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

26:15Let's go to B4. 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.

26:32People 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, it's 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 Netanyahu's 24-7 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.

27:25it's pretty difficult not to believe that he's also including Netanyahu in that who he feels or he at least has been saying publicly he feels like has been um an obstacle to his agenda in the middle east right but at the same time like how can we see the collapse of the ceasefire and not bet on Netanyahu exactly you know we didn't even this we didn't put this on the show shame on me guess what Israel also did today bomb Lebanon bomb Lebanon right which the Iranians are like 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.

28:03You have this attack, basically on the Trump administration, full blown from Bibi Netanyahu on American cable news. And what does the president say? Nothing. I mean, every once in a while, he'll give an interview and he's like, oh, Bibi, I'm the boss. And that's great. Okay, it's nice to say, but Bibi'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 the ceasefire is over, the neocon tongue bath 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.

28:40Don't worry about it. And you basically have fifth columnists here in the United States who are agents of the Israeli government. Let's put B10 up here, Mark Levin. Look at this. I mean, this is basically propaganda on behalf of the Israeli government's position. Breaking news. Erdogan was prepared to join forces with Iran against Israel. The president has mentioned several times he talked Erdogan out of entering the war on the side of the Iranian regime, meaning he talked 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.

29:12If 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? Can you imagine 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 he's our best friend. We need to know a lot more about this. I mean, what they do is, you know, Bibi puts out the talking point, then the entire neocon industrial complex comes up behind him. It's a pressure campaign.

29:46And as, you know, Bruno Messias, 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 me. 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 strike, people know, there 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.

30:33Yeah. 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 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 uh 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 incredible comeback.

31:34But 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, 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, there's no word for it. I agree. And that's why they deserve regional air superiority. That's the balance of power they're talking about.

32:14That's what they're doing with their balance. That America deserves and should backstop in the region. Smart. Smart. Okay. Let's get to Plattner. Maine Senate candidate Graham Plattner 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.

32:53As 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 Plattner'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 Plattner's team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S.

33:31Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like. We have also reiterated that Graham Plattner 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 Plattner formally withdraws from this race. And so the Plattner campaign responded to this, and we can add this in post. Campaign official told Sahil Kapoor, quote, The Plattner 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.

34:06Over 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 Plattner fanboy. I literally said. Ken Vouch, a guy does not like Plattner. It's not that I hate Plattner.

34:47I've always thought he's like a Brooklyn cosplaying leftist as some sort of working client. I think his background bears all of that out. And so I'll save that I tell you so for later. But to me, this is a principle matter. Like this man won more votes in the Democratic primary than anyone in Maine history. And the Maine Democratic Party, who is that lady, by the way? I don't remember anybody voting for her across the state. I don't think so. She didn't run for anything. Did 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 Maine Democratic Party.

35:17I know that one person got more votes than anyone in the history of a Maine Democratic Party. And to say that he should have no say whatsoever in how the next person, if he were to replace, 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 for the, you know, in the Democratic nomination. You know, forced 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.

36:04Nothing 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 Platter 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. Plattner is. Plattner is not even saying he is insisting on Troy Jackson or Shana Bellows.

36:45What 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 be hard to pull off an entire primary, whether you count every single vote. But you could do a caucus type situation.

37:23They could figure something out. And Plattner's campaign is saying, what are you thinking? Because to your point, they don't want this to go into Janet Mills office. Yeah. Or her or her office. Because it's just come out smoke signal. The voters rejected her. Right. 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 Plattner 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.

37:59This 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, Plattner'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. He literally is 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 Mamdani to Bernie to any of the Ro Khanna, all the movement leaders, everyone started with he's got to go without the next part.

38:34The next part should be, and the person 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.

39:13Let'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 Plattner about the best path forward for Maine. In light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside. Mayor Zoran Mamdani in New York was asked as well about whether or not Plattner should stay in the race. He has a lot of the same kind of consultants on his team as are with Plattner and staffers. Let's roll C1 here. Given that you have a sort of ascendant role in the Democratic Party, could you talk about the main Senate race?

40:01Do you think that Graham Plattner should drop out of the race? And do you have any intention of endorsing any candidates in competitive races outside of New York, El Saeed, 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.

40:31You know, 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 Plattner. And the overwhelming, almost universal consensus from them was that Plattner 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.

41:11He's a logger who was a former state Senate president who ran for governor. There was a very close third. It was Hannah Pingree, Shana Bellows, and him as well. And Rav Shah ran competitively as well. Meanwhile, Jared Golden put up C6 here. Uh, Planner ran as an anti-war candidate. Jared Golden cast a deciding vote to kill a war powers resolution in the U.S. House. Right. As his thing was, he's a maverick in the conservative district who, to his credit, continued to get elected as a as a Democrat in a Trump leaning district. to his discredit, one of the ways he did it was by constantly voting for war.

42:04So 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 is 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 it 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.

