Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/31/25: Epstein Israeli Agent Confirmed?, Nick Fuentes GOP Takeover, Graham Platner TELLS ALL

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Emily, Ryan, Krystal and Griffin look at Trump considering to nuke the filibuster, new Dropsite News reporting on Epstein possibly being an Israeli agent, conservative infighting drama over Nick Fuentes appearing on Tucker Carlson, and then we speak with Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner about everything going on with his campaign as well as his real feelings on Pete Hegseth. Graham Platner: https://www.grahamforsenate.com/   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Upgrade to smooth, high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search. Power up at Lenovo.com. Johnny Knoxville here, check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from smartless media, campside media, and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer. That was dumb.

Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals.

And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them. But things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult? Hold up. A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. To find out how it ends.

Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Hey, everybody, happy Friday, and happy Halloween. How's everybody doing? Everybody feeling spooky out there. Yes, love Halloween.

I can't tell you that sarcastic. No, I do. I love it. That was genuine. That was Ryan being genuine. I actually love Halloween, too. I think it's just such a, like, weird, quirky holiday. And it's also, I don't know, it's almost like the most, like, community-focused holiday. Like, everybody getting out and acting like they actually know each other and aren't just, like, strangers on their phone. So I support. And no stress. Just having a good time.

No stress, just candy. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys, are you guys dressing up? I'm not dressing up. My kids, of course, are. We'll have people over at our place. And then all the kids will go trick-or-treating from here. It's actually a great way to have a party because people are at your house for like 35 minutes.

Yeah, and then they just go. Friends of ours always have us and others over every year too. And we just like eat some pizza and then go trick or trading. Yeah. We're being, so me and the other girls in the family, my oldest daughter, my youngest daughter, being demon hunters. That's awesome. Yeah, so that'll be fun. What character are you going to be?

Is there a specific character? I'm Rumi. Ida is Mira and Ella. is Zoe. These were all assigned by Ida, who was the one who was driving the strain. That's awesome. But I do like the movie, and I like the song. So, and Kyle is dressing up as like, he got like this hideous 70s looking mullet wig and then these like 70s glasses and the ugliest pants I've ever seen in my entire life.

They're like brown, like mustard brown crushed velvet and they're tight. He's wearing those like at 70s. It's hilarious. Yeah. I think you were saying she's going as live. It didn't happen. Yeah, we won't take. I'm not sure that many people would get the reference, but certainly our audience would appreciate it.

Well, you know, it's spooky season, but the news keeps rolling in. Why don't we start with something a little spooky here with Trump? Trump is urging Republicans to kill the filibuster. We've got this here in Politico. This is him gesturing before departing Halloween. He did also do some Halloween trick-or-treating himself. He did another candy placement. If you remember, he placed candy on top of a minion a few years ago.

Oh, yeah. That was a great moment. He recreated that again with a different costume this time. I don't have the video for that. But what do we make of this? You can't really beat the minion moment. That was iconic. So here's what Trump said.

He said, because of the fact that, The Democrats have gone stone cold crazy. You put some quotes. The choice is clear. Initiate the nuclear option, get rid of the filibuster, and make America great again. So, you know, obviously, guys, shut down has been going on for, I don't know, almost a month at this point. Is that correct? And then tomorrow, everybody loses food stamp benefits.

So 42, 43 million Americans, most of these are families with kids are set to lose food access to food benefits from the government. This is apparently an affirmative choice being made by the Republicans because there was emergency funding available that they had previously indicated. They were going to tap. They decided not to because they wanted to put pressure on the Democrats because they're basically like relying on Democrats to be the adults in the room and being like, you know what? We don't actually want 40 million people to go hungry in November as we had into the holiday season. So now it's, you know, looking like Trump has just decided to hell with it. Let's just nuke the filibuster. And then we don't need to negotiate with Democrats at all on, on this.

this or anything else until, at least until there's an election and, you know, dynamics potentially change, although very unlikely that, you know, difficult landscape for Democrats to take back the Senate. Yeah, I look at this as similar to what Donald Trump did when he was suddenly like, oh, maybe I will let Ukraine do long-range missiles inside Russia. You know, like when he seemed to flip-flop on Zelensky, I don't think that Republicans are serious about nuking the filibuster, but I also don't know with Donald Trump, the extent to which, and this is why he does these things, the extent to which he's serious or the extent to which he's like doing Art of the Deal stuff. And so my suspicion is that this is Art of the Deal, because if you talk to Republican senators,

they're still utterly horrified by the idea of nuking the filibuster. And not all of them. You know, I've talked to like tied to hours about that. You explain to people why that is, like, because I think people, Democrats from the outside, I'd be like, well, of course, Republicans just want to get rid of the filibuster, but that's not exactly true. So why, like, why is that? So there's this idea among, and that's why what Trump did is sort of funny, because one of the big talking points behind the scenes on the right about how the left is ready to just like completely go scorched earth on our institutions is that they want to nuke the filibuster. And here you have Donald Trump coming out and taking away anyone's like moral high ground for saying that it's Dems who flirt with the idea of.

nuking the filibuster, because when you get rid of the filibuster, if you're progressive, well, yeah, this is a much more like system, this is a system looks much more like direct democracy. You could actually do things. On the other hand, if you're a constitutionalist like Mike Lee, you say, well, the Senate is supposed to serve as the, what is the line of a the saucer on the cooling saucer on the teacup? And it's supposed to sort of temper direct democracy. And so nuking the filibuster then is unwise. So some Republicans in recent years, like I remember having this conversation in an interview with Ted Cruz like 2018, him being like, listen, I'm pretty sure that Democrats are going

to do it anyway at this point. So maybe we should just do it and take away whatever short-term games they get gains they get from being the ones to nuke it. So there's some, there's been some movement on that question, but they definitely can't say it's just the Dems who want to nuke the filibuster anymore. And so at this point, we're now, tomorrow is open enrollment for most, if not all of the ACA exchanges. And the thing that the Democrats have been fighting for is to save ACA subsidies from going away. That won't, that won't happen.

That people are, you know, people now have to go in and buy their insurance for the next year. And so I guess the question now, because. comes like, at what point into the open enrollment, do Democrats say, okay, the thing that we were fighting for hasn't happened yet? Republicans are saying that they're willing to negotiate around these subsidies if we open the government back up. So what, like, what's the rationale at that point, I guess, for not just opening it back up and entering into negotiations? So I asked Rokana about this specifically. I know Ryan, you and soccer had talked about, I don't remember who it was on Twitter, floated that the idea from the Democrats was basically to push the shutdown to November 1st when open enrollment starts and then basically be like, guys, we tried and now open enrollment is here and we failed. Like the Republicans stood in the way. So I asked Roe about that. And first of all, he was sort of shocked that that was like an idea that was out there. He was like, wow. And I was like, okay, well, that tells me that this is not something you guys are discussing behind closed doors. And so I asked him, you know, at what point is it too late to extend the subsidies? And at least,

In his mind, it was never too late, like all the way up until, you know, at least the end of the year, right, for the following year. Because open enrollment begins, but, you know, it lasts throughout the, you know, throughout the year. And I think even into January, right? And so in his mind, there was no, like, too late that was looming. Now, he saw this weekend as a critical moment, both because of open enrollment and also because of the, obviously, the food stamp cliff as well. another thing that'll happen at the end of this month, it's not exactly like on a date certain, is that there are some organizations within the government that are called working capital organizations that are funded through sort of like intergovernment sales that have contracts. They've continued to work and they've continued to have funding. A lot of that will run out at the end of this month as well. So you'll have an additional round of people who are out of work if you really continue, you know, into November in any sort of significant way. So he was seeing this weekend as a kind of like an important. date, but not like a drop-dead deadline in terms of the extension of the subsidies. That's just Rokana.

He's not in leadership. So who knows what other kind of discussions are going on or, you know, what the reality is behind the scenes. But I thought it was interesting, his perspective. You would hope that 42 million people, you know, who've been holding their breath waiting for the next round of food stamps to come in at the beginning of the month and then not getting that, that that would be enough to put pressure on the system because those 42 million people have the probably the least amount of political power.

in our country. You know, that doesn't put the kind of pressure it should. People that do have political power in this country are ones that travel all the time. And so my suspicion is that airlines completely falling apart and flight cancellations cascading are the thing that will drive this. If you remember, was it the 2019 shut down, Emily, when Sarah Nelson, the flight attendant union head came out and was like, all right, enough of this. Like, if you don't have a deal by Friday, we're going on strike. We're shutting the airports down. And they came up with a deal.

They're like, okay, fine. Because like the senators, members of Congress, and people who donate to senators and members of Congress, they are in and out of those airports constantly. And it's not just a safety issue, which is key to people who want their planes to take off and land safely. But it's also the like nightmare hellish travel scenario. that develop, you know, Newark Airport, was it yesterday? It was closed all day because of not enough, you know, flight attendants showing up.

Newark Airport pretty important for, you know, international and national travel. So I would think that heading into Thanksgiving with the biggest travel time of the year, something's got to give at some point or else it's a complete, you know, catastrophic meltdown situation. Yeah. Well, and that's most Thanksgiving travel situations. True. The other thing is that, you know, the polls have been pretty clear that the public blames Republicans more. And so politically, I think Democrats feel like they're on pretty strong ground. You know, the polls are even more overwhelming in terms of the public wants the ACA subsidies to be extended and, you know, thinks that that is an important thing to fight for. So, you know, to me, it was interesting. the Trump and the filibuster gambit was interesting both because I think it's possible that they do it. You know, I mean, all the idea of, oh, we're a constitutional party. You're so committed to that. Like, it just seems so quaint at this point. Like, that's all the window. Well, Trump definitely

doesn't care about that. Trump definitely doesn't get, but apparently neither do they. Because they certainly haven't protected their like constitutional rights and, you know, powers as either in the House or the Senate. So they've just been completely shuffled to the side. And And none of them have really raised a peep with a few minor exceptions have really raised a peep about any of that. So, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if they do actually go in that direction. But let's even say that it's just sort of a negotiating tactic, which I also think is fully possible. The fact that he's reaching for that tells me that he is actually feeling some pressure to bring this thing to a close. And the idea from Republicans going in was that they had all these ways that they were going to extract pain from the Democrats.

You know, first they thought like all the federal government lay. that this is going to really be painful for Democrats, but I don't think it really was just because there have already been so many federal government layoffs. And they're like, you're already doing this shit. So this is not really anything totally different than what we've seen throughout this administration. And there's so much pressure coming from the Democratic base to show that they are fighting and able to stand up in some significant way that I think it's really changed some of the dynamics here. And the Republicans in a sense miscalculated. I also did as well, by the way. miscalculated the strength of the hand that they would be ultimately playing here. And so, you know, you've got the, now they're applying the pressure, hoping the Democrats cared, and I think they do to a certain extent about people losing their food stamp funding. And then the threat of like, well, we'll just take any power away. So there will never be these negotiations in the future is the latest gamut.

