She Supported Graham Platner. Then She Couldn't Anymore.

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1:34Just a heads up here at the top, we taped the interviews you're about to hear yesterday, and things are moving really fast with the Graham Plattner story. So there's a chance that by the time you listen, things will have shifted. And of course, this episode deals with sexual violence. So take care.

1:55Before Graham Plattner's run for U.S. Senate, became a complete mess. Before we knew about the Nazi tattoo, before we knew about the questionable posts on Reddit, before the extramarital sexting, or the accusations of dangerous behavior, or finally the alleged sexual assault. In Maine, there was something else. The town halls. I mean, hundreds of people were being turned away at these town halls.

2:26Lori Fleming was electrified by Grandpa in Erstown Halls. And the place that I saw him, it holds about 300 people and they turn people away. He held that room in the palm of his hand. I mean, he's just, he has so much charisma and he's clearly very, very smart. And he said to this room full of people, nobody is coming to save us. And it kind of sent chills through everyone, I think. And then there was much applause. And he said, we're going to do this together.

3:07I called Lori up because as I sorted through the latest round of Platner News, I wanted to speak with someone like her about how we got here. How we reached the point where a guy with so many red flags finally flew one flag too many. Lori gave money to Plattner. She was all signed up to Canvas for him, too. And she was following the drip, drip, drip of bad news. But none of it stuck until Monday, when Politico ran its interview with a former girlfriend of Plattner's. She said five years ago, he showed up at her house, drunk, and raped her. The end of that story was what really put me over the line.

3:49The end was that she waited until she knew she wasn't pregnant from the sexual assault. She messaged Graham Plattner on Instagram and she said, I never want to speak to you again. And she was very clear about what happened to her. And then she told other people about him and said he was casual about consent. And he never came to her and said, what a horrible thing I did. I'm sorry. he never did that i don't think i mean the first allegations i saw were in october they were about his nazi tattoo yeah oh yeah did that become like a discussion point on facebook like among friends like were you chatting about it oh very awkward very awkward um because i did have especially when his comments about women and sexual assault the reddit comments yeah that he he said you know women shouldn't get so blackout drunk.

4:44I mean, how ironic is that right now? Given that the allegation against him is that he was blackout drunk and then went to someone's house and sexually assaulted them. Yeah. And, you know, I actually had a conversation with a couple of different women friends where I said, my husband and I are parents to a male child. We did not have a daughter. And I said, with all conviction in the moment, I said, you know, if we had raised a daughter, I probably would have said the same things to her, that you have to be safe and you have to be aware of your surroundings and you should not get blackout drunk.

5:21Honestly, I don't know. Would I have said that? But I said this to my girlfriends and, you know, some of them were just really shaking their heads and saying, this smells bad. First the tattoo, now this, I have a very bad feeling. And I just had blinders on as many of us did. I still, even just a few days ago when this broke, there was part of me that, like everybody else, you're questioning everything.

5:49Emma Vigeland: Why the timing? Why did she not go to the police? Why was there no rapport? You know, but you also have to put yourself in her position at that moment. And if you try to believe her even for a few minutes and you're in that moment in your head, there's a million ways you could have handled it. And none of us know what we would have done. And so I had to really, I had to kind of back away from my defending of him and really think on this. We're talking like 48 hours after this Politico article came out. Graham Plattner still has not dropped out. If you stayed in, would you still vote for him? I could.

6:30My husband asked me that this morning and he said that he might.

6:34Emma Vigeland: He said, I would have to think about it. And I said, you know what, I would have to think about it too. But really, my stronger voice is saying, no, I wouldn't. A few hours after Lori and I talked, Plattner did drop out. But no one yet knows who can or will replace him on the ballot. An organization associated with Bernie Sanders has endorsed a guy named Troy Jackson, who just ran for governor in Maine and lost. On paper, he sure sounds a lot like Plattner. He's a logger. He likes calling out billionaires. Have you ever heard him speak? No. Is he good? Oh. I feel like if people are just listening, they won't have seen your face, but it was this like, nope, he doesn't have it.

7:20He's very, if you ask anybody, they'll say he's very unpolished and awkward. I think if a decision is made and the voters who have voted are not involved, I think there's going to be some kind of revolt. I don't know what will happen, but people will be pissed. People are already pissed. Are you mad at yourself at all in all this? No, but it was also a learning lesson, you know, a lesson on a personal level. But I look at my friends who were so resistant to get behind him who said, I don't know, I just have a feeling. And I thought, what is wrong with you? Like, I just, you know, I really was seeing this great once in a lifetime thing.

