Republicans issue BIZARRE response to Graham Platner allegations

0:00Brian Tyler Cohen:I started Ornod in 2013 and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non-technical people. We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end, and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on Shopify.com. Republicans show zero self-awareness as the Graham Plattner situation continues to devolve, and I interviewed Jim Acosta about the fallout from Trump interfering in the World Cup.

0:39Brian Tyler Cohen:I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. There is a story that's not being told amid the Graham Plattner situation, so some quick overview on all of this. Graham Plattner is now facing new, credible, and deeply serious sexual assault allegations. Within hours of this allegation surfacing, all of the people who had supported him, Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, eventually even Bernie Sanders, pulled their endorsements. Plattner's campaign isn't just on life support. It's basically dead at this point. But what I find interesting is this response from the right. This is Kevin McCarthy, former Republican Speaker of the House and current member of Congress on the right, Brandon Gill.

1:17The one thing I know about Republicans, when we had a very bad candidate and found out, we didn't vote for that person. We walked away. For better or for worse. When Matt Gaetz came forward, Yeah, we got rid of him. Yeah. Well, the key is they're standing by him until they don't believe that they can any longer. In other words, Democrats, to your point, had no problem with the Nazi tattoo that was on his on his chest. By the way, I don't have any friends who have Nazi tattoos on their chest. And I don't think that most Americans either. You have to go looking for somebody who has a Nazi tattoo on their chest.

1:47They didn't have a problem with that. They didn't have any problem with multiple credible allegations of abuse from multiple women until very recently, until we find out that the latest woman who's made credible allegations is left-wing politically. They had no problem before. They have had no problem with the really unsavory, just frankly disgusting things that he's written on all kinds of different social media platforms, the messaging apps that he had been on that predators tend to frequent. They had no problem with any of that. What they have a problem with now is they've gotten to the point where they don't believe that he's a viable candidate anymore, so they want to jump in and replace him.

2:25That's a problem. We need decent people running for office, not people that are so transparently scumbags.

2:32Brian Tyler Cohen:Let me just say, if these guys had any less self-awareness, they would not be able to see their own reflections in a mirror. Kevin McCarthy's out here telling us that Republicans walk away from bad candidates. Brandon Gill's lecturing the country about needing decent people in office. These two are using a moment where Democrats are unanimously calling for their own nominee to step down as an opportunity to score points on the left for having a bad candidate. Meanwhile, you've got the current president of the United States, the guy who these two answer to, the guy whose endorsement they would crawl over broken glass for, has been found liable in civil court for sexual abuse and credibly accused of sexual harassment or assault more than two dozen times.

3:16Brian Tyler Cohen:And yet, strangely, no sanctimonious calls for Trump to step down. Weird, huh? And it doesn't even stop at Trump. Like, it's happening in this exact election cycle in the same races that these two are supposedly so torn up about ethics in. You've got Ken Paxton, the sitting Texas Attorney General who just won the Republican Senate nomination to replace John Cornyn. This is a guy who was impeached by his own Republican-controlled Texas House on charges including bribery and corruption. He spent years accused of misusing his office to help a donor named Nate Paul in exchange for home renovations and help covering up an affair.

3:52Brian Tyler Cohen:His own wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce citing biblical grounds, accusing him of adultery after he'd already publicly confessed to one affair to his own staff back in 2018. And now just weeks ago, new footage surfaced appearing to show Paxton overseas with a woman who is not his wife. And how did Republican primary voters respond to all of that? They handed him the nomination. Trump endorsed him. Kevin McCarthy did not walk away from Ken Paxton. Brandon Gill didn't go on television demanding that Paxton withdraw in the name of decency in public office. In other words, these are two completely separate tiers of morality.

4:31Brian Tyler Cohen:Republicans can disparage the moral failings of a party based on a candidate who the whole party is abandoning, all while fully embracing the same moral failings on their own side and not see anything wrong with that. You will not find any, we need decent people running for office. None of that energy when it's one of their guys. You won't find a single Republican leader calling on Paxton to drop out of the race the same way every prominent Democrat did within hours for Paxton. Doesn't exist. And that tells you everything you need to know about what's actually happening here. Because this was never about decency.

5:02Brian Tyler Cohen:It was never about protecting women or holding candidates to a certain standard. This is sheer opportunism. Finding a moment where Democrats are doing the hard, painful, correct thing and trying to flip it into a talking point while your own party's own predators get elevated to the highest levels of government. And look, to be clear, again, because I don't want this to get lost, the allegations against Grant Plattner are serious, credible, and the Democrats' response, which is to say a response that is swift, united, and unambiguous, is exactly what it should be. Bad candidates and bad politicians should be held accountable immediately, regardless of party, period.