But like I said, to me, it indicates that they are worried about some of these things. You know, you're starting to get a place, get to a place where people are noticing the effects. You know, the air travel, noticing those effects. Food stamps is going to be just a massive story. People are very upset. You're going to see the lines at the food banks. We've already been seeing some, but you're going to see across the entire country massive lineups at these food banks. And ultimately, it's Republicans who are in charge of the House, the Senate, and the presidency. So it's no surprise that that's where people are, most people are placing the blame. And also flagging something that Sager flagged yesterday on Twitter, the health insurance, premiums. He shared this. The U.S. is a country where a solopreneur, father of four, has to pay 44K a year for health care with a 12K deductible while elderly retirees get it for free. So we've got these prices here for people just listening. These are silver plans for this family. They're $3,600 a month, $3,800 a month, or $379. a month. Yeah. It's a disaster. And in that way, you know, I think one thing the shutdown has

certainly shown is healthcare was not in the political conversation prior to this moment. And now it really is. And it's a combination of Democrats forcing it to be part of the political conversation and also just the reality of what these prices are looking like. But, you know, when you have figures like Marjorie Taylor Green, who have to come out and say the system is utterly insane, just I think it proves the point that you don't just have to accept the like news landscape as it exists. You can actually force a conversation on an issue where your opponent is on the back foot and that is of, by the way, great importance to the American people. Marjorie Taylor Green always worth noting like the top small dollar fundraiser in Republican politics,

but in Congress, basically, period, among Republicans. So she's also announced that she's going on to view next week on Tuesday on Election Day. I can't wait for that. But it's interesting because, I mean, if the fight does become over, you know, food stamp funding lapses and Dems coming to the table on the health care question for non-citizens, that's a, I think that's my prediction of what happens is that Dems say, to some extent, like, yes, course, like put in the safeguards to make sure that citizens are the ones who are accessing the exchanges. That's my prediction of where Dems come from, and then they get the government

back, like, reopened, and they can go out and say, this was their win, that they were able to, like, negotiate on that. They get something with the premiums, and they're like, we got Republicans to cave on this thing with premiums. I don't know if it happens potentially Wednesday. day. That's a possibility as well that after the election is over, and nothing is moving. It's possible that people come to the table. I forget which them telegraphed an interview just over the last couple of days. It was super moderate. I forget which one it was, that they were ready to reopen conversations. So there are all kinds of things that could happen. But the food stamp battle, CheerPoint Crystal, will be absolutely everywhere. Josh Hawley already has an op-ed in the New York

Times pushing back against his party and saying, It's ridiculous to let food stamps lapse. So that could explode, and similar to the health care conversation, like what Marjor Taylor Green is sent to the health care conversation, that could explode in the food stamp conversation as well. Yeah, for sure. I just, I think the visuals of, you know, thousands and thousands of Americans lined up at food banks as you head into the holiday season is going to be a very, very challenging one.

Some things I've seen floated are like, you know, Democrats might be willing to accept some sort of, you know, commitment. to negotiations plus a vote on the floor, something of that nature could be in the offing and clearly Trump trying to up the pressure to force Democrats to cave here as he himself is starting to feel the heat from his own government being shut down now over a month.

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For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.

They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal. system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Samihante, it's Anna Ortiz. And I'm Mark and Delicado. You might know us as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty. We played mother and son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Betty! Yay!

Woo-hoo! Can you believe it has been almost 20 years? That's not even possible. You're the only one that looks that much different. I look exactly the same. We're re-watching the series from start to finish and getting into all the fashions, the drama, and the behind-the-scenes moments that you've never heard before.

You're going to hear from guests like America Ferreira, Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton, Tony Plana, and so many more. Icons, each and every one. All of a sudden, like, someone, like, comes running up to me, and it's Selma Hayek. And she's like, you are my ugly bitchy. And I was like, what? Is she even talking about it?

Listen to Viva Betty as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Anything else before we move on? Should we hit The Heritage or DropSight next? Let's do DropSight. That's a big story. Always love to highlight our own reporting here, and it is a huge story. Ryan's trending on Twitter.

Ryan's reporting is trending on. Twitter. Going viral in all the right places. Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossade, how the sex trafficker helped Israel build a back channel to Russia amid Syrian civil war. This was written by Ryan and Mertaza Hussein. Ryan, give us a little TLDR. What's going on here? Yeah. And this, this comes from Ahud Barak was using, and for all we know, he's still using this Gmail account, that appears to have been hacked by Iran. It's not entirely clear who got it, but we piece together a decent amount of information

that suggests that they're probably the most likely suspect here. And so they've dumped Barack's entire inbox. Ehud Barak was, you know, former defense minister of Israel, former prime minister of Israel, former head of intelligence, and extremely close to Jeffrey Epstein. And going through his emails,

you find that Epstein really helped usher him through the world of global political elites in an absolutely stunning way. There's a moment in this piece. I'll first start with the Mossad part. Yeah. Because this is a remarkable exchange between Barack and Epstein.

So Epstein emails Barack. Epstein helped Barack link up with Victor Vexelberg, who is this Russian oligarch who's close with Putin got him a million dollar advanced and a million dollar quarterly retainer. Like this is, we're talking, you know,

serious money Epstein was able to deliver to him here. Any, any, so Barack, of course, is going to have to talk to Mossad about this arrangement that he's, that he's struck. And Epstein writes to him, do not go to number one too quickly.

I understand more now, so we should speak. Number one is a euphemism that's that's like israeli speak for the the chief of of masad because back in the old days uh you know we uh like the identity of the massad chief was kept secret and everybody just called him number one and that's like well established it's just what you call the head of Assad is number one and so epstein do not go to number one too quickly i understand more now so we should speak so abstein is basically directing the is former head of military

A more head of intelligence at Israel, how to negotiate and how to navigate his situation with the chief of Mossad. It's so crazy. Like that, so anybody who's like, yeah, did Epstein have Mossad connections? Epstein had Mossad connections. Case closed. Yeah, we've got that one. More than Aeroa. Like, he's more plugged in than Ajo-Berac.

That's wild. And so what this story is about in particular is during, the Syrian Civil War, Israel wanted to, you know, they had a detente with Assad, but they also wanted Assad out, because they wanted to cut off, you know, basically Iran's ability to move weapons, you know, into Hezbollah, Assad, even though they had a detaunt with them, is not friendly. But they also didn't want to be seen as driving this scenario there. So what they wanted to do has set up a back channel to Putin, who was a big, you know, backer of the Syrian government at the time and say, look, you know, if, and this is, this was the scheme that Epstein and Barack came up

with, look, look, let's figure out a way that you can retain your geopolitical, um, strategic, um, aims in Syria while also getting Assad out. Like, let's, let's figure this out. And in, in trying to set up that back channel, you have one email exchange where Epstein, tells Barack, Putin wants me to come to this conference and meet with him. I told him no. I said, if you want to meet with me, you need to set aside real time and real privacy so we can have an actual conversation, not doing this like meeting you at the side of a conference thing. That's Epstein talking to Putin. He then successfully arranges a meeting. You could say, oh, this is just smoke that he's blowing. No, he successfully then arranges a meeting with

Putin and Barack. And they set up, set it up ahead of time. by writing this article together about what their agenda is there. And what makes Epstein such a remarkable historical figure is 2012, Putin has this, you know, has this election that is contested. There's protests in the street. Putin believes, you know, quite reasonably, actually, that some of these protests originate from U.S.-backed NGOs, you know, that are being pushed by Hillary Clinton, who's then Secretary of State.

And that is like, you know, Putin, Clinton's had had a hostile relationship before. That really elevates their, the hostility, which then, you know, plays a role in our politics for the next, you know, decade and maybe more. And so Putin at this time is consolidating power in an authoritarian way, but wants to keep open capital flows. And the person, it turns out, who is perfect to help him navigate this is Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein is very close with the Clintons, and also, you know, not just knows the technical details of how to keep these capital flows moving, but can help with the politics of it. So there's nobody in the world, really, who would be able to balance, you know, both Putin and the Clintons and the U.S., and while he's doing it is really working on behalf of Israeli, you know, national security interests. So it's a, it's, this is one of, we will have a lot, we'll have a bunch more stories coming on this, but this is, this is one of my favorite because it really peels back the way that, you know, power was working, particularly in the 2010s. I wonder if we'll ever get another era like this because these guys were using email in a completely, like, wide open way, in a way that they don't now.

Like right now, these, these conversations are happening on signal with disappearing messages for the most part. thankfully, we still have a lot of morons in this world that will be revealing to us their text message exchanges. Right. And there's regional exchanges and adding Jeffrey Goldberg to exchanges. So, like, we're going to continue to get insight, but this. Thank God for the idiots. Thank God for the idiots. But this level and this amount of detail.

Now, this all cuts off when the Panama Papers drop, incidentally. Panama Papers drop in all their emails. They're like, oh, hold on. Can't be doing this. Got to get a little smarter. We got another way to... That's interesting. That is.

Yeah, anyway, this is a story that's worth reading. I think you'll start it and be like, I don't read long articles anymore. I don't have the attention. And you're like, no, actually, I just finished that article. Okay. I said the reason that people should go to drop site and read the story, I mean, there are many reasons, but one of, I think, the most important reasons is that when you look at these emails, they are speaking in the way that just confirms some of the most.

paranoid conspiracy theorist's fever dreams, which is to say, like, actually as puppet masters, right? Like, it is so wild to hear them talking back and forth about just how they're going to, with the flick of a pen or the click of the enter button on your email, change Middle Eastern politics, change geopolitics. And that's exactly, they're speaking with the arrogance of people who can do that with phone calls and emails. And it's just wild to see it in print.

like in the email form. And we used this quote in a previous article, and I wanted to reuse it in this one because it involved Syria and it's still relevant. But also it just explains everything. Epstein, to Emily's point, Epstein writes to Barack, with civil unrest exploding in Ukraine, Syria,

Somalia, and he spells Somalia wrong, Libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn't this perfect for you? It's like, you know, and then Barack says, you're right in a way, but not simple to transform it into a cash flow, a subject for Saturday. Unreal. And so, yeah.

Well, I was just going to say, too, I mean, there's also the, you know, the meta story about why it's you guys that are doing this reporting and writing all of these things out as well. Yeah, like these emails, we had some early access through this like nonprofit that was that got. from whatever hacker group probably they run in, release them. But now, you know, basically any media outlet could get access to these emails. You just have to,

you just have to basically reach out and say, hey, I'm a news outlet. Can we have access to these emails? And they say, yes, as long as you're not using them for, you know, commercial purposes or intel purposes, like, go ahead. Here's the keys to, like, look through the emails.

This is available to anybody. You're right. And nobody, like, Like, my editor, Nostka, who worked on this story, she was flying to New York for this dropside event we had. And she's like, I don't want to edit the plane. I don't want to edit the story because I'm nervous. Like, what if there's somebody else? You're going to steal the story.

I was like, nobody's stealing this story. They could be right there for them. It's out there in the open and they're not doing it. It's not that they don't have the ability and the information. They don't have the willingness to do the story. They don't want to do the story. There's so many. And what do you attribute that to?

Is it the origin of the emails coming from Iranian hacker? No. Is it that they just don't want to dig into these power relationships? Is Israel? Exactly. They wouldn't mind the Russia aspect of it. But Epstein and Israel. I mean, when was the last time that you saw any headline anywhere in the world that

used the word Mossad even? Like, we all know this organization exists. It's very powerful. I mean, Barry Weiss did interview someone. That's true. She was learning. She was learning the first time. Yeah.

That was so funny. You just don't talk about these things. Like, these are, this is what, this is how the grownups run the world back there and, and, you know, we just pretend like, like it's different. It's so fascinating. Yeah. It's an incredible story. I mean, just to see them speaking so flippantly about how to make money and change geopolitics is completely insane. And Ryan, I think the big takeaway that you made earlier, the point that you made earlier, that's a huge takeaway is like anyone who said, I've seen.

And it wasn't acting. I mean, this is because this is one of the big questions about how Epstein made his money and influence is that he was back channeling negotiations between different countries. And this actually confirms that. I mean, that's an argument that you hear a lot from people who are deep in the weeds in Epstein world. But it's plain as day here in the report. Like, that's what's happening. And yeah, and the thing, exactly, the thing we're learning from a lot of these emails and documents that we've been reviewing. recently is that Epstein was there's this there's this idea that Epstein was just basically just

on the dole and doing nothing but running a blackmail operation and I and I don't think that that holds up Epstein was legitimately making connections between these spy agencies between these top political figures around the world and when you get into the tax advice he was giving he was actually, and maybe it was, it's because he's not a trained tax guy, like pushing the envelope on a lot of tax strategies that legitimately was saving these oligarchs and these billionaires and plutocrats in the United States, you know, tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. Like, he, like, he genuinely was doing the work for these people that was making him valuable. Now, is he doing, you know, blackmail and videoing all the gross stuff?

that people are doing on the side with him? Yeah, probably. And that's part of it. And even if he's not, everybody knows that he is, you know, a disgusting creature. Well,

they assume that he is, whether he is or not. And 2009, and they know he's tied in with, like by this point, he's tied in with Israeli intelligence. Yeah. So are they going to, like,

you know, kick him out of the bank or disassociate with him or, you know, cross him in any other way when he's number one valuable and making them money. And number two, they just assume any bad thing, whether in the context of, you know, his island or just in their life in general, they assume he's got access to all of that.