8:03And I wanted to be in that. And so maybe it's just, you know, maybe it's a good lesson for me in the future that I, I don't know, is it just going to make me a cynic? When are we supposed to believe that the right person is this person? When are we supposed to believe that? I don't know. I feel like we have to believe we're the people. And like this person just works for us, you know? And I think that's the magic of a candidate like Graham Plattner. I think he convinces the people around them. They're the people and I'm the guy who's going to help you feel like that. But the true test is whether you can feel like that without the guy.

8:44I think the thing that's appealing about a Graham Plattner is it promises an endpoint. It's not saying you have to work endlessly. It's saying you have to work to elect me and then it will be over and it will be fine when the truth is kind of we all do have to work endlessly and keep showing up every day. That is a good point. Yep. Sounds exhausting to BH. Yeah, doesn't it? Doesn't it? Today on the show, what Graham Plattner is leaving behind. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next. Stick around.

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12:49Emma, welcome to the show.

12:51Emma Vigeland: Thank you so much for having me. After talking to Lori, I called up Emma Vigland. Emma is a big deal on the lefty internet. She is a co-host of The Majority Report, which is a progressive YouTube channel with more than 2 million subscribers. It was also one of the first channels to give Graham Plattner an interview. We are back and we are joined now by Graham Plattner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, hoping to take on Susan Collins in the general election. Emma did the interview. This is from August 2025, like right after he announced. You are not apparently just a listener to the majority report.

13:28Emma Vigeland: You previously called in, which is amazing. So this is what's very funny is that it was a couple of years ago now and I was I would call in some days when I was on the oyster farm. And the one day that I actually made it through a thunderstorm hit in the exact same moment. And so I was trying to talk to Sam. Well, the quality was just horrific. And Emma was a Plattner supporter. I liked that Plattner's platform was what I think a winning platform looks like in 2026 when we have immense challenges in front of us. We have incoming wealth inequality that far exceeds even the Gilded Age at this point.

14:15Emma Vigeland: We are helping commit genocide in Gaza. We have tens of millions of people that are being thrown off their health care by the Trump administration. And his platform addressed those key issues. He wants to cut off arms to Israel. He supports Medicare for all. He wants to tax billionaires and redistribute wealth so that people can live their lives in a way that is dignified and that they can have some sort of stability. That's what the platform was about. And, you know, that is what I cared about. But outside of the platform, there were so many things for so long sort of dripping out. And you sort of you stood by Plattner through a lot.

14:54Yes. These allegations came out in Politico this week. They basically alleged sexual assault on a previous girlfriend. What made these allegations different to you?

15:07Emma Vigeland: Forcible rape and sexual assault. I mean, prior to this allegation, the New York Times piece spoke about unsettling behavior. And the worst of the accusation in that piece was about aggressive grabbing and excessive drinking. And a lot of what I read in that piece sounded like the symptoms of PTSD that he had described. And I felt that it's important that the left is an open space for veterans who've experienced that kind of trauma so that they can have some sort of redemption arc. And I bought into that narrative, especially because I also think that when you're running candidates that aren't, say, like McKinsey consultants that have been trying to run for president their entire life and have this squeaky clean record in the modern era with Internet, with the Internet history that we all have, there's going to be stuff that comes up like this.

16:03Emma Vigeland: I mean, Daria Liza of the Chevalier, there's no comparison in terms of obviously the allegations that have come out now. But in New York 13, she had some tweets that she had to apologize for and said that they went too far and that she regrets. This is going to be a hallmark of modern campaigns. So it was believable, in my view, that he could have changed his political viewpoints on that, on a lot of what he had said, including some racially insensitive things that he had said on Reddit, etc. So I bought into the apology. I think that it's important that we give people an opportunity to redeem themselves and apologize if they see the past error of their ways until it gets into something like forcible rape and sexual assault.

16:47As soon as I read the piece in Politico, I knew

16:51Emma Vigeland: that he had to drop out of the race. And I believe the woman immediately. I mean, the details were lurid and the corroboration was very well sourced by Politico. Yeah, this woman, Jenny Rassico, we should just sort of outline exactly what she says. Like she says she and Planta were in this on-again, off-again relationship for years. And one night she came to her, he came to her home, very, very drunk, blackout drunk, she says, had non-consensual sex with her, didn't remember it the next day. And, you know, this was the end of their relationship. And then she has these receipts. She has emails with a therapist where she characterizes what happened to sexual assault.