5:42Brian Tyler Cohen:But if Kevin McCarthy and Brandon Gill and the rest of the GOP actually believe what they're saying, this idea that voters should walk away from candidates like this, they'd be saying it about guys like Ken Paxton right now, not just Grant Plattner. They'd be saying it about the guy sitting in the Oval Office right now, not just Grant Plattner. Instead, what we got was a party that has spent a decade normalizing every kind of scandal imaginable within its own ranks, suddenly discovering its moral compass exclusively when it's useful against the other guys. That's not principle. It is a talking point.

6:13Brian Tyler Cohen:And all of us should be able to see the difference. Next up is my interview with Jim Acosta. But a quick note here. My new book, The Day After, is coming out in a week. So if you'd like to support my work, the best way to do so is to pre-order the book. And I'm also going to be on tour. So if you live in New York, D.C. or L.A., now is the time to grab those tickets while they're still available. I'm going to be with Jim Acosta in DC, Don Lemon in New York, and John Lovett in LA. So I'm going to put the link to both pre-order the book and grab tour tickets in the show notes of this episode. That one link will bring you to both.

6:46Brian Tyler Cohen:So please help support my work if you can. I really appreciate it. Okay, here's my interview with Jim Acosta. No Lie is brought to you by SelectQuote. Life insurance. We all know we need it, but we keep putting it off because we think it's complicated or expensive or that we'll live forever. Stop telling yourself that you'll handle it later and take care of it today with SelectQuote. In 15 minutes, you could have coverage that fits your life and budget. Here's what makes SelectQuote different. Their licensed insurance agents work for you, not for the insurance company. They compare options across multiple carriers to find you the right coverage at the lowest price.

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7:53Brian Tyler Cohen:So major news today is that the Belgian soccer team is busy trolling Donald Trump online. And the meltdown, I think, is going to be imminent from that. But somebody who knows full well about contending with Donald Trump's meltdowns is my guest here, Jim Acosta. Jim, thank you so much for taking the time. You got it, Brian. Absolutely. So I want to talk to you about what the Belgian team has done in the aftermath of beating the U.S. 4-1 in the World Cup match. First off, can I have your reaction to the post that they made of them doing the YMCA dance and then, of course, posting online overturn this?

8:31You know, I wish I had done one of those dances during a press conference maybe or something like that after he wouldn't answer one of my questions. No, I mean, I think that it was the perfect troll for Donald Trump. He should have never gotten involved in this. For him to try to intervene and change the outcome of the World Cup is typical Trump. You know, it's like the old Rick Wilson saying everything he touches dies. And, you know, the thing I've been thinking about this because, you know, I get into the World Cup every four years. I think it's a fantastic sporting event. You know, if Trump had just stayed out of it, I wonder what might have been.

9:07You know, the U.S. team was really pissed. Americans were really pissed that that this player had been booted out of the game for for the next game against Belgium. And I just wonder if the rest of the U.S. team would have gone out there with a chip on their shoulder, pissed off, fired up, you know, wanting to prove that they can win without this player being, you know, wrongfully red carded. I mean, when you watch it, it's obvious he shouldn't have been red carded. Yeah, I agree with that. It was a ridiculous call. Yeah. But you just kind of wonder if he had, if Trump had not gotten in the middle of it, maybe the outcome would have been different.

9:40I know it was four to one. And so, you know, Belgium was looking pretty strong. There's no question about it. But you just never know because you just don't know what the outcome of the game was going to be had it been a different situation. But I just think it taints the entire World Cup that FIFA would buckle. I think this was the first time since the 1960s that they reversed a decision like this.

10:02Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, look, special deference has to be paid for the inaugural winner of the FIFA Peace Prize. I mean, this isn't just anybody calling up Infantino. This is Donald Trump. He's our Infantino. Yeah, our Infantino. That's right. Yeah, our globally reviled corrupt figure at the top of a criminal enterprise. Yeah, our Infantino. Well, you had mentioned what it would have been like for the U.S. team to go out feeling like, okay, now we really have to be at the top of our game because we've lost our star striker in what a lot of people believed was an unfair red card. And I agree that I think it was an unfair red card.

10:43Brian Tyler Cohen:But the flip side is think about how the Belgium team feels when they watch our president just be able to engage in corruption in broad daylight. I mean, they like you, you can make the argument just as easily that they came in extra fired up because now they feel like they're not just contending with unfair practices, but like basically a deck stacked against them because all it takes is for Donald Trump to make a phone call. And all of a sudden, you know, FIFA bends to their will. And so I'm sure that this not only took the wind out of the sails of the U.S.'s team, but lit a fire under the ass of the Belgian players who now feel like they're not just, you know, fighting to stay in this World Cup tournament, but also fighting to overcome such blatant corruption that everybody's contending with.