So it does help explain how he maintains all of these relationships and all of this power, even after he is a literally like convicted, registered sex offender. Yeah. And yeah. And who else is going to get in a meeting with Bill Clinton and then with Vladimir Putin or you know it's a it's a it's a rare he had rare he's like one of the most connected people in the world at that time yeah I wanted to read this one little section here

it says in the same email thread Epstein offered Barack guidance on how to ratchet the pressure on the US to strike Iran I would use the opportunity to compare it with Iran the solutions become more complex with time not less I think many people would like your views on Egypt, Syria, etc. Russia's role, question mark. I think you might point out the gassing of women and children is an expression from the 20th century. Women are no longer equivalent to children, civilians versus combatants only. Yeah, it's surprising because, you know, it's like, I think most people just think of him as like mainly doing the island stuff, but now he's a foreign policy expert. Yeah, and it fits in this, this was the height of the Davos man era, or

Everybody was an expert on everything. Yeah. And so if you spoke with authority, you didn't even have to spell the countries right, and that was good enough. Well, that's another crazy part of this. Yeah, you're just watching them like totally boomer text. You know what I mean?

Like in these emails about changing geopolitics where they're all lowercase with the most bizarre punctuation. Sorry, boomers. But like just the craziest. Which was back then. And maybe today still was a power move. Like I noticed, and Crystal, you may remember this too. Like really powerful people, Ariana, for instance, my old boss, like, they would, I think

they would leave in all the typos and radical errors as this display of their own authority and power that, like, I don't have to fix the- I don't have to care about, yeah. Well, that was kind of thing. You get my point. You do the work to, like, interpret what I'm saying because- You're going to because I am a person of deep authority and power. It's alpha to be illiterate.

I think my son still operates on that model, actually. To be honest of you, it's actually a zoomer thing. I learned this from Ella, actually, that capitalized, like proper capitalization of your sentence is considered like an old person thing to do now. Or a little. Zoomers turn off the auto capitalize so that their texts are all lowercase. that's, yeah, that's apparently a young person thing now. They have that in common with Jeffrey Epstein. So good for them.

Yeah. There you go. There you go. So, I mean, I think, I mean, in a way, Ryan, you have put on the public record now, like one of the big mysteries, like you said, does Jeffrey Epstein, is he connected to Mossad? You know, is he working with them? And, okay, case closed. Yeah. We know that.

At least a little. No longer conspiracy. That is now recorded, known, reported out. What's the relationship? How deep? What else did they do? That remains to be discovered. But how does he get himself into that position?

All of that is still, you know, still up in the air. But it's a sort of important piece of the puzzle that you've been able to fill in here. And I just also do think it's extraordinary that the lack of interest from the national media, the opposite, the anti-interest from the national media in digging into these emails because they could have had this scoop themselves. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, there's this like maximum journalism. If it bleeds, it leads. And everyone tends to blame journalists for over sensationalizing stories and only covering bad stories, sad stories, awful stories. But the fact that they're not interested. I mean, right, there's CBS news reporting on the prison and the cameras. We've seen some of that. But if it bleeds, it leads is clearly not true because this is the most sensational Epstein material that you could report out. It's right there at emails. And it reminds me of the time that. that one reporter was, I forget what the exact scoop was, but Trump just came out and said it. And the reporter was like, I've spent months investigating this and he just said it. He just came out and said it. Like, they're saying it.

They're just putting it plain here. And it's like juicy, like intriguing, crazy stuff. And they're not touching it. Yeah. Well, I'm telling them now. We have a bunch more stories to do. So if you want to scoop us, like you still can. The opportunity is still available.

Yeah. All right, we should get to this heritage thing. We didn't even mention at the top of the show. Grand Planner is joining us in a little bit. And we asked our premium subscribers to submit some questions for him as well so people can hear from him what they're interested in. But before we get to this, Emily, you want to set up this heritage situation? I get the outline of it. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you.

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and also today's politics. Get the big short now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. But I think I need some of the like granular, like the texture, the color from you of how this is raining and the conservative. You can tell me where I get it wrong. Oh, yeah. That's fine.

I like that. Yeah, that'll be more about all the young buds. Here's my outside looking in. I mean, depending on where you want to start, but for the sake of time, we'll start with Tucker interviewing Nick Fuentes the other day. You know, we know Tucker can badger a guest. Ted Cruz learned that firsthand. The Fuentes interview was, you know, more of a kid glove situation.

Now, I noticed he like, you know, Tucker has like made fun of him for being gay in the past. And I noticed that Tucker spent like an enormous amount of time kind of forcing him to like talk about women, which I felt like Tucker's like kind of passive aggressive way of messing with Fuentes the whole time because, you know, if he is. What women did they talk about? All of the women at one point. Fuentes is like, Tucker was like, okay, so what's the problem? And Fuentes was like, well, it's the women. Yeah. So like it's that part.

It's just the whole whole thing's ridiculous. But so that created this, you know, Fuentes is like an on the record. he doesn't he says like basically that he's anti-semitic like that he like yeah he's one he's like the jews control and it's not israel it's the jews like he he is a i mean he he talks about being quote unquote radicalized on race even in the he'll talk about the gay question like this is not a guy who's leaving yeah who's trying to like he says women should be burned at the stake more No, he is an overt, like, avowed identity politics, racist, that is his ideology. And so there's been this effort to kind of cut Tucker off, and this happened at T.P. USA.

There was, you know, Charlie Kirk was under a lot of pressure to not let Tucker speak at his event. And then Heritage came under pressure to distance itself from Tucker Carlson. and so the head of Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, put out this startling video, which, and we can talk about this a lot, but there's a bunch in here that just taking the traditional, like genuine, I think, reasonable definition of anti-Semitism, not the like, oh, you're criticizing Israel, that's anti-Semitic.

Like there are, while we go through this, we can just like count. the dog whistles in it. Like, they're, like, and you can, and you can argue about whether or not people are too sensitive to whether or not these are anti-semitic dog whistles or not, but they're known. And, and he, and he deployed them anyway. Globalism, venomous, what do you call them? Uh, basically snakes or whatever.

Anyway, Griffin, if you want to play this, you'll, it's, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, this in the coming days, but today I want to be clear about one thing. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic. And of course, anti-Semitism should be condemned. My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology. But when it doesn't, Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter

how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington. The Heritage Foundation didn't become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won't start doing that now. We don't take direction from comments on X, though we are grateful for the robust free speech debate. We also don't take direction from members or donors, though we are inherently grateful for their support, and we're adding more every day.

This is the robust debate we invite with our colleagues, our movement friends, our members, and the American public. We will always defend truth, we will always defend America, and we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serves someone else's agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains and, as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him or sowing division.

Their attempt to cancel him will fail. Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right. I disagree with, and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says. But canceling him is not the answer either. When we disagree with the person's thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas and debate. And we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left. As my friend Vice President Vance said last night,

what I am not okay with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens, and it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interest of our own country first. that's where our allegiance lies and that's where it will stay and so the beginning of that is just normal like look you can criticize Israel

and not be anti-Semitic and we're not going to be to other Christians specifically Christians according to him the rest of us I don't know so much Ryan right launches with the Christian thing but yeah globalist venomous

the reference to donors like if he was writing this speech trying to cater to more tender feelings about anti-Semitism that he wouldn't have used those terms like those are those are very deliberate and provocative terms to use in a video that defends not only their relationship with Tucker Carlson but uh the the engagement with Engaging with McQuentes. Last thing I'll say, and I'm talking too much here, I made this point on Twitter.

During the Obama years, Netanyahu basically went to war with Obama over the Iran nuclear deal. And that was kind of the beginning of the end of Israel's relationship with the Democratic Party, which was already strained because some Democrats would offer some rhetoric criticizing some human rights abuses related to the occupation. And that was, they, they did not want that. The Republicans were much more willing to just be fine with whatever you're doing to the Palestinians. And so they actively pursued this,

they had a bipartisan approach, APEC and Israel had a bipartisan approach. They switched it to a one-party approach, still tight with Schumer, Jeffries, et cetera, the leadership, but went to war with the base of the Democratic Party and abandon the party more broadly and lined up with a party roughly the same time that Charlottesville is happening,

it's clear that there's becoming this like strong Fuentes element within this coalition. And so the long-term play of aligning with these kind of Christian nationalists was to me always going to blow up in their face you then have two years of this genocide

where the younger Republicans are watching and unfold on their phones and the combination of that means they've basically lost everybody now at this point. I feel like we're usually on the same page about this stuff. I don't see the globalism and venomous and vile comments and about donors. I mean, I assume he addressed donors in that video

because he was... I think you can argue about whether those are, whether that's anti-Semitic. But what's clear is that people read that as anti-Semitic. Yeah, I mean, whatever was going on the scenes. And to use it deliberately as then a provocative. It was not written to cater to people who are genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism. It's written to cater to Groyper's who are the, who apparently everybody in the party is just afraid of about this one.

I mean, judging by J.D. Vance, judging by Tucker, judging by this statement. Like, I mean, that's, I, Richard Henanee has been arguing like Nick Fuentes and the Gory Birds at the future of the Republican Party. In a lot of ways, and I've been saying this, I think they're already the present of the Republican Party as it exists right now. Kevin Roberts is the man who greenlit Project Esther, and there are a lot of internal divisions over the old neo-conservative line at Heritage that is categorically pro-Israel and pro-Lucod, pro-Netanyahu at every turn. unless they're also like going pro-smoutrich, right? Like that's, there's, he has stood up to that. He said they're not taking money from defense contractors anymore. Now, I would have to go back and look and see how well that's held, but it has been explosive inside of heritage.

And so what, to Ryan's point, it does sound like there was a deliberate writing of the script to basically be like, we are not catering to you guys over on whatever floor. working over there on Project Esther, who are blowing up and maybe even like having people blow us up on social media for being affiliated with Tucker. Now, Tucker lost his job at Fox within like a day of giving a big speech at the Heritage Foundation about how there was like a spiritual battle happening in American politics.

And so Kevin Roberts is, I mean, there's a lot of like internal politics on this, but Kevin Roberts is seen as somebody who has aligned heritage actually with, like, the grassroots MAGA universe as opposed to, like, the D.C. MAGA universe. And so at the same time, though, he's got this, like, contingent of neocons over there doing their Project Esther thing. And he's genuinely pro-Israel. But he's also trying to, like, I don't necessarily know that people are, I mean, I know some people are definitely afraid of the griper's and of Laura Lumer. But I think they're also, like, if we sound like that Seth Dillon opad, he wrote for the free press, which was super controversial on the right, saying we must gatekeep, we must gatekeep. What we actually want to do to attract people to our side and to get them to trust us is to say, hell no, do not gatekeep. Gatekeeping is the worst thing possible. It's like a virtue signal in one direction versus a virtue signal in the other direction.

And like this video has exploded the right. Like the MAGA coalition, everyone is like debating this and freaking out over it. And it is like dividing people in personal sensitive ways. and he actually might, like, lose his job. It's not impossible that the board, like, votes him out over all of this. Did you guys see this thing that was going around that was like, you know, I'm told there's lots of ideological diversity on the right. Here's the real ideological diversity in the right.