17:28She has people she told, a boyfriend she had after dating Graham Plattner. So and this is key. She believes in Graham Plattner's platform and says that's why she did not say more sooner. Unlike in The New York Times allegations, they really focused on allegations from one woman who had worked in conservative circles as an activist for a long time. And so I think for a lot of people, the key difference with Rassico was that she's she she talks about a moral struggle between her beliefs and what she says happened to her. Yes.

18:04Emma Vigeland: And and and the severity of her claim as well is is on a different level than what was alleged previously. And so, you know, I there as you say, there were lurid details in the piece like I it still sends a chill down my spine when she talks about him knocking over her antique sewing kit. I mean, just as a woman, you hear certain details and you kind of understand like, OK, I get I get what happened here. And so, you know, I do do feel as a supporter of of Plattner's campaign. I want to emphasize this because the Bernie Sanders movement and everything that's come from it, really, I would the mainstreaming of Democratic socialist ideas and Plattner was not a DSA candidate, which is maybe something we can get into if you'd like.

18:47Emma Vigeland: Like, but these kinds of this kind of populist progressivism, you know, it was always about not me, us. It's about the ideas. It's about what people stand for. And I had a belief that left wing candidates and an understanding that they're going to get picked apart in many ways, especially, you know, if you're not coming from, as I was saying earlier, a squeakier, clean background. And that that would be something that Plattner would have to withstand because of what he stood for. But it was never about him individually. It's about these ideas. It's about cutting off arms to Israel. It's about guaranteeing health care for all.

19:25Emma Vigeland: It's about taxing billionaires. And so whoever takes up the mantle here, I hope, embodies those ideals because that's what the voters resoundingly said they wanted. And frankly, that clearing the field for a geriatric centrist didn't work out so well in terms of generating enthusiasm. So we're in a tough spot here. But the voters spoke in terms of the ideas that they want and their representation in Maine. I guess the question for me is how much a person or a pundit or whoever is like willing to compromise to get the policies they believe in in place. Like, I feel like I need to say here, like, you and I are coming from slightly different places here, which is I think we're both progressive people.

20:10um but i've been like really grappling with gram platner's rise for months on air in my day-to-day life like i can go back and look at texts i have like friends in maine uh who are politically active and so anytime something would pop off with gram platner i would text them right and i and so i was going back and looking i was like what was i saying when was i saying it what was i saying to them in my personal life right your phone is kind of like your id um i went back okay tuesday october 21st after the Nazi tattoo allegations came out. My text to this, you know, friend is rip to this guy. Like I was like, he's got he's gonna have to go, right?

20:49There's a Nazi tattoo. And for me, that felt like this has to be a red line, right? And I think his response was really telling. His response was, maybe not. Mills, Janet Mills, the governor, is claiming he's too far left and a Nazi, I think this is just Mills dirty tricks. And I think that's interesting, because it reveals this thing, which is a lot of people, including Mainers, were fatigued with their democratic leaders, and were sensing some pushback that was not really about the right things, honestly. Yes. So I think that's, and I think that's an important signal. Eventually, in this thread, I got a response from this person that was like he was being very honest but it was like we only seem to elect menopausal women in Maine's Democratic Party and I was like huh like that's where I began to kind of shift in my mind like as a person as a woman because he just gave me pause I was like is this campaign like shot through with a kind of misogyny that I need to grapple with right and like this is from a friend who i love and i basically i was really glad i didn't have to vote in maine um do you see things did you see things differently like did you not see

22:14Emma Vigeland: those kind of like blinking warning well i i still honestly frankly i the tattoo thing uh it seems like he was probably not forthright about when he knew about it uh but again i am i the other members of of the marine corps that you know or his uh you know the other people that got the tattoo didn't get it removed as well they didn't necessarily see a problem with it it makes total sense to me that like somebody drunken in the military gets a dumb tattoo with a bunch of their friends and maybe doesn't know about it there was nothing in his past that does make sense to me but like if i feel like if i knew i had a nazi tattoo i would be so ashamed i would like well yeah that thing for my body which he eventually did but like as soon as i knew i would be like oh crap i think you can look back on that now and say yes perhaps there's an arrogance and a level of uh you know narcissism that some you know many anybody that runs for public office has but perhaps that it's at a different level here that he thought he could get away with anything i mean what is like the tattoo part again you know i i i his reddit history showed that he was quite left-wing and and so i did think that that was a contradiction and i was dismissive of the tattoo for that very reason.

