Graham Platner Discusses his Senate Race in Maine with MeidasTouch

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1:41Ben Meiselas:an oysterman a harbor master a military veteran from rural maine drawing 6 500 people at that portland maine rally along with bernie sanders troy jackson in an off election year his name is Graham Plattner. Maybe we all should listen. And a lot of Americans are listening to his no nonsense message, fighting against the billionaires, fighting against the oligarchs, making it clear that unless you're a billionaire and an oligarch, you're probably in the struggle that most Americans are facing. He doesn't mince words. I want to bring in Donald Trump's biggest nightmare right now, Graham Plattner.

2:27Ben Meiselas:And Graham, I want to show everybody, it feels like you jumped in the race like a year ago in this timeframe that we all kind of this morph timeframe reality, but you launched your campaign August 19th officially with this video. This is when you said, look, I'm doing this for keeps game on. I remember that launch video by my favorite launch video I've seen in at least recent political memory. Let's play it. And then I want to talk to you about your soaring campaign. Let's play this video.

3:00Graham Platner:I love most about Maine of the people. I have never met people who are more hardscrabble, even in a place that requires you to work like two or three different jobs. We have watched this state become essentially unlivable for working class people. And it makes me deeply angry. My name is Graham Plattner and I'm running for U.S. Senate in Maine to defeat Susan Collins. A decade of military service going overseas, farming oysters to feed my community, diving to lend a hand to other fishermen, trying to start a family. But everywhere I've gone, it seems like the fabric of what holds us together is being ripped apart by billionaires and corrupt politicians, profiting off of destroying our environment, driving our families into poverty, and crushing the middle class.

3:45Graham Platner:I did four infantry tours in the Marine Corps and the Army. I'm not afraid to name an enemy. And the enemy is the oligarchy. It's the billionaires who pay for it, the politicians who sell us out. And yeah, that means politicians like Susan Collins. I'm not fooled by this fake charade of Collins' deliberations and moderation. The difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz is at least Ted Cruz is honest about selling us out and not giving a damn. People know that the system is screwing them. They know it in their bones. Nobody I know around here can afford a house. Health care is a disaster. Hospitals are closing.

4:19Graham Platner:We have watched all of that get ripped away from us, and everyone's just trying to keep it all together. Why can't we have universal health care like every other first world country? Why can't we take care of our veterans when they come home? Why are we funding endless wars and bombing children? Why are CEOs more powerful than unions? We fought three different wars since the last time we raised the minimum wage. I'm not pretending to have all the answers, but I know that I'm asking the right questions. When I tell people around here that I'm running for Senate, sometimes the initial reaction is, what the f***?

4:51Graham Platner:But when I tell them why I'm doing it, because I truly do believe that we can build a system that is going to represent working people, the number one response has been, well, thank God somebody's going to do it. You're supposed to fight for the things you love. This is our home, and I will fight tirelessly for it, for you. It's Mainers first, and Maine always.

5:19Ben Meiselas:Graham Plattner, great video. Let's just chat about where we are right now in the campaign. We are getting more bad economic reports end of last week, jobless rates increasing. We're seeing inflation surging as you're traveling the state. What are you hearing from people?

5:41Graham Platner:I mean, it's unsurprising to me that within the system that we have built, which has created a spectacular amount of wealth and power for very few and left very little for the rest of us. It's not surprising that that system is getting the results that we are now beginning to see. The economic reporting numbers, I mean, it's terrible. Obviously, our economy is in dire straits. straits, but that's because it's an economy that has been built not to function for everyone. As I go around the state, as I interact with Mainers, frankly, of all sides of the political spectrum, you know, the one thing that keeps coming back to it is if you ask everybody who works for a living in the state of Maine, if they think they live within a system that is built to benefit and support them, they're all going to tell you no, because everybody knows the truth.

6:38Graham Platner:because everybody can see the truth. And we, I mean, right now we are looking at like, we already had a healthcare system in rural Maine that was holding on by a thread. Now with the Medicaid and Medicare cuts that have come down the pike from the Republicans' budget bill, the outcome of that is going to be more closing hospitals, more hospitals that cannot provide services. And this has everybody angry. And they should be. They understand what's going on. And yet we have a political system that in many ways is like refusing to engage with this, refusing to engage with this kind of material of reality for working people.