And it's a screenshot of Laura Lumer fighting with someone else. And she says to them, you're a Muslim and they reply, you're a Jew. I mean, that's kind of what's playing out here, right? You've got Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, who is also a, you know, a, you know, a, racist and white nationalist just asked Trump. They'll tell you if he's being candid, who is, you know, extremely powerful. But he is on the side of like the Muslims are the real baddies. We've got to, you know, we will back Israel. And in his view, Israel and the Jewish people are all, you know, this is all tied together. This is not reality. But this is his view. So we'll back Israel

no matter what. And we'll do everything we can to, you know, like his wife threatened Jank Yugar with deportation on Pierce Morgan show the other day, right? That's that view. And then the Fuentes view, like the purest version of the other side is no, it's actually really the Jews that are the biggest problem and they're controlling everything. And that's why we're doing all this stuff for Israel and whatever. And so that is like this big divide that is ultimately playing out. And so obviously, D.C., you know, the Trump regime and their acolytes and a lot of the,

you know, the sort of like entrenched interest or whatever. are on the Stephen Miller side of that. And then you've got Fuentes, which embodies the other side of that. And so, you know, to go back to the Tucker thing, like, this was very interesting to me as well, because you're right, Tucker is a very powerful media figure in his own right, very talented media figure in his own right. And flirts with the ideology that Nick Fuentes just says plain. So when it was Tucker talking to, wasn't it Candace, he trashes Fuentes. He says he's a loser. He's a gay loser in his mom's basement. But then when they're face to face, no, it's, it's kid, let me hear what you have to say. I think you've been taken out of context. Don't you really mean this? Why don't you tell me more about yourself? So that's why I say, even someone as powerful and as talented as Tucker Carlson, he's afraid of these guys. And you can see, you know, the J.D. Vance event this week, the T.P. USA event, you know, a bunch of griper questions.

You know, kids coming up and being like, well, what about your Hindu wife coming up and being And like, well, what about why are you in Hock to Israel and, you know, taking like a Christian nationalist perspective on why that's a problem? Like, they are, J.D. Vance is the most online character you can imagine. They are all well aware that this is where the energy in the party is. And they're afraid of it. They're afraid of crossing it. So on the question of gatekeeping, Emily, I mean, look, I know we all have like pushed all

of us in our own way of push back on cancel culture and like woke scolding and all this sort of stuff. But you're not going to draw the line at a literal Nazi. Like, is there really literally nothing that is out of bounds? Because apparently, that is increasingly the position in the Republican Party and in the conservative movement. And that's why it's becoming, you know, increasingly radicalized in a way that I think a lot of maybe like Norby's outside don't realize how much of this energy there is at this point. I think Jen, well, so this is kind of just as we're talking about, I'm thinking of this. So Fuentes is engaging in intense revisionist history and his appearances on- That's what I was going to say to, Emily. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. The revamp.

Yeah, like, and I don't hate anybody. Yeah, no, as a Christian, I don't hate anybody. It's like, dude, and this is what was, sorry to cut you off, Emily, but this is what was so lame about Tucker's approach. She's said, oh, let me hear you in your own words. No, you need to take his words that he's actually said and say, well, what about when you said this? What did that mean now that you're trying to present yourself and, like, oh, launder yourself or a more mass audience? You can't just put all that stuff in the past unless you've had some sort of a genuine evolution of which there is no evidence whatsoever. I think with this, again, like I was working in conservative campus politics at the time that Fuentes was ascendant. And the way he tells the story about how he ended up getting

canceled is insane and untrude. He's like, I was just questioning Israel. It's like, no, you fucking words. Like, that's not actually what was happening. And so I think there are these like people who don't understand, again, having dealt with a lot of students, they get lost. I wrote a whole op-ed for the Federalist this week about how to deal with this stuff because it's so, it's like genuinely dangerous, but it's also not the majority. And the more that you gatekeep, the more that you push people in that direction because they're like, hey, you're calling. Like, it doesn't matter if if we say one thing, we're going to get called Nazis. We're going to get called bigots.

It doesn't matter if you're trying to. When Nick Fuentes was canceled, he was a much smaller presence. Like, it worked when he was deplatformed and you didn't have all of these people having, let's just sit down and chat conversations with him. He was much less of a force. Like, I do think that I do think cancellation of him and gatekeeping Nazis was like it did work to a certain extent. I think you just have to do it in a way.

This is what I wrote the piece is, like, you have to do it in a way that doesn't alienate already alienated people. So not Fuentes, but the people who are listening to Fuentes and are being taken in by him saying that you are, you're being called bad. You didn't do anything wrong, but you're being called bad. You're just asking questions, but you're being called. That's just what I'm saying is like that does need to be, you do have to do that carefully because there's the sense of like victim mentality among people who have to some degrees. been alienated their colleges, telling them this, that, and the other thing. So I do think you have to be careful with it. That said, that said, it's just like the entire, you don't have to talk to Nick Fuentes. Like, you actually don't have to talk to Nick Fuentes. And you definitely

don't have to then respond to people who are mad because someone else that you associate with talked to Nick Fuentes. Like, you can just not say anything about Nick Fuentes and ignore him and let him wither, or you don't even have to ignore him, just be like, this is insane. Like, this is America. And Tucker went into this whole thing about blood guilt and about how that's anti-American. But, yeah, I mean, I don't think people are wrong to say he was much tougher on Ted Cruz than he was on. Of course. Right. Like, it's, there are a lot of, especially because Fuentes and Charlie Kirk, that was the scene as like the dark and the light on the right that, like, dark Charlie was actually Fuentes. And they were like bitter and

enemies, and Fuentes saw himself that way. And after what happened to Charlie Kirk, Flentis has been trying to rehabilitate himself and to do the soft launch of Fuentes 2.0, who's just anti-Israel, and just a Catholic, antsy Israel guy. And so I think a lot of people don't know what to do with that, but you definitely don't have to treat it like it's credible.

He also complains to, like, he's like, tell some of his fans, you guys are doing, like, low IQ anti-Semitism. Like, I'm trying to do a professional tidied, tidiness critique now. I think that's a, key point because effectively policing boundaries of conversation requires, you know, basically stigmatizing, you know, odious things. And, you know, canceling people requires kind of moral credibility. And that's why the left was able to do it in the 2010s or so. They blew it. They overshot. They lost their moral credibility. That's why they can't kind of do it anymore.

But Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL and the entire kind of Zionist movement by weaponizing anti-Semitism claims simply as a tool to help out Netanyahu and help out Israel destroyed the moral credibility of the claim

of anti-Semitism and so people like Fuentes then recognize they have completely destroyed this they don't have the weapon anymore so now if I just talk about Israel I'm completely covered and can smuggle my genuine anti-Semitism

That's exactly what I wrote. Go ahead, Griffin. I was just going to say outside of the Israel conversation, I do think that Nick Fuentes' popularity is a product of conservative media having no Trump critiques. Like there is, and like Fuentes has critiqued Trump, not just on Israel, but a lot of stuff. And if you look, the majority of conservative media are kind of just ball lickers. Like there's no critiques on tariff, no critiques on anything. and Fuentes does have this critique. Unless it's from the center. So if you are a young conservative who's not happy with something that's not even not

is related, but not happy with something Trump related, well, Nick Fuentes is filling that vacuum. So I actually think his popularity isn't just this Israel stuff, but the fact that he's willing to critique Trump on other things, something I see very few conservatives doing. And the polls with young people are going down for Trump. He's like basically lost all of the gains. So I think that's actually true. I think it also explains Tucker and Candace's popularity right now. it's that like there is no criticism like Tucker flirts with it he hasn't gone full in criticizing Trump but yeah I think that's true Griffin well and on the Israel point though too like listen they if you are giving people a frame of like the Jews are bad and then you're like look at this genocide for two years look at our politicians like doing everything that they want look at the way that the ADL tries to control you and smear you look at the way all these donors back Israel like if It's not hard to make that case, especially when to Ryan, to your point, you have Netanyahu and everybody else who's a Zionist insisting that every Jew be associated with this genocidal state. So Israel is doing half the work for the anti-Semites by saying, yes, of course, you know, yes, Jews must be associated.

They are associated. They support what we're doing, like they are doing, they are creating half of the propaganda that is necessary for the Fuentes as a the world to be able to sell their view. And, you know, in a sense, it reminds me a little bit of like Trump's rise, you know, or you could think of like a Sarah Palin's rise. Like the things that Fox News would flirt with or, you know, other conservative influencers would flirt with the kind of dog whistles they'd flirt with. Trump would just come out and say. And of course, people who have been sort of propagandized to think things in that direction. If you just come out and say, yes, finally someone's actually saying it, not just doing the code words and the dog whistle. And so Fuentes is like the actually say it version of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson.

So, you know, since there is this like, you know, there's there's always been this strain, certainly on the right and going back a long time. But now with the, you know, with the horrors we see coming out of Israel and the insane way our politicians behave vis-a-vis Israel is just create a perfect perfect storm for the rise of this of this movement. And that's why I say like this is, this is where the Republican Party is. The ideology is, you know, incredibly baked in, especially among young conservatives. And, you know, that's why I think a lot of these characters, including the Heritage Foundation people apparently, or this dude at least, are afraid of the grippers and, you know, feel like they have to sort of like contort themselves to cater to them into their hateful,

like racist world view. Last time I will say on this is that I think that is the like these young men I've talked to some of them they grew up at the height of Me Too at the height of cancel culture they were going to schools where it was this constant drumbeat about how I'm here by the way so that that's I just hope that there are lessons going forward about these broad categorizations of for example anti-Semitism because it does allow people to come in and weaponize it and it's very seductive in those circumstances. Hey, Graham. All right.

How are you? Good. How are you? No. That's a better question. What's going on? What's been happening? It's been real, real mellow, really chill.

Yeah, things have been very, very relaxing for me in the past few weeks. I've been getting a lot of sleep. That's stressful at all. And I've been eating very healthy. So, yeah, that's the wild. Glad to hear that. Very maha of you. How much time you got, by the way?

Honestly, about, let me look at the schedule. I don't think I've got anything, I've got a while, yeah, I got essentially as long as we need, so. All right. Well, there's a lot of fun, there's a lot of fun, a lot of good, a lot of probing questions that we got that we can get to. But to start, does it, Crystal, or anybody want to start with anything from yourself before we get to the audience? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, let's go. I mean, Graham, I do just want to know, like, you've been a candidate for a while, but this is really your first time with this level of, like, heated national media scrutiny. And so what has that, what has that been like for you? What has that experience been like? I keep having to point this out to people. I've only been a candidate for like 10 weeks. Like this thing. That's kind of crazy, actually. We didn't launch until August 19th. And, and. And. And. And. And. The whole conversation around the launch started at the beginning of August.

So, I mean, like, you know, end of July, none of this was remotely on my plate. I was still legitimately just farming oysters in Sullivan and having a very normal existence. So, yeah, it's, I mean, it is, I feel like I inhabit two worlds where there's like the whole politics, pundit class world, which I don't actually spend a lot of time in at all. But, you know, obviously, I can interact with it because people send me stuff and I see things. But then there's, like, the actual world I inhabit, which is still Eastern Maine where I live. And that's like a totally different world. That's like, that remains to be very normal. And all the people that I know still know me.

And we all, like everybody's incredibly supportive. And then as we've been going around the state doing all the town hall stuff, that continues to be, like people turn out in droves. and they want to talk and they want to, they want to engage. And, yeah, I mean, it's very, it's just funny that it's like the, the national media sphere, which I've always had a lot of cynicism and, frankly, like, skepticism about the past, like, two weeks of my life. I'm just like, yeah, well, that's all made up. So, yeah. Yeah.

