Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/5/26: Graham Platner Scandal, California Elections, Screwworm Outbreak & MORE!

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Krystal, Ryan and Emily discuss Graham Platner facing accusations from ex girlfriends, California election results continue rolling in as Raman and Steyer make up ground, screwworm outbreak after DOGE cuts, and interview with Oliver Larkin on his race in Florida. Oliver Larkin: https://www.oliverforcongress.com/   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Happy Friday, everyone. Ryan, great to see you. Good to see you, too. So we have a little bit of timing challenges today. I have to leave here shortly, and Emily was doing another podcast that has to come in late, but we wanted both of us have things to say about this whole grand platinum

situation, so we're going to sort of split the grand platinum segment into. Ryan will be there throughout the whole process to guide us through. So we can get this covered from all aspects. But didn't want it just to be two lefties. But also, Emily actually knows the woman who is the main accuser in the story against Graham Platner. So definitely wanted to get her view on what is going on there. We're also going to update you on the California election results, which continue to shift in very interesting ways. We're going to update you on screw worm as well.

And I had an interview with Oliver Lark in, excuse me, this week. who is challenging Jared Moskowitz in a Florida district in the Democratic primary. Moskowitz, in my opinion, has been a real villain. You can, he's certainly, he's proud to be a top A-PAC candidate. He defends taking those A-PAC dollars. He says basically it's, he doesn't understand why they're singled out for, for scrutiny. Ryan, I'm sure you have some, some thoughts about his comments on that. But in any case, Oliver Larkin challenging him from the left and, you know, has a very interesting story and very compelling in his own right as well.

Yes, yes, indeed. And, you know, the news gods gifted us with a slow newsday, one of the first in months. So that allows us to spend some quality time with this New York Times investigation, which I think is useful, not just for what it says about Platner or for this particular Senate race, but it's a really, it's kind of a snapshot of our moment in time in a really interesting way. I completely agree. So let's go ahead and dig in. This is the New York Times piece. And we should say before we jump in that there were rumors flying all week that some major scandal was going to break about Graham Platner, above and beyond the sexting revelations that had come out. Was that early this week or last week? I can't even remember at this point. And so this appears to be what the rumors were about. So the go ahead, Ryan. No, it definitely is. The rumors were that the New York Times had this story and they spoke to a bunch of his ex-girlfriends and it was going to be kind of devastating.

And the senators, Democratic senators, when Plattner came down to D.C., I believe it was on Tuesday, even asked him, you know, are there assault and abuse allegations coming? And he said no credible ones. Yeah, no one can guarantee what someone is going to. to say about them. Right. It turns out, you know, we, there weren't any period unless, well, we'll get it. We'll read through the piece. There's this one grabbing the shoulder thing that you could say, well, that's physical and

that there's touch. Like Representative Luna was, you know, badly assaulted by Medea Benjamin, as we'll talk about later in the program as well. Thoughts and prayers. So any contact can be considered over the line. So, but we'll go through it. Yeah. All right. So the headline here is several women, by the way, they news alerted this, just so people know, which means you get it on my phone. I got a news alert that this story had broken, which is what they reserve for what they consider it to be. They're sort of most important or most explosive stories. Several women who dated Graham Platner recall, quote, unsettling behavior. The Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine could be charming, women said in interviews, but some found his actions intimidating and disturbing.

So if you go through this piece, they speak with, I think, six different Platner ex-girlfriends. The primary accusations here, in fact, really any of the accusations that have any sort of detail to them come from one woman. We'll get more into her background. And Ryan has done some reporting on that. And as I mentioned before, Emily actually knows, knows this woman, Lindsay, who leveled the, you know, most serious allegations against Graham in this piece. She does work for right-wing causes. And to me, the headline after I read it was very, was kind of misleading because even though they say several women, which led me to believe, as I dug into this, that you're going to have multiple stories with specific accounts, it's really only this one woman who says anything even remotely specific.

The other two say things like, well, he came home drunk one time and I found his behavior settling and I cut off contact, that sort of thing. but no real specifics and certainly no allegations of anything that would approximate, quote, unquote, abuse. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting. Yeah, we can parse it because, yeah, if they say three set X, but then when you go through it, you're like, well, who are the three? Yeah. And actually, the primary accuser here is taking issue with that as well because she's saying she was told that there would be other women making similar allegations.

and she was very surprised when she read the piece and it was all about her. The byline here is Katie Gluick and Lisa Lerer. What do we know about them as reporters, Ryan? Because I know you have experience with both of them in some regard. Yeah, Lisa was a colleague of mine back at the, when I was at Politico back now almost 20 years ago at this point. I think she's a great reporter.