7:22Graham Platner:And I think that the response that we have had to our campaign, which has been overwhelmingly supportive in ways I was unprepared for, the reason we're seeing that is because everybody knows and everybody's just looking for someone to come out and say the truth.

7:37Ben Meiselas:You know, it's not like Trump's hiding it right now. I mean, he's building a golden ballroom. I'm not sure if the oligarchs are paying for that or the taxpayers. There's zero transparency there. They literally ripped apart the Rose Garden and turned it into Club Rose Garden, a place for the oligarch cabal to hang out and dine on the finest steaks and wine that taxpayers are paying for. I saw over the weekend, Donald Trump posted a photo of people at something called Rooftop Ciprianis or Club Ciprianis, some exclusive members only club in Manhattan where people were waving. I'm not sure if they're waving goodbye or hello to him, but he goes, it's great to see this.

8:22Ben Meiselas:And I'm looking at it. It's like$9 ,000 for three nights to stay there. And yet he managed to convince working class people to vote against their interests. And I think that needs to shift. I mean, when you're around, I mean, I assume you're speaking to people who voted for him before working class people who fell for it. So what's your diagnosis of it? And how are you trying to get us out of it?

8:50Graham Platner:To me, I mean, honestly, it's relatively simple. You know, Donald Trump told people that the thing that they knew was true was, in fact, true. And what that was is that they lived in a system that was not built for them, that the system was trying to screw them. And it was screwing them. He told them that that was real. And then he gave them a whole bunch of scapegoats to blame. Now, I don't think that Donald Trump's populism is going to fix anything. I mean, as we just as you just discussed, it's pretty obvious what this is for. You know, I think historically right wing populism never actually addresses the root causes of people's suffering.

9:34Graham Platner:It just finds scapegoats. But that only works when there is no alternative, when there's no clear, understandable answer to blame the people who are to blame, who, in my opinion, and I think just, I mean, evidence just shows this. We live in the system that is screwing most people because it benefits the ultra wealthy. And those benefits are given to them by a political class that has been bought and sold by the rich. People know that. People know that's true. You know, there is this element in American politics right now where a lot of folks like to talk about voters or the electorate like they don't know what's going on.

10:14Graham Platner:I think that's nonsense. I think people know exactly what is going on. Granted, they can be misinformed. They can be propagandized. But if you don't tell them that the very obvious truth is in fact real, which is that they live within a system that is built to benefit the ultra wealthy at their expense. If you don't have an answer for that, they're going to find answers and they're going to find answers everywhere else. We need to make the Democratic Party again, be the party that has those answers and we can do it. But the only way that we can do it is by, in many ways, making the ultra rich and the ultra powerful, make them all Republicans again.

10:58Graham Platner:They need to be. I think the Democratic Party should be a big tent party that has all kinds of competing ideas and concepts inside of it. The only one I don't think we have any room for are billionaires or billionaires who simply want to maintain their billionaire status and keep passing laws to make sure they can extract as much out of working people as possible. The Democratic place for those folks.

11:26Ben Meiselas:Then you have someone, though, like Susan Collins, as your video says, you know, it's this fake moderation. She comes in and she's like, look, Maine, Mainers, we don't like all this politics stuff. Like, we got to tone it down. We got to find compromise. We got to, you know, and in theory, a message of moderation is appealing to moderate people who don't who don't like extremes and whatever. But but to your point, it's a fake moderation. It's extremism masquerading as moderation because she's rubber stamped everything that's happening. She rubber stamps and then she goes behind closed doors with Murkowski and they figure it out.

12:11Ben Meiselas:OK, you're going to vote on this one this time. I'm going to vote on it this time. So I look bad. You look good this time. I won't look bad. Tell us about that.

12:19Graham Platner:No, I think that that's obviously the case. I think Collins has tried to create this charade in which she is always the one to be like the moderate voice in the room. That's nonsense. And everybody knows it's nonsense. I mean, I think that the recent budget bill is the most glaring example of this. She she allows it to move on to the floor. She does nothing. She uses none of her power to slow it up. She doesn't slow it down or make us all have a much more public conversation about it. And then when it's on the floor, she votes against it. And that way she can come back to Maine and say, see, I was against it like you weren't against it.