42:49That's why we go with Plattner. That's why we're going to abandon our woke shibboleths after the New York Times 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, Neera Tanden and Matt Iglesias and Josh Barrow. And I'm not saying this in a disparaging way.

43:23They have a more of an adversarial, more centrist view of how the Democratic Party should be. They are using this moment to not only go after Plattner, but everybody who backed him. So Morris Katz, 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 Plattner. 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.

44:00Because Graham has both not fought back, even though, I mean, again, the biggest indication to me that he's guilty is, or at least guilty of something, is he's like, okay, I'm hands up. Yeah, he hasn't heard from anything. He's canceled his events. He stopped all of his spending. He basically 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.

44:39But 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, 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, Plattner'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 Plattner?

45:15No, 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. Yeah, okay, good. I mean, I'm not, like, I haven't argued with him, but I would. Yeah, but. 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 got two children. So, you know, good for him. I don't think that 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.

45:44That's just my, well, my personal plug. But you've got to look. Not totally, but it reduces the likelihood. Soft Sharia. 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 lifestyles, you will not have people who have accusations against you. Who would have thought? So Zoran 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.

46:22Like they really – like the left was having an ascendant moment. They had Zoron – between Zoron 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 winning a blue seat in a blue state, OK, 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 a absolute earthquake in politics.

47:04Like, 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 platter 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 toxic. So I do think it's a very dangerous moment, like for democracy. And especially if you – how could the number one lesson from Biden not be democracy is good?

47:41Actually, democracy is good. It is because the failure of that is what led to your devastating loss in November of 2024. Let's talk a little bit about the way the press handled this.

47:55Politico and CNN omitted a key detail from its reporting around the Graham Plattner sexual assault allegations we have learned. Let's take a listen to how Jenny Rascott, the accuser of Graham Plattner, 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 he 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.

48:37And 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, Sagar, so there was no follow-up from Jake Tapper. If you listen closely there, she said, we were texting back and forth, and he took something that I said as an invitation to come over. 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 to him that that that he misunderstood? Now, let's take a look at how Politico reported this.

49:21This is this is D8. This is how Politico first reported. So Razzicote told Politico she connected with Plattner on the dating at 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. Plattner 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.

50:04So Sagar, you read that and most people in Washington who read that, they're like, that sounds like he broke in to the house 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 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.

50:53And we know this because the Washington Post also interviewed Jenny Rassica. 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 has handled this story. She was transparent about this.

51:30She doesn't have the text messages anymore. Plattner 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. So she divulged it to the Washington Post. The Washington Post reaches out to the Plattner campaign for comment, good for the Washington Post. And in their request for comment, they mention that Jenny had been texting him talking about a massage earlier. And so the Plattner campaign sees this and they go back to Politico. And they say, apparently there's some more context here about like the back and forth.

52:16Like, do you know about these text messages? The reporter then exchanges messages with the Plattner 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 Rascott had been, quote, texting Plattner 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, Plattner is in the house. Now, she says.

53:05She says she followed up. No, no, no. Don't come. Don't come. And don't come. Because he texted back. So he's wasted, clearly. He gets this message. I need my glute massaged. Right. He comes over, and he texts back, I'm coming over. And she's like, wait, wait, don't come over. She says, don't come over, don't come over. This is Maine. He's not taking the subway. So he's drunkenly driving over there. Comes into the house, and then it gives, and then she says he's grabbing her on the couch. She's saying no. Right. Where is he grabbing her? Is he immediately starting the glute massage or whatever?

53:42Right. Anyway, the Washington Post, to its credit, included a version of the detail we could put up Washington Post at D7. One night in November or 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. Rassikot said she later deleted them soon after the incident. The Post didn't include the glue part, but did mention the massage to their credit.

54:23But because Politico published first, nobody—I didn't even know the Washington Post reported on this. 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 Plattner enters the home. 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. And I think what was key to the understanding generally that all of us had was that it did genuinely appear as if Plattner had been told explicitly not to come over there, understood that to be the case, broke into the home effectively.

55:06Entering a home unannounced, whether it's unlocked or not, is a full-blown crime. 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 gross sexual assault, Class A felony in the state of Maine with a 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 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.

55:52This does not in any way say that she is lying about what then transcribed. Also, we should not take away agency from Plattner, who is wasted out of his mind five years ago, mind, you know, not 20 years ago. Five years ago, absolutely blacked out drunk and then clearly in a position where he has been in several of these types of encounters, which have been described from Lindsay Fifield 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.

56:37That's why I think this is a media story, 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 reality. 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 word of one person. You could have contravening evidence of what obviously was a complicated encounter or something where, look, there's genuine misunderstanding or a different takeaway in which people's lives got totally ruined.

57:23And I do think that in this case, like with Plattner, 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. Were this really then... If it was, it wouldn't be good.

57:56Or 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 in an event as possible, especially one that was just something like this.