And I had told somebody close to Platner, I was like, you know, if Lisa on her own takes you down, you probably deserve to go down. Like, she's a very good reporter. And I think you can really put a lot of faith in what she reports and writes. Katie is different. Katie is a little like me on the reverse side, like both a journalist and somebody with a sense of politics.

And she has, for her entire career, been pretty strongly pro-Israel in, in college. She was, I forgot, what was the organization, you know, that she was president of like Friends of Israel

or whatever it was that like won an award from APEC. So like, fine, like go ahead. That's fine. Like,

I don't, I think it's, we should all, you know, as long as what you're telling is true, is, you know, you can back up what you're saying.

But it's been interesting to see people now slamming the New York Times as like, this is a catch and kill, like, these reporters were like in the tank for the Plattenor campaign. It's like, do you have any idea like what Katie's politics are? Are you insane? Yeah.

You could like. And did she write some of the critical pieces about Zoran during his campaign as well? Yes. Yes. The one of some of the most egregious. Yes. Um, so if you had Katie as your lead byline here and this is what you got, like you're not going to do any better.

Like there's, there's just no world in which you can say that she is biased here, for Platner. Yeah. All right. Let's get back to the actual text of this. And I'm just going to read through this and we'll just like pause

and comment where we think appropriate on Tuesday evening because I don't want to, you know, I don't want to mischaracterize what the report says. We'll give you the actual language that's in the report. On Tuesday evening, after Whirlwind Day in Washington, Graham Platner,

the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, rushed home. Rumors were spreading from Portland to the Potomac about Mr. Platner's messy personal life after news reports that he had sent sexual messages to women while married. Democratic senators were pressing him about whether more damaging revelations were coming. Journalists were swarming, staking out his hometown. Amid the turmoil, Mr. Plattner worked the

phones rolling through calls to ex-girlfriends who might publicly acknowledge that while he may have been a bad boyfriend, he was in fact a decent guy. In interviews with the New York Times on Wednesday, several women did just that, describing Mr. Plattner as a fun and caring partner and saying they felt safe with him. Some remain friends with him to this day years after their relationship ended. But in extensive conversations over the past two months, three other women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner offered a far more complicated assessment, describing volatile and quote, toxic relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching. Mr. Plattner could be charming and charismatic. They were called in interviews, but also demeaning to women in

in at least one case even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful. Mr. Platner-40-1y combat veteran has spoken openly about grappling with PTSD, depression, and drinking that he said has resulted from his time in the military, as revelations about him have surfaced, including his dismissive remarks online about rape and derogatory comments about women, as well as a tattoo he had that is widely recognized as a Nazi symbol. He has said his past behavior does not reflect who he is today. Maynors, he has urged, should not judge him.

for the worst thing I said on the internet on my worst day 14 years ago. The critical accounts provided by three of the women interviewed by the times who were each in romantic relationships with him for years give a fuller picture of Mr. Platner's life. They shed light on an earlier era when he has acknowledged intense struggles, but also raised questions about his more recent years in Maine, which his campaign has presented as a period of healing and personal redemption. And again, Ryan, when I read this portion, I really fully expected to get like a, you know, detailed accounts from all three of these women,

which is not what you end up getting in this piece. No, yeah, you get, and maybe we should do those first, because I know you've got to leave in five minutes. Maybe take a look at, yeah, let's take a look at the accounts from the two that aren't, Lindsay, because I've seen people saying, oh, what, you, okay, you don't believe the Republican operative, but what about these other two women?

It's like, well, believe what? like what like prepared to believe you know or not believe or evaluate claims and allegations or accusations but what what are they like what like literally like what so yeah jenny i can read this so here we've got jennie rassico 41 main democrat said she dated him casually said the post deepened her belief he did not respect women when i saw the old comments he made online i recognized a version of him that i had experiences with So, like, what is a reader supposed to take from that? Is there anything else from her?

Is she the one where he showed up drunk at the house? Let's see. They say these vague things. The three described him in similar terms. Spending time with him could be exhilarating. They said they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing. I mean, I think Graham's owned up to all of this, by the way, this aspect of it. You know, I think that was already on the record that he had a drinking problem and the womanizing problem.

As to sum up how he treated her, the third. woman, I think that is the main Democrat, said she felt like collateral damage to the world that is his. Yeah. Okay. Sure. I believe her. I believe that she felt that way. All right.

So here's from Rassico. This is the allegation and this is the part that winds up in the headline is unsettling. Rassico also said that in 2021, he arrived at her house drunk after she had asked him not to come over. She declined to elaborate, but said she cut off contact as soon. after that episode and found his behavior, quote, reckless and quote, unsettling. So to let you in on the journalism here as you're doing interviews and then packaging a story, unsettling wound up in the headline of this article and this is where it comes from. Usually if you're going to put that in the headline, you're going to quote the person.