23:27Emma Vigeland: And I think the Nazi thing was a bit overplayed because of his desire, this desire to paint him as an anti-Semite because he wants to cut off arms to Israel. I am not really questioning, honestly, his ideology at this point. I am now questioning that and now believe he's a liar and believe that he had he's a rapist. So like that's a different level. And that's something it's a separate question in my view. And that's what makes it disqualifying. So so I do look back on that differently, not questioning his ideology. You can have a left wing ideology and be a bad person. And it seems like that's what Graham Plattner is.

24:09We'll be back after a quick break.

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25:47Emma Vigeland: in the tone that there was a sexual assault allegation, but there was not a sexual assault allegation in the piece. But Plattner must have known he knew that one of the women that was interviewed by the Times that they didn't print it. But one of the women, you know, had she had said that she had DM him and said it was non consensual, that that perhaps like this is where it goes back to the arrogance and the narcissism of it. You knew that she was being interviewed by the press and then like you skated through and and that didn't come through but you then go on television and chris hayes and you know you say there's nothing coming out definitively when you know this woman is out there quoted in the times piece and could say more exactly exactly that is where it is like unconscionable in my view and um so and and shows a pattern of lying and narcissism and like this kind of driving desire for glory and charging ahead with a with a carelessness that betrayed so many supporters so many mainers like he didn't just win this primary by a little He won by 50 points.

27:00So almost immediately after this Politico piece dropped, you could see lots of people changing their minds about Graham Plattner. You know, Hassan Piker read the Politico piece loud to his fans in real time and was immediately like, this guy's toast. I think I think we should just talk about what happens now. Plattner has a deadline of dropping by July 13th. the reporting right now is that he may be doing that as soon as today with a recorded video, but is definitely trying to push for whoever would replace him, right, on the ballot. He's saying, I've built this thing. I won votes, so I earned that.

27:38I think there's disagreement about whether he should be the person doing that, but okay. Do we know who's waiting in the wings?

27:47Emma Vigeland: I think Troy Jackson is the favored candidate here. Troy Jackson was endorsed by DSA in Maine for governor. And I think that's part of what the leverage that the campaign is trying to exert. My and frankly, like they won the primary. So, of course, they do have actual leverage in that way. And I politics is a dirty game. I don't defend it. But I also understand like the Maine Democratic party has failed so much and be defeating Susan Collins is so paramount that I can see why members of the campaign are like, we need somebody to at least represent this platform if we're going to do some sort of convention style thing, like what what happened with Kamala Harris, that they need to get behind the platform that Maynard's got behind in the Democratic primary.

28:35Emma Vigeland: But what I would hope it happens, and I hope they can get their crap together soon enough, is some sort of blitz primary because Democratic legitimacy is important. We saw this with Kamala Harris when people haven't voted for them and there hasn't been a primary where you have Democratic input from voters. They have less legitimacy in the eyes of voters. So we have Plattner has until Monday to drop out. It's inevitable. He has to. It's going to be a painful interim period. And in that interim, I'm hoping that the main Democratic Party can see that, you know, selecting a candidate at a convention just isn't the right way to go.

29:13Emma Vigeland: If you can manage it before that later July deadline, when a candidate and the replacement needs to be selected, I would hope that they're able to cobble together some sort of single day primary where voters can vote on whoever replaces Plattner. You know what I was thinking, looking at whatever is going to happen in Maine? the one advantage of this situation is that both democratic factions that have been fighting for and against graham plattner have like fumbled the ball here pretty badly like the more centrist types who thought we'll just run a 70 something governor janet mills for senate they were not correct she dropped she was not the one right so okay that's not great and then you've got grand platner supporters um and i think you could argue the folks who thought what maine wants and needs is a street fighting dirtbag like they they should also be eating crow right now well they voted for neither side was right they voted for him yeah i mean And OK, yeah, but overwhelmingly, I think I think if both sides here could recognize they made some missteps and like be humble, like maybe they can work together to fix this thing.

30:35But I just wonder if you think there's any chance.

30:37Emma Vigeland: I hope so. I hope so. You know, I think that that silver lining right now is a little bit hard for me to see because it's such an infuriating start to the week. But that is my hope. Right. And to your point, like. The Democratic Party is fractured right now. That is part of what we're seeing, like we are not, unfortunately, right now a united opposition to a fascist. And I lay the blame in maybe different ways. But I think that like a lot of this, what we need to learn from this is finding a way to unite behind a party platform that is unifying, that can cross different states from Maine to, you know, states, areas in the south, a platform that can fight against Donald Trump, that has popular support within the Democratic base and that, you know, abides by some like internal ethical rules that include like, yeah, we can't be supporting a candidate once they're credibly accused of rape.