13:04Graham Platner:If you had been against it, you would have shut it down or at least slowed it down. And she did none of that. I think that here in Maine, Mainers viewed themselves, I'm one of these people, as independent of the usual kind of buckets that people get put into when it comes to political descriptions in the United States. Many Mainers don't fit into those buckets and they like to vote for people that don't fit into those buckets. Collins took advantage of that for a long time, trying to play this middle of the road thing. But at this point, everybody in the state of Maine knows that she is just another self-interested politician who represents the interests of those that donate to her.

13:44Graham Platner:And we need to be talking about that and taking advantage of it. And I think that that's one of the reasons we've had such a response to this campaign is that's exactly what we're talking about. Susan Collins does not represent the interests of working Mainers. Everybody can see that. We just have to come at that with answers that do represent the interests of working mainers, which is what we're doing. And I think that's why people are excited.

14:11Ben Meiselas:One of the things that people told us why they were not watching cable news and why they were watching Midas Touch was because they would say, I'd watch cable news. And I'd be like, what the hell are they talking about? Then I'd come to you and you're like, you just said what I was thinking. Your campaign, I think, is doing that on steroids right now because, you know, you you say the thing i i read it and people read it and go exactly like like with epstein you know the photo of that birthday card that donald trump uh clearly sent to jeffrey epstein came out and you know and then on cable news there's like a debate did he sign it of course he signed it it's his freaking signature get over like let's get over it like it he signed it and he is a sick f you you know what and you wrote it you go as soon as it comes out you go trump and epstein are sick fucks.

14:59Ben Meiselas:And then you go, why is Senator Collins protecting pedophiles and abusers like Jeffrey Epstein and his associates? Whose bidding is she doing? It's time for answers. You're not afraid to say that. This is what's going on with Epstein and the cover up by Trump and Collins. It's one of the most, it's in plain view. So the fact that they view what's happening in front of us as being better than what's in the files goes to show you, but like they're literally like a pedo sex trafficking cover-up ring at this point.

15:29Graham Platner:I don't know what else to call it. No, I mean, there's no other way to describe it. I mean, that's what it is. But like to me, you know, it really is, that's just protecting people in power, which is really what Susan Collins has been doing the entire time. And again, everybody knows this, like working people, Republicans, Democrats, Trump voters, progressives, it honestly doesn't matter. When you go out there in the world and ask people, are you looking at this and seeing like a political establishment that is out to protect your interest? Or are you seeing an establishment that is just protecting those who are already wealthy and powerful?

16:08Graham Platner:I mean, you know, it's barely even a question. that's you know the the Epstein stuff to me it's just another obvious piece of evidence as to who is being protected and supported in this current political system and that's why when you just point that out everybody understands everybody gets it we're we're not I don't feel like I'm saying anything new or that I'm saying anything that requires some kind of like really deep analysis, I'm sorry. Like this is all right out in the open. And all you got to do is point out the reality because everybody's seeing it too.

16:53Ben Meiselas:Grant, before we go, anything else that you're seeing on the ground that you think deserves more attention? We've got 6 million subscribers here, the largest independent news network out there right now. Anything you're seeing that you can share that may not be obvious that's been talked about?

17:11Graham Platner:So one of the biggest things for us has been the outpouring of volunteers. If anybody wants to help this campaign, if you go to GrahamForSenate.com, there are opportunities for volunteer signups, opportunities for donations, because we're not taking corporate PAC money. So we need as much help as we can from the ground. But the thing for me that's been most fascinating is people are realizing that they need to put skin in the game. People are realizing that only by organizing as Americans, as organizing as working people, that is where their power lies. That to me has been the most uplifting and energizing part of this campaign for me personally.

17:55Graham Platner:we've had over 6 ,000 people sign up as volunteers since we launched this thing. And that was a month ago tomorrow. And that for me is, that is the evidence that this is going to work. The evidence that we're going to be able to build the movement that it's going to take to unseat and not just beat Susan. I don't want to beat Susan Collins. I want to trounce Susan Collins. I want to give the Republican party a battering here in the state of Maine. We're going going to do that by getting people organized and engaged. And to me, that is the most exciting part of this entire thing.

18:33Ben Meiselas:Graham Plattner, United States Senate candidate for the Democratic Party in Maine. Thanks for coming on.

18:38Graham Platner:Thank you. I appreciate it.

18:40Ben Meiselas:Everybody hit subscribe. Let's hit that six million subscriber number this month. Thanks for watching. Be sure to add the Midas Touch podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for new updates every single day.

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