Well, I saw this, I saw this extraordinary report from Alex Seitzwald, who I used to work at with back. in the day at MSNBC, and he went from being a reporter from NBC to, I guess, starting a, like, local Maine news outlet, which I didn't realize. And, of course, because it's Maine, like, we all know a lot of the same people, unsurprised. I'm sure you do. Yeah, so I saw him doing a report on MSNBC, and he's like, guys, this is the biggest disconnect I've ever seen between on the ground and national media coverage. And I have tried to find anyone who has, like, turned on Graham over the Reddit story. over the tattoo and I have tried really hard and I can't find anyone and I'm curious if you have found I mean obviously you had a campaign personnel who departed who has turned on you so we've got that

one certainly publicly but I wonder if you know you have had people in person tell you know that they're upset or they're disappointed or they're switching support what have you experienced with that regard only one person has texted me saying that the and it was actually it's a very weird one too because essentially they completely misread a comment I made like eight years ago. And they've just, and they're like, I didn't get defensive about it. But like what they reference, I'm like, I didn't, I never even said what you thought I said. I mean, he clearly didn't even read anything, but that's okay. One.

And the rest has just been overwhelming amounts of support. I mean, like, my phone is a nightmare, but not because people are mad at me. My phone's a nightmare because I just, I have hundreds. of mismessages of people just saying, stick with it. This is insane. You know, we're, we're, I mean, it's all like, yeah, overwhelming support. And so, but no, there was, but there was one person who was like, I can't abide it. And then I read why and I was like, I never even said that, dude.

But that's, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I don't take things very personally. So I, you know, it's fine. I'm not going to get into it. What do you, what do you say to, uh, lefties who are worried about getting Fetterman? If I was me, looking at me, me. I would worry about the same thing. So I mean, I get it. We've been burned before. I think a couple things I would say is there were plenty of hints around Federman early on that maybe things weren't

quite what they seemed. I don't, despite what people are claiming are in my Reddit posts. I think my Reddit post show a fairly, like, what would you flag as those hints? I agree with you and I think we elevated some of them probably, but not enough to our discredit. What do you, what do you think are some of those hints? For Fetterman, I mean, Israel from the get go. You know, there was, and then also, like, there were, there was a lot of that kind of shying away even early on from, I would say more progressive social change, like trying to, and I don't shy away from that. I mean, it's not the core of what we're doing here. I think economic social justice or economic justice is the core of what needs to be done. But I'm also not willing to, frankly, back

off wins that we've had towards justice and equality in this country. And I'm very blunt about that. So, yeah, I, and then there's also the element that, and I don't like, Fetterman was trying to get into politics for a long time. I still don't really want to be doing this in some ways. Like, I'm doing this because I, frankly, I mean, because I have, I mean, I, I didn't go looking for it. I was approached with this idea.

It, it is a, there is a moment in history right now where I think my kind of politics, the politics I want to see in politics. is just ripe for developing, and that's why I'm doing it. But I'm like, I've not been, I mean, everybody likes pointing out. I have no background in politics, and I don't. I mean, I have a very political background, but not in electoral politics and campaigning because I, yeah, the kind of politics I look at, I view is it's very power focused and it's very organizing focused, and that's where I've put my energy for years at this point.

But that's also what we're doing with this campaign. And what do you say to it? Because I look back on Federman and this is a guy who came from a very good background and was kind of doing what people would say was like the stolen working class valor. Like walking around as though he was just, you know, it is, it is t-shirts and his car hearts and the like. What do you say to people who are now bringing up like, you're boarding school and all of that sort of thing? Like, what's your response? Because there's been some of that circuit.

Yeah, look, my grandfather was a architect who worked with Saronin and a few others. Who, he's not like famous, famous, but he designed windows on the world. He designed the lobby at the St. Louis Arch, a few of these things. It's pretty cool. But it's very funny, too, because growing up, like, I knew my grandfather was, like, an architect, but I didn't know what that meant. And there's also this kind of weird thing where, like, I mean, my parents, like, I grew up in Eastern Maine.

Like, I was, my mom has been, she likes, she doesn't have a college degree. She started a restaurant in the 1970s in Bar Harbor. And she's essentially been a serial entrepreneur in the food industry since. She still runs a restaurant to the day because she has no money and she can't retot it. I mean, she's in her 70s and she's still running a restaurant. Like, it's my, my dad was a small town lawyer. And I grew up, I would say, like solidly middle class, but also in eastern Maine.

So there's this weird mix of, I mean, I got my first W-2 job before I went to high school. You know, like, I worked all through high school. I washed dishes. I did landscaping. I worked on the Appalachian Mountain Club's trail crew. I bagged groceries and pushed carts at Haniford. I mean, I have always worked since, and I come from a family, I don't know, like, that's just kind of what you do. And I know that they're trying to frame me as some like Silver Spoon rich kid, but I'm sorry, like, it's anybody that, like, comes down here and asks around about how I grew up and my, like, everybody in here knows it's nonsense.

But I, my mom did want me to go to a good high school and the local school, which I wanted to go to, had lost its accreditation through the state in like 99. And so there were a number of families around here that sent their kids up to Bangor to go to John Abst, which at the time was just kind of like it was a private school, but it's weird. It's not, it wasn't like chote or something. And my mom did try to send me to Hotchkiss for half a semester in the beginning of my sophomore year. And I realized I was the only kid who'd ever worked and I hated everybody. And so I got myself thrown out because I found out that if you don't go to class and prep school, they just send you home. Maybe a formative experience for you, actually. I mean, without exaggeration.

Deeply. I had never engaged with people with like that kind of wealth and lifestyle. Like it was, I mean, my middle school had like, there were like 13 kids in my graduating class. You know, I grew up in a really tiny town. And Eastern Maine is full of a lot of poverty. So, yeah. Now, does Maine have, I know Vermont has this thing, but does Maine have the thing where if your high school loses its state accreditation, then the local town subsidizes the

private school tuition? And other words, did the town then subsidize the private school? Because the year after the school got its accreditation back. But at that point, my mom was just like, well, you're in, you're like, you're going to this high school because it's where you've started. And like at that point, I liked going there. I mean, it was a good, it was a good school. I got a great high school education. It was also cool. It's in Bangor. I drove an hour from Sullivan. And there were other kids that went to John Baps who drove an hour from all the other directions. So I met kids from all over the state of Maine.

And it was an interesting mix because you would like kids from like wealthy families, you know, car dealerships, that kind of thing. And then there were a lot of kids who just went there because it was a good school and they got in and they, you know, the kids that lived in mobile home parks. But it was a very main, wealth in Maine is interesting. I think it actually gives us a different. It's actually why I think our politics is kind of the way it can be because there's this weird mix of ultra rich and ultra poor, but everybody still inhabits the same space and people know each other. It's very, it's weird. It's weird.

Yeah. I mean, that is something I wondered about because, I mean, Maine is a very rural state predominantly. And it's a very white state. And yet it's still, you know, those are demographics that have fled the Democratic Party in most of the country. Probably like Maine and Vermont are some of the only exceptions to that. And yet, obviously, Democrats can and do still win in the state of Maine. So I was curious about what has kind of kept that. that politics together.

I think part of it is the fact that manors are, even a lot of conservative manors, still kind of have a distrust of like the system and the ultra wealthy. There is the residual kind of leftovers of what the Democratic Party used to be. And in my opinion should be again. There is, I mean, but there's also, I would say,

like a social progressivism, Even amongst, I mean, a lot of conservatives I know are also pro-gay marriage and, you know, they don't care about, like, their conservatism is, it's around guns, it's around weirdly at this point, like this kind of Trump-style anti-establishment element, which I actually think is why, like, a working class-oriented message works really well. I mean, I mean, I know guys who will literally say things like, can't stand Bernie Sanders. communist, but I still love him. He still cares. And you're like, okay. These are guys like love Donald Trump. So there's still a fair amount of that up here. And then there's also just the fact that Southern Maine at this point is kind of a more like standard, like liberal hub. And there's a lot of voters down there. So. Well, I'm sorry. I was just like a quick follow up. Go ahead. Go ahead. Um, just on like the

the culture question, Crystal's question about how to keep this together. Like I saw your Instagram posts about not. And this is a, as the populace left kind of reckons with what's happened over the last 10 years, the idea of like what to do on trans issues and immigration issues, I saw you posted on Instagram that you have no intention of throwing trans kids under the bus or, you know, immigrants under the bus, that sort of thing. But how do you talk to people who disagree with you complete, like Janet Mills is getting sued by the Trump administration over the idea of whether trans athletes should be able to compete in women's sports. And that matters a lot to a lot of like Trump curious Mainers whose trust you need to win over. Same thing with like Bernie came out

and said Trump did secure the border when he was on Tim Dillon's show. So how are you navigating those conversations? Because that can't be. It's not easy. But also I mean, Graham, let me add a audience question to that because there's one that really lines up with this. I'm not going to do the guy's handle because it's inappropriate for a family show. But he says where they say, love your left populist economics but can't stand your dogged refusal to moderate on unpopular culture war issues. How is protecting women's sports, shelters, and prisons from opportunistic males, quote, throwing trans people under the bus, unquote. How is ensuring we have a functioning border and limiting illegal immigration, quote, throwing immigrants under the

bus, question mark. And no, I do not support Trump's policy either. So to kind of dovetails with what Emily was asking. On the immigration front, we need to have a total overhaul of immigration policy in this country. We, the, the foundations of it were written in the 70s and we only did some overhauls in the 90s, which frankly weren't even that intense.

We are living with an immigration structure that was built for a world that we no longer inhabit. And we're going to continue running, like, and this is why, you know, people are like, oh, Obama did this and Biden did this, and Trump did this, and like, and when you look at it in the aggregate, there aren't that big of changes because the law never changed. I think that we do need to have a legal pathway to citizenship for people who have been here for ages. I'm sorry, rounding them up and throwing them out is not

going to happen. It's not, and also it's, as we are seeing right now, the doing of it is pretty unconscionable. But that doesn't mean that we don't have a border. And that doesn't mean we don't have like an effective system. We need to have a system that is, I would say, reflective of the needs of our time and the realities that we live in. And it is, it's going to require more judges. It's going to require more courts. It's going to require more energy and time to adjudicate, whether it's asylum cases, whether it's people with illegal applications. But we've never been able to do that because there's been no coherent overhaul of the underlying policies. And what I mean by not throwing immigrants under the bus, I'm not saying

that we don't have to overhaul our immigration system. We absolutely do. I don't think the answer there is armed masked men kidnapping people off of work sites. And I'm going to say that I think that's a good idea. I'm never going to, like I refuse. I mean, that's just authoritarianism. That's garbage. And it's also, in my opinion, unconstitutional. So there are, yeah, we shouldn't be doing that. On the issue around, like, trans people, I do not believe.

And I think this is true for a lot of Mainers as well, because we have a real libertarian streak up here, including us lefties. It is not the role of the federal government to come down and tell people, tell communities, tell school boards, is tell municipalities how to handle what are frankly often very complicated and nuanced discussions. We need to set standards when it comes to equality and decency and treating everybody like that. But I do not think it's the role of the United States Senate to go down

into a municipality or go to a local school board and tell them how they're supposed to figure out what can frankly be deeply complicated discussions, that is not the role of the federal government. And I think that there are a lot of people who don't think that's the role of the federal government. I also think, and I'll just be very upfront, that this continues to get pushed and pushed and pushed as this huge discussion so we don't talk about universal health care. So we don't talk about the fact that we need to remove the cap on Social Security or that we need to raise taxes on, frankly, pharmaceutical companies and big agricultural corporations that have just been building an apparatus that screws working people constantly for their own benefit.

We don't talk about that stuff because we spend all this time talking about things that I think are nuanced discussions that should be left up to municipalities. Again, it doesn't mean that we – that that doesn't mean the federal government comes down. in says, hey, municipalities can just do whatever they want and we can treat people unequally. We need to set basic constitutional standards. But these are complicated discussions, and I don't think it's the role of the U.S. Senate to have them. We've got some, we got a whole bunch on, you know, your service and then also your time with the Blackwater offshoot, what Constellus, I think it was called.