11:28Yeah. And I also thought about what it was like to be Balogun in that situation, you know, to have, you know, I mean, the other thing that we should mention is, is that this was kind of an endorsement for birthright citizenship. You know, Balogun, you know, born in this country kind of by accident, by fate, that his parents just happened to be here and couldn't travel back to, I think it was London at the time or something like that. And so he was born in the U.S. and became a citizen. Just an amazing story. It's, again, another example of amazing things happen when we open our doors, you know, to people from all around the world.

12:04But, you know, I just I just think that, yeah, if you're Belgium, you're certainly going to come in there fired up and pissed off and ready to prove something if Donald Trump is going to put his finger on the scale. And so, of course, they're going to go out there and troll him and do the Trump YMCA dance or whatever it is, you know, after they after they pull it off. And so, yeah, it's just like everything else, you know, tearing down the east wing of the White House, painting the reflecting pool, his ridiculous state fair down on the National Mall. You know, he's doing things that presidents of the United States don't typically do and trying to make everything about them and how he makes it all about himself.

12:42And he's just ruining one thing after another. And it goes to show you that he does not have anybody in that inner circle right now who has the ability to control him. And that just makes him so much more dangerous and unstable, it seems to me.

12:56Brian Tyler Cohen:I mean, that's why he's composed the inner circle of the people he composed this with, because they are subservient, because they're obsequious, because they won't stand up to him or offer him offer any good advice like, hey, maybe don't make the World Cup about you. because this thing has been successful because it's about unity. It's about sports, which are a joyous thing. And he doesn't operate on that level. That's not one of the channels that plays on this TV show. It's only hate division and xenophobia, racism, bigotry, and frankly, just consolidating attention onto himself. And it really is amazing to see.

13:34Brian Tyler Cohen:Everybody is enjoying this World Cup, which again is owed in large part to, you know, a diversity of countries coming together and playing this game. And of course, we're in a situation now where Donald Trump figures out a way to make it about himself, runs a victory lap after getting Infantino to agree to his terms. And then all of a sudden, the U.S., which is a great host, And you have people all around the world who are talking about how great it is to eat like Waffle House and Taco Bell and like the rest of the disgusting fast food that we offer. But like everybody's having a great time. Everybody's talking about how nice people are in these host cities.

14:16Brian Tyler Cohen:And like that's a huge boon to the US, especially at a time where tourism is is in the toilet because everybody's afraid of getting plucked off the street by roving ICE agents. And, you know, and then that gets that gets undermined because now we're suddenly not the underdog. Now, you know, this is the team that gets unfair advantages because we have a president that is so quick to just wield the levers of power and abuse the U.S. government so that he can get what he wants, whether it's fair or not. No, it's so true. And I mean, and you never know. I mean, maybe the folks at FIFA, the officials at FIFA might have taken a second look at this without Donald Trump getting involved, without the White House getting involved and said, you know what, this was a boneheaded call.

15:00This was a terrible call. Let's, let's reverse this. Let's, you know, it's rare. Yes, but let's go and reverse it. And, you know, as you said, he just has this tendency these days to just shit all over everything. It's just what he does right now. And it, it, it's, it's really, it's, it's a big shame. And I, you know, I think you're absolutely right. This was a moment where America could have repaired some of the damage that's been done to our standing in the world by Donald Trump, the way he has thrown his weight around when it comes to NATO and Greenland and my God, you name it, the way the rest of the world looks at this country right now as it relates to ICE.

15:36As you said, so many people don't even want to travel to the U.S. right now because they might get thrown into a detention center or get roughed up by federal agents. And here was this moment where people were coming together in this incredible way and celebrating, you know, this, this, uh, you know, power of sports to, to bring people together. And he just, he couldn't help himself. He had to go in there and, and botch the whole thing. Yeah. And I, you know, and I, I don't root against America. I, I, you know, I cheer for my country every time they get out there on the world stage. Um, but you just have to think that there were probably a lot of people around the world who said, well, they got what they got, they had coming to them.

16:18And it's just, I hate that. I hate that that that he put this country in that position. And you just but again, does this penetrate? Is this one of the things that will, you know, crack that impenetrable armor that he has around him in conservative media? I saw people on social media saying, oh, I'm so glad he did this, you know, and, you know, thank goodness. Why would anybody have any problems with this? And of course, if a Democratic president had done this, they'd be trashing a Democratic president for doing it. Right.