58:30Jenny is alleging a full-blown felony punishable by a decade or plus or whatever in prison. That merits a serious understanding of how we're going to put in all the details as much as possible as if then we'll go to trial. Since they knew the direct implications 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 Plattner still had the text messages, but either way, she did not hide anything. She did not hide this at all.

59:07It 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? Does it give you any clues into how Graham Plattner 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.

59:50Right. You could say he was disinvited by the subsequent text messages. Uninvited is false. Yeah. Like it is just flat out false that it 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 Persinski and Adam Wren, who's one of the reporters. Real quick before we go to that. So I asked Jake Tapper if he knew. I asked, why didn't you do a follow-up on that? But more importantly, did you ask her off camera? Did you know that she had said I need my glute massaged in the text message, that that was the thing that he, quote, unquote, mistook as an invitation?

1:00:32He did not respond. 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. Let's get to Mika Brzezinski 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, asking her for corroborating evidence.

1:01:19She 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 the 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. We asked her why she didn't file a police report, and she described sort of the insular nature of where she lives and her corner of Maine that she shares with Graham Plattner. And she debated sort of how to handle this. And we found ultimately the number of corroborating pieces of evidence to support her story in a way that we could report it.

1:02:17So what are some of those corroborating pieces of evidence? So you've got conversations with her therapist and people who she confided in. any any conversations with Graham Plattner 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 what do you have that actually connects this literally? Graham Plattner to raping this victim. Yeah, she reached out to him the day after via Instagram and essentially told him that she didn't want to hear from again. She told him that morning as well. And we looked at messages that she had sent to others in the months after this happened through social media.

1:03:16But you were able to see those DMs? she tried to recover those dms we did not we were not able to 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 um 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.

1:03:58That wasn't in the story. That's pretty important. That was the rumor before the story came out. That was the rumor that was going 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 between her telling the therapist that it happened. And later on, in June. June of this year. In June of this year. After she started working with Shea and Hunt. They did talk to a friend, ex-boyfriend, who backed up her story. So that's there. And the Facebook message is there, too. But I don't know.

1:04:27I mean, the therapist detail was kind of important. And I can read from the Politico article. So this is about the Politico describing the therapist. Rassico showed Politico recent emails with her therapist. They say recent. My understanding is this is June, like weeks ago. in which Rassikot explained she was talking to the media about her relationship with Plattner and the SA-R, using an abbreviation for... In the message, Rassikot 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.

1:05:14The therapist, who Politico agreed not to name at her request, declined to comment when reached on Monday. So if you hear Adam Ren 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 then. 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.

1:05:46So she wrote basically, do 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 applauded for her courage. But that's not the same thing. That's not confirming. Yeah, that's not the same thing. 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.

1:06:24This is from Lindsey Fifield, 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,

1:07:06I 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 during premarital counseling I had 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.

1:07:36Besides, I had written about it in my diary. As the weeks dragged on, I stopped trying to give them evidence because the amount I had already given 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.

1:08:08The third unnamed woman did as well, but tell me again how they could not corroborate. So there are two things that actually happened here. 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. Similarly, she actually did provide them a decent amount of evidence. 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 Lindsey Fyfe Field's allegation and the dismissal generally of her because of her previous role as a conservative activist.

1:08:53And 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 in. This could happen before the primary, right? The voters would have had the information, new candidates, Troy or whatever, could have declared.

1:09:34People 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. Sorry. 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 this.

1:10:06And that's the final thing. I said it yesterday. That's why I think he's loathsome 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 Lindsey Fifield says. So there could be more that we didn'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 their hard-earned money to you. And you fucked them over, man. You really did. And he's got to live with that. Not just what he did to these women.

1:10:34He 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 like him, he may not even know about the existence of these text messages, the glute thing, because he was seems like he was blacked out according to Jenny, the next morning he rolled over and put his arm around her and she's like, what are you doing? Do you not remember what happened last night? And he's like, no. And she's like, get out. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, his handling of all of it is awful.

1:11:12He never responded, allegedly, 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. He's ghosting. He ghosts these women. He's drunk. He's acting totally out of control. Manic, depressive. And he acknowledges that even five years ago, he was gradually trying. And that's my final thing, where people are like, how could you have known? And you couldn't have known. So I'm not blaming you or anybody. But the tattoo, the adrenaline junkie behavior, the Blackwater and all that. It's a type.

1:11:46It's an archetype, which anybody who's ever interacted with people in the military, they know. They know well. Some people liked him for that, and I understand that, but it does come with a significant downside for anybody who is like this. And so, look, if you want to be a public servant, part of that is you not only have to withstand 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 and judgment, or sorry, character especially, was all that important to judgment. But I've actually changed my opinion quite a bit on that.

1:12:18And as Mom Donnie showed, if you're going to take on the man... Oh, man, you got to be squeaky clean. 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, and that's not an endorsement of the way that the situation is. It is kind of unfair considering how many disgusting cretins are here in Washington. probably who have done the exact same thing. The acting class cannot countenance such behavior. Yeah. Great point.

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