One of them, so from Halal Flo, says, like, how does someone with your worldview end up working for Blackwater? I think a lot of people on the left would find that helpful to hear. They're worried you might be another Federman. Man, Federman is haunting. There's a lot of trauma. There's a lot of trauma there. He says, but I don't think you are. There were already signs of who Fedman was when he was running and caving to DMFI, pro-Israel lobby.

Yeah. Not to mention that whole incident where he, like, tried to be. murder a random black guy in his neighborhood that yeah not mentioned enough there was that as well maybe not mentioned it more um he said you touched on this a bit during your last appearance on the show when you talked about your u.s military service but we didn't go into much into this the state department security contractor so who did you work for what and why and what and and for people who are skeptical of american empire why should that not be disqualified so i never worked for blackwater this I've, like, I see this everywhere, and I'm always like, oh, for God's sake.

The company that we all know is Blackwater, the one that Jeremy Scahill wrote about back in the late 2000s, that, that company, Eric Prince's little kind of warlord fantasy, that company essentially went away after 2012, and the, it was sold. I forget who bought it. There were several iterations afterwards, similar, like, same facility down in North Carolina. And this is something that I think gets lost in all of this. The State Department has contracts for high threat security. They don't do it in-house. And the contracts were written with very specific requirements about what kind of training people have to receive, what kind of background they have to have. It's all around combat backgrounds, combat arms, special operations, infantry,

that kind of thing. And so they've maintained those contracts. There were only a few companies for a long time who could meet any of those requirements, Triple Canopy, Blackwater back in the day, and then the Academy afterwards, Z, SOC, SMG. There were a number of these outfits and they because they were the ones who had the training facilities they knew how to meet the contract requirements there's a story in all of this that i think often gets lost which is that after blackwater folded hedge fund started buying all of it up and because they saw they essentially saw like if you if you can have all the companies then you can set your price you're the only ones that have the ability to meet the contract requirements

by the time I got around to doing this, which is 2018. So I left the Army in 2012. I frankly didn't know what to do with my life for the next six years. And in 2017, I was back in Maine, utterly lost, had left college, didn't know what I was doing. But I was fully qualified to go work for the State Department in Afghanistan. And I had a lot of friends who were on that contract. And so essentially a friend of mine hit me up on Facebook is like, hey, dude, what are you doing? I'm like, honestly, man, I have no idea.

I'm lost. I can't figure out where I fit in this whole thing. And he was like, I mean, come on over and get on the Ambo's detail. And, you know, the money's okay. We don't do, like we did enough. I mean, this is by 2018. Yeah, we talked about what you actually did because people think of it as like you went out there and you're shooting kids. For the record, all of that used to happen.

back in the late 2000s like all of like all the horror stories from that shit are true sorry, all that's it's it is there but there's also a reason why the hammer came down because that stuff happened by the time I get there

essentially it's this like it's a corporate money grab and like they use guys like me with these backgrounds to meet the contract requirements so they could pay us bare minimum and walk away with the balance, which is frankly what everything in Afghanistan was by 2018. The whole thing seemed to exist purely to move taxpayer money into the pockets of

defense contractors. I was a driver on the ambassador's advanced security team. So I would go to a venue before the AMBO would go, and I drove the vehicle and guys in the team would make sure that everything was set up, and he'd be able to walk in the door and meet the people. It was all. In 2018, we were barely leaving the green zone. There were, we, we didn't, I mean, look, I was there for six months. I mean, I probably went on like 12 or 13 moves. All I did was lip weights and play video games. And, and, and, and I got huge. And I played a lot of far cry. Far cry. Okay. Nice. Which one? The Montana one, the one that was all, yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was deeply boring, and it was, which was, I mean, for me at that point, it was good because I was like, I wasn't, I was overlooking for excitement. I was just trying to figure out what, it was the only skill I had. And so I, but, you know, six months, I, I, actually, honestly, three months into it, I was done. I was like, this is such a waste. And then there was this other element where there I am at the embassy, like, watching

the embassy staff and watching. the ambassador and the generals and the NATO staff and the UN staff and no new ideas. I hadn't been in Afghanistan in seven years. And there I am seven years later at like with access to the whole, all the brain trust, nothing had changed. Same nonsense. Wow. And I was like, I'm this one, we are going to lose this war. And when it collapses, it's going to be a mess. Now, I don't want to say I was right, but, you know, I didn't want to be there when that happened. But two, I was like, there's no purpose to this. Nobody has any idea.

Like, the embassy is constantly under construction because there's always some new security threat that we have to pay somebody. Some contractor comes in and has, like, the whole thing was just a scam. It's just one huge scam, paid for by tax dollar money, and I wanted no part in it. So I quit. I was only there for six months. I quit and I moved back to my hometown. And I became an oyster farmer. And I'll be honest, until this stuff happened, I had no intent on ever looking back because I was just, I was done. You said someone approached you about running. Who was it? Who was it that approached you and convinced you? So the past couple of years, I've done a lot of community organizing. I, after I left Afghanistan, I got real disillusioned and thought there was no value in any. anything. And that made me essentially sink all of my time and energy into living in a small town, which ironically then rebuilt. You've mentioned the community organizing. Can you be

more specifically? What did you do? So I was an organizer with the local group called Acadia Action. And we focused on, I would say, like, building basic organizational capacity in the county I live in. Getting people connected, getting people engaged with mutual aid projects, getting people engaged with identifying local races and finding candidates that people could run, but locally, all like local school board stuff, select board, that kind of thing. And really, honestly, for me, I read no shortcuts by Jane McAlevy a few years ago and then took organizing for power a couple times, got really into this idea of on-the-ground power building. And I just didn't see it in my, I didn't see an existing construction.

It's a labor training session, right? Yeah, it's a labor organizing training. But I just took that into my community because, you know, where I live, labor organizing is fairly hard because, you know, everybody has like seven jobs. The, it was doing that that I got connected with a lot more people around the state in labor and in like kind of statewide organizing around economic justice issues. And there was a, I mean, unbeknownst to me, there was a, there was a move to try to find a candidate to run, who came from like a working background, who was a normal person living a

normal life, to run on kind of an economic populism. And Maine is tiny and everybody knows each other. At some point, somebody's like, you should go talk to Graham and Sullivan. And so they did. And my wife and I initially told them to get out of our house because, I mean, I mean, like, I cannot, like, the whole concept is insane to us. I mean, we've, we've, we, my wife and I have built a very idyllic, but very small and simple life. We do not make a lot of money. We weren't trying to. We run a very small oyster farm that is focused on, frankly, like a high quality product.

We do a lot of tours. I like the eco-tourism side because I think bivalve aquaculture is one of the most fascinating things I've ever been involved in. And I want to tell everybody about it. And when I go to the U.S. Senate, everyone's going to have to hear about muscles and oysters for the rest of time. You can't wait for that. But we, when this idea came to us, the thing that we realized is that as people who've dedicated a lot of time past a couple years to organizing in our community, that this is an organizing opportunity. that this is not about just winning a Senate seat. This is about actually injecting,

I would say like the mechanics of on the ground power building around working class issues that I have been waiting for and wishing to God existed my entire life, essentially. And we didn't go looking for it. It literally showed up at her doorstep, but we recognize that if we don't take this we had this moment of like do we believe in what we believe

and to Crystal's question who was that that showed up the door? It was a combination of folks some folks I knew from labor people affiliated with the AFL and then a there was some input from people who came who had worked on Dan Osborne's campaign

who a whole kind of project try to do something similar So I heard from people on Dan Osborne's campaign who flagged your campaign for me. So that actually tracks. Graham, I share your sense that the moment is right for your politics, which of course, very much similar to my politics. But, and like obviously you had that same inkling. What is, what do you think has struck a nerve or hit a chord in Maine? because I think it's pretty undeniable at this point.

I mean, here you are 10 weeks into a race. You're, according to a lot of polls up on the sitting governor of Maine, certainly competitive with the sitting governor of Maine. We all watch your town hall after your scandal broke. There's 700 people. There's overflow capacity. It's literally in a town of just over 2,000 people, like totally insane. So there's clearly something happening here to what do you attribute that energy?

the material conditions for regular people are getting worse. Like here in Maine, our hospital system is legitimately collapsing. It's not academic. It's not theoretical like it's going to happen a year from now. Hospitals are closing now. People cannot get access now. Elderly people are dying in their homes in undignified horrific ways alone right now because there is no support for them. That's happening. It's happening and people continue to be told by the kind of,

I would say, the establishment political system that things are still actually okay all in all, that we don't need to try anything new. That really what we need to do is kind of double down on sort of more corporate establishment Democrats, but not even that. I mean, just kind of the whole thing is, like, everybody sees what's happening. Everybody can, like, witness. Everybody's watching videos of massed federal agents,

kidnapping people. They're also watching their neighbor, like, die alone in their house. They're watching their ability to have access to health care happen. They're watching the Trump administration talk about starting a new war with Venezuela. They're watching the establishment Democrats continue to, like, not do anything about anything. And the reason I think this is all happening right now is I just came along and told everybody that what they were seeing was happening because it's what I'm saying. And people hate getting lied to. They hate getting told that, like, there's a different reality happening than the one that they are witnessing.

It's like Gaza. You know, you got the Democratic Party telling people for years now, like, no, no, this is. fine. And everybody's like, I'm watching videos of children starving to death and getting ripped apart by American bombs. Don't tell me this is fine. I think you can just extrapolate that out to the larger system. And that's where the energy is. People are angry. And they are sick and tired of this. And there is an irony for me, like, I've been saying this stuff for like the past couple years. And like, you know, I could say this in a bar and somebody would be like, yeah, man, sounds wild. But then I do it on a Senate campaign. And people are just like, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, this reflects exactly what I'm seeing. And I think that, yeah, I think just the material reality that we are living in is what is driving all of this. Yeah. We have a question here from, oh, sorry, go ahead, Crystal. I was just going to real quick, we have seen some public polling. Do you have any, you know, what are your internal polls or do you have internal polls at this point? I'm going to be entirely frank. The last two weeks, I have barely slept. I am like. You're very coherent for that.

We are, yeah, we are in the, we are in the midst of doing all of that. We also, you're fielding a poll. We are in the midst of fielding a poll. We also have, again, this is something I want to kind of reiterate. I know from the outside, this whole thing. looks like big and real. I just want to, we are 10 weeks in, and I've never done this before. So we essentially threw everything at the wall for eight weeks. We built an immense amount of momentum. We built a substantial war chest. We kind of flesh things out. You know,

last two weeks, we essentially have made contact with our opposition. We had our first kind of stress test. There were people on the campaign that frankly weren't kind of up to the task, and they are now gone. The bulk of the campaign is very much still here. And I think in many ways, this is kind of galvanized everybody. So we were planning November is when I sink my oyster farm. I have to go. Actually, when we get off the phone, I'm going back to go out on the boat. So we were planning for November to be kind of a slowdown period where we take all the connections and the resources and the information, the visibility, and now we coalesce it into an actual, like structural campaign based around movement building based around organizational capacity.

That's the project that we are engaged in right now. So it's a, yeah, I want to reiterate because a lot of people are like, where's your policy team? I'm like, dude, I'm driving all over Maine and I haven't had five minutes to myself and we're only eight weeks in. Go ask one of the other candidates in this race who's been in it since April where his is. He should have a better excuse. go ahead Griffin he's too busy running scam packs that takes a lot of time crystal um so i want we want to hit you we've got a lot of other audience questions so we're going to do some like rapid fire ones really quick with you graham but this one actually comes from me first i wanted your take on pete hegseth uh his renaming of the department department of war he routinely calls the soldiers war fighters is kind of like his coin term and he's made a lot of talk about women and trans people in the military in their place uh What do you make about that?