16:46Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, I should note in terms of bringing people together, Jim, you and I will be on stage together in Washington, D.C. on July 14th at 6th and I. There are going to be tickets available. We're going to talk about my new book the day after. We're going to talk about politics more broadly. Going to be a great conversation. So for those who live in or around Washington, D.C., if you have friends, family, co-workers, whatever it may be that are going to be in D.C. and want to see us live, there are still tickets available. So I'm going to put a link to the DC spot stop of the book tour right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video.

17:20Brian Tyler Cohen:You can also go to Brian Tyler Cohen dot com slash book and scroll down to the book tour section and grab tickets there. But we would love to see you in person. And and if you haven't grabbed those tickets yet and are around DC, please make sure to come. Jim, to that end, I want to I want to ask you about a little bit of a different topic in terms of, you know, a lot of Trump's supporters coming to his aid in the aftermath of, you know, some boneheaded decision that he makes. You know, we have seen this financial disclosure come out in just the last few days, this 927 page financial disclosure that shows Trump was the beneficiary of a windfall, like a fuck ton of money from crypto, from selling his own merch.

18:00Brian Tyler Cohen:His family benefited from government contracts. And so do you think that this is going to have some some potency in terms of reaching people in Trump's own audience who voted for him, supported for him, supported him or even voted for Republicans more broadly on this idea that this would finally be an administration and a political party that was going to focus on the little guy? And instead, all of the conditions that Trump exploited to get elected have gotten worse. And meanwhile, Trump is adding plenty of zeros to his own bank account. So do you think that's going to have some impact on a potential realignment of the electorate?

18:39I mean, a potential realignment of the electorate, we'll have to wait and see. I do think that this is penetrating in this moment. And I think that this has the potential to be the scandal of this summer. Last year, it was their attempt to sweep the Epstein files under the rug. That didn't work. That blew up into a massive scandal for Donald Trump. And it was one of those moments that said to his base, this guy's a fraud. He and the people around him said that they were going to open up the Epstein files and get it out there to the public because there was a Democratic cabal that was involved in all of this.

19:09And then it turns out he was in there 38 ,000 times. I think similarly, they tried to put out this financial disclosure form. And yes, there were some eye-popping numbers in there. I put disclosure in quotation marks because, I mean, that's what he's disclosing. Do we really have our arms around the full picture here? I don't know. I mean, you look at the UAE and the contribution, the multi-hundred million dollar contribution they made to World Liberty Financial in all of this. I mean, that is an eye-popping figure. You look at the raw numbers. Steve Ratner was putting this stuff out on social media.

19:48It was just brilliant showing it was almost the exact amount of money that investors put in Trump and his family took out and made. And I do think that this does penetrate. I do think that people can understand dollars and cents, in particular when they're paying higher grocery prices, paying higher prices at the pump, you name it. They're not benefiting from this. And when Trump was asked about this the other day, you know, he said, well, we're all making money right now. Don't aren't you in the stock market? Don't you have a 401k? Well, like 59 % of Americans have 401ks in this country, but there's about 40 % of the country that does not.

20:26And he, and those are the people that show up at his rallies. I used to run into them all the time at his events. They were the ones who would, you know, you know, stare at him all googly eyed and while, you know, hating my guts. and you know i think they had it exactly backwards i think a lot of his supporters have tragically had it exactly backwards donald trump is not looking out for the well-being of his supporters he has milked them he has fleeced them he has taken them for a ride he has taken this country for a ride and i think that it is all starting to come home to roost all of these things that you know he went out to the american people and said that you know he was against forever wars, that he was going to open up the Epstein files, that he was going to bring down high prices, and that he was going to look at, you know, look out for the little guy.

21:14He's done the exact opposite of all of those things. You know, he talks about the Biden crime family and Hillary Clinton and all this other stuff, lock her up and whatnot. And, you know, and then he decides to go on this crypto corruption spree, the likes of which we've never seen in this country before. I mean, he is undoubtedly going to go down as the most corrupt president in our nation's history. And so I, you know, I do think over time it leads to realignment. I think that, I think that what is going to take place in the fall, Brian, not to belabor, this is going to be fueled in large part because there's, I think there's going to be a real backlash to this.

21:50I really do. And I think it's because people are starting to figure out that they got stiffed by the ultimate con man.

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22:31Brian Tyler Cohen:It is a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration, that is to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night, drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Every time I have pre-alcohol before drinks, I notice a marked difference the next day. Even after a night out, I can confidently plan on being on camera without worry. And trust me, I have read the comments, people would notice if something was out of the ordinary. July is packed with barbecues, fireworks, lake weekends and late nights with friends.