31:45And I am encouraged to see that essentially everybody that's credible

31:49Emma Vigeland: on the left is pretty much in that camp. The folks that are holding out and saying that this is some sort of smear job are really disgusting to me. But Hassan, myself as well, as soon as we read the substance of this piece immediately understood. Now it's time to jump ship. It's just the ideological battle is what I wish we could be foregrounding on. And unfortunately, Graham Plattner, due to his selfishness, has made it a different conversation. How much are you questioning at this point? Like, I think part of the reason why folks got behind Plattner is because he seemed to be able to bring new energy and ideas and voters to the Democratic Party.

32:28But then there was just polling the other week that seemed to cast doubt on that whole idea. It showed Plattner had way more support from college educated Democrats than, say, like working class Mainers. And then there was reporting that, you know, Plattner was at a fundraiser with Ro Khanna in California, which is not a very like local Maine thing. That's like, you know, going to billionaires and asking for money.

32:50Emma Vigeland: Well, I mean, but he's not taking corporate back money. At the very least, that's fundraising from individuals but i understand yeah i mean yeah i mean like i just wonder if you were like reflecting more on like other stuff like how much of this was an illusion uh which part uh of his candidacy like was it uh an illusion the working class oyster farmer thing was that actually just like a really good like uh magic trick a brand i mean i i'm less concerned about the brand i'm more concerned about the platform. I think there's nothing that changes in terms of like what main voters supported in the platform.

33:26Emma Vigeland: They want an end to the genocide in Gaza. They want to tax billionaires. They want Medicare for all. They want a Green New Deal. They want to fund rural hospitals. That's what I care about. Well, they weren't voting for that stuff necessarily. They were voting for a guy, right? They were voting for a guy. I don't agree. I don't agree. I think that like there's a lot of I don't I don't necessarily think that we should characterize that in terms of main voters. They talk about his platform. They even say that they were willing to put aside certain parts about his personal character because he supported things that they supported.

34:00Emma Vigeland: Like there's a dismissiveness about voters in the national press right now that I don't understand. Well, it's interesting because I just got off the line with like this main voter and she really did seem to have been like behind a guy. Like she was he was just so charismatic. I loved this guy. And it felt like she had defended him through a whole bunch of stuff. And she wasn't talking about the Green New Deal. She wasn't talking about, I mean, she liked, but she liked him. That's what it was. And that was a powerful part of his appeal. I think he did have charisma and he was a good communicator of the very issues that main voters care about yeah um i think you i don't know how you're feeling in this moment because like so like i was and i don't know how much you want to talk about it because like if you go to the majority report subreddit like you can find comments from a few months ago basically saying we should thank emma vigland vigorously because she vigorously defended grandplanner through all of these scandals.

35:07She's a primary reason he was able to weather those scandals and continue on.

35:11Emma Vigeland: Yeah, I don't feel great. That's putting a lot on your shoulders. I don't feel awesome. Yeah, it's an interesting time in my life, honestly, because new left media used to be a lot more marginal and we're having more of an outsized impact with very little infrastructure. I mean, we have four people that work on the show on a day-to-day basis and a lot of the time I'm making assessments about the news myself. So I'm human and I'm going to make mistakes. Do you feel betrayed? I do feel absolutely betrayed. I think I said that on air as well. I feel an immense amount of betrayal right now, especially because they insisted multiple times that nothing new was coming out.

35:49And as I said earlier, the fact that

35:53Emma Vigeland: the campaign, the pivot point for me, when the New York Times interviewed the woman who now is accusing Jenny, who was accusing Graham credibly of rape, when they knew that the Times interviewed her and they still went on air and said nothing new is coming out. That is a moment where, you know, I'm that's where my anger goes when I think about that moment, especially because, you know, I think that the Democratic Party is constantly talking about we need to win back young men. We need to bring back young men, but not in that way. Hassan Piker is, is, is so dangerous and not in this way. You know, uh, like we, we, uh, Graham Plattner, his old Reddit post that he's apologized for.

36:39Emma Vigeland: We should cancel him forever because of that. Like I was very defensive of that because I don't think that we can beat fascism without those people in our coalition. We need to build the broadest possible coalition because it's existential. At the end of the day, what I want to do is defeat Susan Collins. And I thought that Plattner's platform and what he stood for was the best way to do that in this environment. And that was a part of my vigorous defense about him. I don't care about his personal character for the most part until it crosses a line like this. Like everybody in D.C. is a scumbag for the most part.