Pete Heggzeth is a deeply insecure man who had a highly unimpressive military career and wants everybody to think that he was some kind of god of war, which he most certainly is not. He was an infantry officer who doesn't even have a Ranger tab. So, pardon me, well, I don't think the man deserves an ounce of respect. Now, all of this is is just masculine insecurity. And it's, and he never should have been confirmed in that role. All right. So we've got a few others here.

Now, this one is a Saugger-related question. Sager referred to you as a Brooklyn leftist. And a Hickland. Interesting. And a Hickland. He's shifted from Hick-Lifted now, Brooklyn leftist. Yeah, that's the tag now. This is from K to M.

I'm sure this will be asked about how does Graham respond to Sager's characterization of him as being no different than a Brooklyn leftist? Well, I've never lived in Brooklyn. Strong start. And like, and my best. politics really developed more coherently since I moved back to small town main. So if, I mean, I guess, yeah, I don't know. Like, it seems like an insane thing to call me, but. Are you still pro-gun, Graham?

I was going to ask, because we have this question from Hunter, who says Hunter Shade says Mainer here. My question for Graham is about a Second Amendment support. Would you vote along party lines on issues of gun controllers? Is this something you feel strongly enough about to buck the party trend? and what is your position generally on civilian gun ownership? Also, could you give a little background your side to the, quote, militia training accusations I've seen in the news?

I'm assuming that's the socialist rifle association picture that's been going around. What do you make me in that group? Emily, the last paragraph's good, too, actually, of that one. Do you have that? Yeah, it says I've lived in Maine my whole life and know the gun culture is stronger than most New England states, but do you think your position on firearm ownership will help or hinder your endeavors in the state given most of the population lives in York and Cumberland counties,

which do not have the same gun culture as, say, Arustook County? Arrustick, it's okay. This is our Brooklyn left list. I'm literally in Brooklyn right now, okay? And I don't claim you. I don't claim you here, okay? You're different than me. Firearms have been a entrenched part of my life since I was a kid.

I grew up in Romaine. I grew up hunting. I grew up shooting. I learned how to shoot at 4-H. I joined Marine Corps. I joined the infantry. Yeah, I mean, I, obviously I, and then after that, I've been a firearms instructor. I still am a firearms instructor.

And I'm a competitive, I do competitive pistol shooting. It's my hobby. Firearms remain to be a fairly, I would say, intrinsic part of my life. And that's how it is for a lot of people in rural Maine. I come from a firearms-owning tradition that is based around competency and responsibility and safety. I get a chuckle out of the whole me training paramilitaries thing. In 2020, I don't know if anybody remembers, but in 2020, COVID happened. And a whole bunch of people bought a bunch of guns, people who had never owned gun before.

All these like left-wingers, progressives, Democrats, everybody's like the sky. the world is falling apart. As someone who has spent a long time working with firearms professionally, I saw a bunch of people who frankly, I was like, you should not own a gun. And if you're going to own a gun, you need to understand how to own a gun. And so I taught, and like there are a lot of people, I would say, on the left or progressive spaces, who see gun culture as really scary. like they don't want to go to gun shops

they don't want to hang out with people that usually teach firearms and so I taught essentially an introduction to firearms course for a bunch of first time gun owners some of which had come through the SRA which is I mean it's also funny

the SRA was like an online meme that turned meetups people are like it's like the left wing NRA I'm like I mean okay Not in my experience. It was mostly just a bunch of people posting at Discord servers, but like, whatever. I would do that again.

I mean, I, if people, I'm a firm, guns are tools and they're incredibly dangerous. And they are not to be viewed as toys. They are not to be viewed as extensions of like your masculinity. They're not going to, they're not going to make you inherently safe. In fact, having them makes you far less safe. having a gun in your house increases the likelihood of gun violence in your house essentially exponentially because if it wasn't there it wouldn't happen. So I'm a firm believer that if people in a country that is awash in guns like ours, if you are going to be around firearms in any way,

you need to get competent professional training in how to use them. And that was what I was trying to do. And I will not walk that back. I think teaching people how to safely handle firearms, uh, is a, is a good thing. That's awesome. Uh, speaking of discord and old post, uh, this is from Sarota 554 for Graham, one of the posts that came out from, uh, the, uh, referred to yourself as a communist. My question as a communist myself is, do you still consider yourself a communist? And if not, why not? Uh, no, and I'll be honest, I've never considered myself a communist. Arguing with people on the internet and calling oneself a communist to piss them off is something

I used to do. Copy that. I mean, there isn't of court, I'm advocating for universal health care and like the ability of working people to organize and build unions. Of course somebody's going to call me a communist.

So I used to just make jokes about this stuff long before. I mean, if you read the threads, by the way, it's fairly obvious. I'm being a sarcastic dude, but whatever. Graham, I don't want you to read my old post I've deleted, so we'll leave it there on that one. This one comes from Farras, Abu Zay, Graham, you said you wouldn't support Chuck Schumer

for a Democrat leader of the Senate. Is there anyone you would endorse? More broadly, what current senators do you admire, respect, or see yourself working closely with should you be elected? Honestly, I've thought about this. I don't know who I would want to push for leadership, because it's going to depend on kind of the general feeling. I will say, I have an immense amount of respect for Chris Van Hollen.

I think he understands his role in the Senate in ways that I look up to, which is that you have structural power, but you also have secondary power. I think Bernie understands this, too, and Elizabeth Warren as well. Like, there is a secondary power. There is the power that comes from you being visible as a senator. Like, when Chris Van Hollen went down to El Salvador to interview Kilmara-Briga Garcia, he got to do that because he's a U.S. Senator. If he was anybody else, he would not have been able to do that and bring visibility on to that. And I think he understands his role in the Senate in a way that I would like to see more senators understand it. Not necessarily, like, there's a, you have to bring almost an element of activism to it as well if you're going to utilize the role in all of its power.

And so I think that that's, so I have an immense amount of respect for him. much amount of respect for for uh senator warren um for i mean senator martin heinrich has been a real real cheerleader for me and throughout this whole thing incredibly supportive um there is a yeah i mean i i could just keep going down the list ed markey uh um peter welch like there's a but you got some guys there's some guys there um yeah um what it's a van hollie One's been important on Gaza also using that visibility as well. Yeah, he's earned my respect as well. He could go do what he did.

If he was not a U.S. senator, nobody would have cared if he went and walked the line. But, you know, he's a senator. So they have to. Okay. Our last and most important question from the AMA, this is from sciatica man 80A. Was Ryan Grimm, oh, yeah. Was Ryan Grimm a good bartender tipper? okay oh you actually remember serving Ryan this is great yeah we have we have incredible we have

we have we've connected over our mutual tune-in time so tune is the best it's a great bar well Ryan and I are also uh we're we're Chesapeake Bay people so we have some connection to the the mollusk the pro-mullis community you guys would have me someday I want to come back on and just talk about aquaculture but that's a whole one we would love that yes sorry I'm here on an oyster bar at his wedding, and the oysterman sniped at me one time. And it's soured me on oyster. Oh, no. Well, hopefully.

Well, I will say this. Maybe next year when the weather turns, you should come up. I'll take you out on the oyster farm. And we can rebuild some trust with the bivalve mollers community. So that's awesome. That would be the best breaking points ever. Awesome. We'll all go.

No, Maryland has done a great job funding aquaculture to clean up the Chesapeed Bay, but could use federal health for sure. I mean, I'm a firm believer, frankly, that using aquaculture projects as, as environmental rehab projects is highly underutilized. There's a lot of potential there. But we also, frankly, we don't have like a big lobbying wing, so we don't get anything. Now, you were on David Soroda's podcast last night. People should go and watch that one.

That was, I think it was instructive. And you were asked this, but I wanted to ask again for our audience as well, because this is something that people are very curious about. One of the more disturbing Reddit posts that people have circulated talks about, it's a question, if you could fight in previous wars, you know, what would you do? And you talk about kind of the joy, almost, of combat. And I think, so can you talk about, like, how you got into a mind,

where you believe to that and whether you still share that mindset, whether you're in touch with it and, you know, how that relates to your current posture towards, you know, American imperialism and wars in general, because we're talking about, you know, people getting killed. I viewed myself for a long time as a professional soldier. It was, it was my identity. I was very, I was a very competent soldier. I saw a fairly significant amount of combat. I also, and I mean, this is a weird, I'm, I still work on, I'm going to work on this till I die, I think.

I still have these, I have a very complicated relationship with my time in combat, because I, I think it was all for nothing. I think the horror and the violence that I took part in was completely pointless. And yet I still have this element of me that when I was engaged, in it. Like, I found infantry combat very exhilarating. I found infantry combat. I found my proficiency in being an effective soldier in combat as something that I viewed. I was very proud of it. And I, in some ways, enjoyed it. But I want to make it clear. People, I think, I never enjoyed, I never enjoyed or relished in killing, ever.

it's it but it was more the more like the professional challenge of other people are trying to kill you and then you have to make decisions and be effective in your weapon systems be effective in your leadership in order to survive and then like win and like and that was how I always viewed it and I the thing that I connect with now is that when I look back through history, I see a lot of people who, like me, engaged in wars of imperialism, wars of colonialism, who that experience, in many ways, shapes, and forms turned them into dedicated opponents to it. One of the reasons I am in such opposition to this stuff now, I know how easy it is as a, like, young person, who wants to go do this kind of thing, for whatever reason, how easy it is to be taken in by it.

I mean, and that's why we shouldn't do it. Because there will always be young men and women who in their youth are going to be taken into being part of something bigger, finding meaning in struggle and suffering and all that stuff. And if that's going to happen, that should never be taken advantage of by a political apparatus. which is exactly what happened. It's what happened to me.

And I struggle with it. I'm going to struggle with this until the day I die. I don't think there's an answer in here because I will always find some connection and some, I don't know, feelings of self-worth in, like, how good of a soldier I was. But I also think it was all pointless. And it's, yeah,

And I'm doing better with it now. I mean, for a number of years there, I mean, it sent me into a dark place because I couldn't square the two. And I still can't square them, but I think, frankly, developing a more, like, structural critique has allowed me some, like, I'm like, oh, yeah, right. I did this for the service of something I was not in charge of. And that kind of, I'm not trying to get myself off the hook. It's just that there is a way of describing it where I don't have to feel, like, I don't, I no longer require it to have meant. anything. It doesn't mean, like, it no longer has to have value to me. I think it was valueless, and I'm okay with that. One of the generals who participated in a lot of those

small wars that you mentioned was Smithley Butler. One of my personal heroes, unsurprisingly. Yeah, so have you read Wars of Rackett? What was your reaction to it? Spendley Butler's been a hero of mine for a long time. And, you know, his support for the bonus army, his time his, obviously his time ratting out the business plot. I mean, I'm a big, a big Smetley Butler fan. But Smetley Butler

got there because of his combat record. You know, it's, it's, uh, I think it is, I don't want to that's interesting. Yeah. Right. Smith, yeah, he participated in some horrifying war crimes. Yeah, everybody should go read Thanks to the

capitalism by Jonathan Katz. Great book. Ryan has a good podcast on Smedley Butler back from It was with, actually, the author of Gangsters of Capitalism. Great book. Yeah, that's right. All right, well, on that note, I think we're all set. Graham, thank you for giving us so much of your time today, being open to answering all of our questions, and we'll continue to follow your race. Yeah, happy Halloween, and, you know, we'll just let you get back to your very quiet, idyllic.

Actually, today and tomorrow I get to go out on my boat. So things get pretty nice for a bit. Nice. Awesome. That's awesome. All right, Graham. Great connecting with you. Thank you so much for answering all our questions.

Thank you. Seriously. I appreciate it. All right. All right, folks. That's that. Any reactions before we split? I know, Crystal, you got to run.

Almost wish we had more time. Because there's so, like, American politics. pushes the conversation constantly away from material conditions. And I hate when we even participate in it. But people really want to know, and I want to know, what his response is on a lot of these personal questions. But we spend so much time talking about the person. We don't get enough time to talk about the policy.