Like you'll do the entire thing that she said. Instead, here it's paraphrased and then thrown into a quote. So you don't know, like sometimes a journalist will say, well, was that unscathed? settling and Raskoka said, yeah, it was unsettling. And so then it winds up like this. But, okay, so he showed up as they all said that the same thing that he's unsettling. And so she, he showed up drunk after she said, don't come over. And then she didn't elaborate on that.

So it looks like, well, then I guess he left. Like, I mean, I mean, we can, I guess we can guess that you know, she didn't want to talk about whatever happened after that. But that's it. So when, when people are like, well, what about her allegation? It's like, okay, I totally believe 100%. This sounds like a credible claim. I don't think Plattner has denied this.

Did he say, I'm going to come over when I'm done with the bar? And she said, don't come over. And he came over anyway. Like quite possibly. How is this in the New York Times? Is kind of my question there. Yeah. Well, and I did want to ask you, Ryan and Emily, welcome.

We started diving into the article. because I'm going to have to jump and I wanted to get a little bit of my two cents in here. And we definitely wanted your two cents on this story, given that you know, Lindsay. So we started going through actually the other allegations of the other two women that are in this piece, which are, you know, which I don't think Graham denies and which are consistent with things that he said about his, you know, what he describes as negative conduct from a previous era of his life. But, you know, Ryan, I wanted to ask you because you've done reporting on alleged sexual assault. assault, and I never have. You know, I found it to be shocking, just to get to the main claims in the story from Lindsay, who, by the way, does not allege sexual assault. You know, the most egregious thing that she alleges is that he grabbed her by her shoulders, that he yanked her by her hand

out of a cab, and that there was an incident where he put her arm behind her back, pushed her into her room, closed the door, and locked the door. He, by the way, completely denies this. The Times says they were not able to independently corroborate it, you know, in any way. It's just basically her word against his word. And so what I was fairly shocked that they printed this, given that not only do you not have corroboration, but you also have an actor who is, does have a potential political motivation here, given that she, you know, worked for heritage and is a right-wing operative. But I wonder as someone who's done this sort of sensitive reporting, how you viewed that aspect of it.

And, you know, to be clear, you were involved in the reporting on Kavanaugh allegations, on terror, breeds allegations against Joe Biden. So how do you weigh how to do that reporting and what meets the standard of printing something publicly? I think because the allegations are at a low level, the bar then becomes kind of lower for them to be included, like the higher the offense than the higher bar for corroboration. So because you can also imagine like, so basically what she's saying is they were having a fight and she has, I think, discussed this elsewhere.

They're having a fight, and he kind of like pushes her into the, or moves her into this room, closes the door and says, like, stay in here until you calm down. And she says, like, it hurt when he'd push her in there. And then, but then she fell asleep in the room. So it's like, it also, it's like, most people in relationships can picture some version of that. Yeah.

And so. it's so it's easier to include. I think what happened is that they had a lot, they had heavier allegations that they couldn't substantiate or corroborate. And so they whittled it down, whittled it down, whittled it down, whittled it down until they had what they published.

And if they originally would have pitched to their editors, so here's what we have. We have, you know, three women who say unsettling stuff, one of them he came over drunk at the house when I asked him not to the third one said he was demeaning towards women I think the third one has no no accusation

specifics at all yeah just kind of he was disrespectful towards women which he had disrespectful things to say about women in his Reddit posts like that no that tracks yeah that tracks and then the third one saying he kind of pushed me into a room during a fight and pulled me out of a cab by his wrist

like I don't have a hard time believing that he might have grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of a cab. Like, and sometimes, like, you often will help someone out of a cab. And if you're angry, maybe, like, yank, like, totally plausible accusation there, but also not remotely kind of debilitating to the campaign. So I think it's easier then to get it in. But I think if they could pitch it as that, like, this is what we have.

The editors would have said, no, that's, you don't have a story there. But once the entire country is talking about your story, and there are all these rumors going around, but you've got to publish something, is my guess. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing to me is like, okay, well, if it's not that serious of an allegation, then why are we digging into past relationships from over a decade ago, from, you know, years ago?