37:11Emma Vigeland: It's about what you stand for and what you fight for. And that's so dark, though, isn't to like to be like, I expect nothing from these people like from a moral standpoint no i just wonder what we lose when like we i didn't say things like they're all dirtbags no i know i know but like i'm just saying like when we expect them all to be jerks like that's the nature of it's the nature of politics there's a narcissism that's embedded embedded in it um and so i i have that baked into the cake especially because i'm just not under any illusions about you know how many members of congress are voting to slaughter children on a daily basis like that's what i care about in terms of their morality i don't care what they feel in their heart i care what they vote for and they fight for that's what it's about representing the people i it's to me there's this reality tv application and like this over focus on people's individual brand and character that is like a national sexy uh narrative but it's not necessarily what matters and impacts people on the day-to-day basis.

38:16Emma Vigeland: So that's what I am passionate about. And it's what led me to defend Plattner because I was so I think it's so important right now to have voices in Congress that want to end the genocide in Gaza, that wanted to tax billionaires and that want Medicare for all. I hear you. I mean, I feel like the trouble, the place where I get stuck is like, are we becoming more cynical in a bid to beat cynicism? And is that a winning strategy? Like, I mean, is that possible? Do you know what I mean? Can we out cynical the people, the most cynical people, the fascists? I don't think it's cynicism. I think it's focus.

38:56Emma Vigeland: I think it's focus on what matters. I think it's focus on winning. I mean, we're talking about playing a game and it doesn't matter. I mean, we've got to win. Like first we have to win and we have to slow the roll of this fascist administration the midterms are all i care about right now and um but if you win by empowering bad people you know it's like well i've i've abandoned this person once they're once they were accused of rape and i don't necessarily i did not think that the character concerns that were prior to this amounted to something that was disqualifying and now this is disqualifying has this changed you like as a reporter as a journalist i mean it's been 36 hours of course it's changed me to a degree um but yeah no like i and i also journalists i eschew that term like i am a communicator of politics i give my opinion i i mean i i literally i go to dsa rallies and do volunteer work for candidates so i can't call myself a journalist and i uh i'm a commentator and a communicator and i have a perspective so um that and and platner and people on his campaign let me down for sure by, you know, insisting that nothing new was coming out.

40:13Yeah, it feels like you're in like a one spit and twice shy situation.

40:16Emma Vigeland: Definitely. And I will also say like, you know, as as a woman, I feel an outsized responsibility, of course, to treat accusations like this seriously. And as one of the few women in our space, like the space, I think there's a lot of people right now in the national narrative that are rightly a little angry, I think, at some progressive alt left online media because it is whiter and because this space was more supportive of Graham Plattner than other parts of the internet that were skeptical about his past, like racially insensitive comments. My argument was always like Maine is a really, really white state and this is the context in which he's running.

40:52Emma Vigeland: And like we have to win power. So he has to win and he has to defeat Susan Collins. And that is my orientation. But I think, you know, I think that that is part of what people are angry about. And like, you know, that makes sense because there are this space could improve and could be better and is still ever evolving. And I'm I am reflective of that. And I do have I do honestly feel a weight that if there were any women in our audience in particular, um, that felt that my defense of him prior to the sexual assault allegation made them feel like their experience or victims broadly, not just women, anybody, um, was not taken seriously.

41:42Emma Vigeland: That is something that weighs heavy on my heart. So like, I would be lying if I said I haven't felt an immense amount of guilt and have been self-flagellating for the past 36 hours. But I will defend my, I guess, overall values about why I wanted that candidacy to be successful, because it's about defeating fascism, and it's about the policy. And that's always what it's going to be for me until it reaches a certain threshold.

42:14Emma, I'm really grateful for you coming on and being honest with me.

42:17Emma Vigeland: Oh, of course. Well, I appreciate the conversation. And I think it's, you know, I've done another show this morning that was also kind of critical of my support for Plattner. But I think it's healthy that we continue to have these conversations. Maybe it can mirror what we talk about in terms of bridging divides in Maine. Emma Vigland is co-host of The Majority Report. At the top, I spoke with Lori Fleming, who lives in Maine. And that's our show. What Next is produced by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharm, and Patrick Fort. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TVD.

42:58Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. Ben Richmond is the senior director of podcast operations. And I'm Mary Harris. Go track me down on Blue Sky. I'm Matt Mary Harris. Thanks for listening. Catch you back here next time.

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