And I guess we understand where he is on the policy spectrum. So maybe that's less important to suss out. But I don't, yeah, that's just a general observation about the state of. And I often think it's helpful to have like good, decent personal conversations as your frame of reference for what's decisions somebody will make in a policy sense going forward because a lot of times people will say, well, if that bill came to my desk, I'd do this, this and that. And then they have a horde of lobbyists descending on them.

And turns out they're John Fetterman. So, yeah, I think sometimes it's when you're not having like a gotcha back and forth, you actually get a good sense of what the person will be like in Congress, the Senate. Yeah, I agree with that. I'm just very struck by, you know, the similarities I see between him, between Richard O'Jada, between Anthony Aguilar, you know. I mean, I think about Anthony, like, had just retired, and then he's like, gets similar thing. Like, somebody hits him up on Facebook, like, hey, you want to go, like, give out food in Gaza? And, you know, he's at the time, he's just settling back into civilian life. And it's like, okay, this is pretty good paycheck and seems like I'd be doing some good and just goes over.

And that's how you end up as this person who clearly is a very moral and courageous, like, both physically and like ideologically courageous person, going and working for this like monstrosity of an organization in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. So, you know, I think if you've if you've known people who have not had a debt. jobs like a JD Vance or, you know, a P. Buttigieg or whatever, but who were in the shit, right, who were doing the ugliest parts of war who were used as pawns in these, you know, horrifying chess games that our country has been playing around the world with catastrophic outcomes. I think you're going to, his story is going to actually make a lot of sense to you because there are a lot of parallels with the guys that I've known who have been in similar situations. I don't think Dems know what they have on their hands with Dan Osborne. Graham Platner. I don't think Republicans know what Dems have on their hands with Dan Osborne and Graham Platner. And I know Dan's running as an independent, but you just talk to Graham and you realize he has this fluency. Like when Griffin asked him about people getting worried about being fetterment, he answered that without asking, what do you mean fetterment, which just about any other senatorial candidate would be like, I'd explain. And if you explain it, they might get it. But he just has this

fluency and speaks like a regular person. And that's what you, in this media environment, desperately need. And on top of that, he has this crazy background that he's perfectly open and honest about. He's just sort of like, sorry, but like the perfect podcast era candidate. What did you think of his background to explain? You know what I mean? And he's open about it. So like all of the background that the consultants think is going to destroy him ends up being something that it's an opportunity for him to have normal conversations about and look like a dimensional human being. And I don't think people understand indeed. DC, that actually is effective now in a way that it's not that he's going to have problems if he goes up against Susan Collins.

Of course, some of that stuff will be a problem. But it also gives him this opportunity to sit down and have long-form conversations that selling up in Maine is going to watch. And it's like, oh, actually, this guy isn't the scary person, the caricature. All right, guys, I'm going to, sorry, I'm going to jump. Yeah. Yeah, but I'll see, I'll see y'all later. Bye, Crystal. Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween. Hey, Pop. I had one more question for Gila Griffin or Emily. like one of the fascinating under-discussed or almost undiscussed elements of the race is this there's this dynamic where people say well maybe Graham is actually too far left you know for a swing state like Maine it that does not factor in that Janet Mills launched her campaign on and is running her campaign on the least popular issue that Democrats currently have which is you know trans athletes in sports her she launched her campaign on uh what was her slogan

i'll see you in court like the fact that she fought trump over trans question the trans athlete question so on the one hand you have people saying graham's too far left but if if just objectively speaking if the thing you're concerned about is that somebody has an out of the kind of uh you know way out their position yeah on an 80-20 issue yep like mills is actually ironically, even though she's centrist coded and centrist on everything else and certainly a corporate centrist, on the thing that's 80-20, she's out, she's out there. Well, and what, so what, so the question that is, like, what did you think of Graham's response on that from the right? Like, how will the right, like, hear what he said about both immigration

and a trans sports question? Yeah, I mean, I think if he's up against Susan Collins, that'll be interesting. Against Janet Mills, I mean, this is, for him. it gives them a great, like when Bernie explains that often these identity issues are used as a shield by corporate elites, like Janet Mills, so that they don't have to talk. Janet Mills is like the perfect example of that. What, like, you're talking ad nauseum about this particular issue. Even though 80-20 in Maine, people are like, just stop. And, you know, just like, stop. And yet she's talking and taking the unpopular position. because she is still stuck in 2020 when she believes that signaling on the cultural issues is actually how you buy the goodwill

and earn the goodwill of Democratic primary voters. And this is not the case anymore when you're in a head-to-head with somebody who has the Bernie line. So I obviously completely disagree with what Graham said because I think the Obama administration nationalized the issue by using the education department to have dear colleague letters

that threatens federal school funding if you don't let people compete. in opposite-sex sports, going opposite-sex bathrooms and locker rooms and the like. So as long as we have Title IX on the books, there's no real, like, local solution to this question to, like, civil rights if a woman should have to be in a women's shelter with a man. Like, that is a serious question, and it is a material question. And that's where I disagree often with Bernie. And I wonder if privately he would disagree with it, too.

That's a kitchen table issue that is a, it's not, it's not health care, although it has health care implications. but when people are putting their heads on the pillow at night, that is something that, like, genuinely they care about if their kids and their schools are tied up in this and all of that. So I think it could, like, I would expect to see that SRA picture everywhere if he's up against Susan Collins just because it's so... I really appreciate what he said about that.

Like, you should be. When people who shouldn't have firearms are trying to arm up and, like, LARP and militias, I think that's awesome. Like, he is the type of person who should be training them up. Like, it's awesome for him to go in there and say, I'm going to teach you how to do this, right? But that picture is going to be everywhere. That will definitely dog him.

I don't know what you guys think. And Ryan, when you say it's an 80-20 issue, that sounds like, oh, we need to talk about this then. We need to reverse course. But it's also, it's not like a top five issue for people. Is it even a top 10 issue for people in Maine? Well, I think it's an issue of trust. But let's say, whenever. Well, if someone, yeah, exactly.

But like, if someone were to rank, like, their Maine's top five issue. Is that even in the top five? And then I guess my other question is like, are we basically just trying to say like, don't worry, we're not woke now. You're never going to like not be woke if you're like in the Democratic Party. Like so I think like you're kind of just walking into a terrain where you're never going to be as, you know, based or on the trans issue as the Republicans. So you're always going to kind of lose the issue.

So at that point, if it's not a top five issue, I don't think it's an all. Like, I think, you know, this is a new issue. And we live in a world set up for a binary, and now we have a spectrum and a non-binary. And so how do we integrate those two things is not a settled question yet. But it's also not a question that, A, I believe, like a Democrat candidate will beat a Republican on. So, like, why fight in that territory when it's not a top five issue for Mainers? Oh, because also it's important to get right. It's a top five issue?

No, no, no, I think here's what it is. It's a litmus test issue for people in terms of whether they trust a candidate when it comes up, right? So it's not like people are going to the polls. I think some people do go to the polls, and it's not everyone, but maybe it's even like 10% of people are like, I'm voting on the fact that Janet Mills sent our school district spiraling into chaos because everyone was yelling at each other over this policy. And I don't think it's right, blah, blah. But I think if people see this as a common sense question, should a, which most people do, to Ryan's 80-20 point, should a, you know, 18-year-old boy be competing in this track, which has been a huge issue in New England, competing in this track race with this girl who's going to lose out in scholarships, potentially, whatever. And they see someone say something on either side. It just loses trust in that person. I'm not saying it's what they vote on, but I do think because it's such a big topic of conversation, it's seen as a litmus test for whether you're trustworthy and common sense. I understand that. I understand that.

And my argument is I don't think it loses. I don't think it's like a deal breaker trust issue. Like, okay, like, yeah, maybe I disagree with them on the trans stuff, but I agree with them on housing. I agree with them on all the other things he wants to do for Maine. Like, it doesn't seem like a deal breaker. And in fact, it seems like the more you play into that issue that, in my opinion, you'll never win against a Republican, then why fight that battle? I mean, we'll see. Brian interrupted you last time.

Sorry. No, no, go ahead. No, well, it's a, it's also, it's also an issue that needs to be figured out as a society. But not by like main, not by like main, not by who? It's a huge, it's like local news. It's all over. This question is all over, man. Yeah, yeah. And also, you know, there was that Trump ad, like, Kamala's for they, them, I'm for you or whatever. I felt like that question had a larger sense outside the trans issue. Like that that, yeah, Kamala is for others. Kamala's like, not for you. And people kind of ran with that and said, it's all about the

trans issue. I'm just saying I don't think a Democrat can be like on their hands and he's being like, I promise I'm not woke guys. Like that just doesn't work. Here's what would be worse for Graham. It would be worse for him to suddenly flip-flop on trans issues because that also makes you look on trustworthy. That also makes you look like the consultants got to me and now I was this leftist who was at the SRA and I'm like, ah, never mind. So I think it's a really balance for him to strike. But I also think there's some wisdom to him saying, I'm not throwing immigrants under the bus.

I'm not throwing trans kids under the bus. I think he has to have a good answer. And you can see him working that in real time with the local answer. And that's a view, but it's going to be tough. I think there's like, I don't know. I see what you're saying, Griffin. That like you'll never,

Susan Collins is always going to be able to say what she's going to be able to say on that. Right, yeah. Then we're going to have to figure that something out. Like, we've got to get to a place for it. everybody's like comfortable and people's rights are respected on you know and and spaces and spaces of respect because like obviously and everybody like basically everybody agrees you can't like you're not going to just let a guy walk into a women's room at a gym by claiming outside the door

that he's a woman nobody would allow that so it's like okay i mean like like hunter schaefer like nobody will allow that so if we don't allow that then okay where are we then like what's that what are the actual rules here? Well, like, we need some rules. Like, we've got a new, in a, we have a new, like, situation that we're dealing with that. What are the rules here? And we, and as a society, we just have to figure them out.

Democrats, Democrats can't just keep saying, well, don't worry about it. There are so many trans people, though, that, uh, that put completely, like, unless you were told, like, a purest female. And would, and they, you would get eyebrows raised if Hunter Schaefer, walked into the men's room. It's pretty different with kids, though. I think Republicans lose the upper hand when you're talking about adults with the public

and in a state like Maine, which is not Alabama. It is, as Graham invoked, very libertarian. And so I think that's part of the wisdom in talking about it is maybe you can get Susan Collins to start talking about that sort of thing. But when it comes to kids, that's a totally different question.

And I think that's what most of the conversation, if I'm like looking at local media in Maine, that's mostly what the conversation's been about high schools and the like. I'm an advocate of the new parent my my new paradigm is dark woke where it's like yeah we we we believe these in these issues and you're going to give you housing and how are we going to pay for it we're going to melt down all of the high school swimming trophies and that's how we're paying for it like that to me is a far stronger way to go for for the candidates and then like I do think like maybe there's some like large like federal stuff that could get worked out along the lines of like how we made. gay marriage equal or what have you, but I don't think that a candidate needs to be like, fuck,

I got to solve this question in my individual race in Maine. That's just my personal take. I'm going dark on this one. That's kind of his answer. All right. Well, we'll leave it there. Thank you all. Folks, we are releasing this full two-hour episode for the public.

Normally we paywall the first half of the show. But you guys are going to see the whole second half, because we had Graham today. But if you do want to ask people like Graham questions in the future. Yes. Here's your picture. Yeah, exactly. All those questions today came from our Breaking Points members.

You can sign up today to help our reporting, help us do all these extra shows, all these extra interviews. Go to breakingpoints.com. We've got a monthly membership. We've got a yearly membership. And it helps us do what we're doing here every day. So we thank you all for the support. And happy Halloween.

Bye bye. anyone someone else say something Halloween no one's dressing up happy Halloween don't do a platinum costume

it's not going to be funny it's not going to work for you take your shirt off and get a pencil don't do it well I have not seen any platinum costumes yet but the day is young

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