to Israel. She has, you know, done things like veto tax hikes on the rich in the state of Maine. She's had an adversarial relationship with labor unions. You know, if you were looking at this race, like, do you think that voters would be off better off choosing her because she's had fewer personal controversies than Graham Plattner?

50:08No, but it's a matter of how we hold the people who we would prefer in office to account. I think that's the issue, right? Because sometimes we vote for people. Well, sometimes we vote for people, right? And sometimes we vote for the person who we have a better chance of holding to account and making sure that the candidate functions similarly once in office, right? Because you can, it's very easy, particularly in these moments, to campaign as a progressive. It's radically harder to govern as a progressive. And I speak as someone who is currently in legislative session here in Pennsylvania and Harrisburg in the largest full-time state legislature in the country.

50:52It is very hard to govern as a progressive. And so how we hold anyone to account, myself included, is by making sure that they fulfill their promises that they made in the campaign, on the campaign trail, and making sure that they will sit down in earnest with people who have genuine concerns and priorities that may not be fully aligned by the time someone wins their primary. One more on this, because you mentioned you got you got Fetterman vibes from Plattner. I want to explore that a little bit more. So Fetterman and Plattner have actually been going back and forth with each other. Fetterman's been attacking him.

51:33Graham Plattner has been responding, I think, called Fetterman an asshole. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of how John Fetterman went after Graham Plattner. For me, as a Democrat, I'm never going to carry water for a guy that that calls, you know, an American hero, a dumb MF-er. or someone that, you know, smears Chris Kyle, you know, the American sniper and claim that he's he's shooting innocent civilians. I mean, you've literally lost count. And he also called rural Americans as racist and stupid. It's countless. It's absolutely is. This is a guy that had a problem with me, how I dress.

52:13But he seemed to have no problem posing in a towel at a disgusting website that consistently had serious problems about that kinds of depravity. So I wonder if you could respond there to Senator Fetterman. But also, I am curious for you to elaborate when you say that Plattner, you're getting Fetterman vibes from him. What is it specifically that you're responding to there? No, I wasn't specifically referring to Plattner regarding Fetterman vibes. But here in Pennsylvania, I get that when people say, oh, I like what you're saying. You know, you seem to be right on all the issues, but how do I know you're not going to be the next Fetterman?

52:50So that actually applies to me as well. When people are very traumatized in Pennsylvania and beyond, when they think that they're electing a progressive populist and they get something very different. I don't know Plattner enough to weigh in on that specifically, but I can tell you that, you know, I don't know how many black folk you're polling or talking to, but all I can say is we need to have more conversations about what accountability looks like for folks who are running to the left and making sure that we understand the intersectional nature of progressivism and ensure that folks' racial politics are aligned with the populist politics that are trending so well these days.

53:39That's all. Yeah, I think that's well understood. So last question for you, Representative, is when slash if, but looking like when, you get to Washington, what will be some of your first priorities you would like to work on there? How will you operate in a way that you think is different from how a lot of other members operate. Sure. Well, just to be clear, I'm not an optimist by nature, but there's no Republican on the ballot and there are more raccoons than Republicans in my district. So I think it's safe to say that I'll be in Congress on January 3rd. So we have to de-Trumpify Washington, D.C.

54:15All the choices, appointments, cuts, all of the structural fissures and such, we need to do what we can to restore or prepare for their restoration. And we also need to build a bold vision in a post-Trump world. And, you know, frankly, that may happen long before two years. What does that look like? So he's been a wonderful villain, but, you know, people are struggling. They need to know what Democrats envision for a society with people closest to the pain struggling like never before and making sure that we are clear with that message and consistent and make sure that we hit all of those people, particularly folks who, generally speaking, the Democratic Party counts out and disregards who really should be centered.

55:08The people closest to the pain, young people, poor people, black folk. I'm going to keep bringing up black folk. If we do not take care of black women, we will lose and we do not deserve to lead if we do not understand the primacy of Black women. When we help Black women, we help everybody. Future Congressman Chris Robb, thank you so much for joining us and taking the time. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Ryan and Emily tomorrow. We'll see you then.

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