And if it is a serious allegation, then how are we printing this without any corroboration given the likely, the clear-cut political motivation? here. And, you know, as I said before, he completely denies it. In fact, maybe I'll go ahead and play a little bit of his denial here. Emily, while I'm pulling that up, you want to just react a little bit and tell us a little bit about what you know about. Lindsay and your experience with her. Yeah, well, and have you guys mentioned her post this morning yet? Not yet. Okay. So this is also worth mentioning on the corroboration point. So she and I guess some of her friends, and I'm out in West

Virginia was driving all night, so I may have missed some stuff, but I've seen what her friends said. By the way, we do have some mutual friends and some, I think some close mutual friends. I've met her a handful of times and am not personal friends with her, but I know her. And not well, I should say, but we do have some close mutual friends. I am also a, actually, I don't even know this for sure. I think I'm still a fellow at independent women's forum. They don't pay me for anything. It's kind of like a brand ambassador thing for some people I would describe it as. I think they said she was paid 15 grand over the course of a couple years in the early 2021, 2021, 2022 time period. But I don't think I've seen her in like five plus years. So

she is now saying, and some of her friends are saying, that they offer to provide corroboration. I don't think they have specifically, unless I've missed something, said what? They would have provided that corroboration for, would it be for the arm twisting incident, for the wrist incident? But There's, I just, there's no way right now to know what was happening behind the scenes of the reporting. All we can do is like read the tea leaves. And it's just a strange, strange story for the New York Times all around. It is just an incredibly strange story for the New York Times. And Crystal, you have up here some of the stuff from the women.

Is that what that is? Yeah, we, we had, this is one of Lindsay's posts. The other post that she put up, the other post, that she put up said that, yeah, she felt misled by the times, that they came to her and were like, we have these other women who are going to also go on the record with significant allegations and that her impression was she was not going to be the only one because she expresses in the piece. She understands like, look, people are going to look at this. I'm a Republican, like, operative. I'm, you know, they're going to see psycho-bitter ex-Republican girlfriends and be like,

what are we talking about here? And so I, you know, I don't rule out that the times came to her. And in order to encourage her to put whatever she was going to say on the record that they claimed, they had more than they actually claimed than they actually had. And that also makes sense, like you were saying, Ryan, in terms of the editors greenlighting this, you know, if they were portraying to them as well, like, oh, we've got these, you know, we've got these multiple women and they're all going to go on the record. And at the end of the day, you just, just have one political operative who was literally, you know, involved with the organization that helped Shepard through Brett Kavanaugh's nomination and coach Susan Collins on what to say

in order to help get him through, you know, the editors probably would have got, I don't know, like, I'm not sure this is strong enough. So it does seem like there are some other things that are going on here behind the scenes. I do want to quickly, and then I probably got to run. I want to get Graham's voice in here a little bit because he did do a lengthy interview with Chris Chris Hayes last night. And, you know, the first portion of this I'll play for you, just his reaction. And just to generally characterize the interview, he acknowledges, yeah, I was a bad boyfriend. I've spoken about this.

I've tried to be transparent about the man that I was and the man that I've become. But on the issue of any sort of physical altercation or harm, he categorically denies that. So let's go ahead and take a listen to the beginning of this interview so you can hear that portion. Good to have you on. Thank you so much for doing this. Thanks, Chris. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

I just want to say at the start that like, you know, we've had you on before. And I think you and I are both people that in other contexts talk about income and equality in health care and all those issues, which are extremely important. And we devote a lot of time to on this program. This is not, you know, the thing that we spent a lot of time chasing. But, you know, there's some serious stuff there I want to go through with you. I think that we'll right to know about it. And I want to start with what Ms. Feifield says about being rough, is the term the times. And I'm going to just read you the account so you have it.

This is from the Times. Mr. Plattner could be rough with her, Ms. Fyfield said, particularly when they were drinking, leaving her shaken and sometimes afraid. In the interviews, she grappled with how to process her experiences. She was quick to note, he never hit me, never punched me. She said irregular grabbed her by the shoulders, sometimes hard enough to leave marks. On one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist, after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car. During one argument, she recalled, he pressed her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom, and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn't get out, telling her to remain there until she was calm.

Eventually, Ms. Fyfield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning. It hurt, she said, but she added, it didn't cause any injury. It didn't break my arm. Did that happen? No, it did not. There are some allegations in this piece that I just want to be kind of unequivocal about are simply not true. anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of someone who's politically motivated. In this piece, there's a lot about my struggling, not being a good boyfriend, certainly self-medicating with alcohol. And I've been very upfront since the beginning of this campaign.

That was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service. And that's what that kind of life looks like. And so there are things in this that I absolutely will take responsibility for and have been speaking about openly for months now. But those serious allegations are just not true. So there you go. And that's kind of the tenor of what he says. He also makes a point. At one point that I think is worth noting, which is he's like, look, this is why people don't run for office.

Because, I mean, look, I don't know what you guys, but if reporters went and talked to my exes, I don't know that you'd get a very flattering portrait. Let's just be very clear. So, you know, I think many of us can look back and imagine the way others in our life may view us and sorts of things that they may, you know, tell to the press if they wanted to, you know, hurt you and take you down and say, that might be a little uncomfortable for me. Throw in that one of them is a Republican operative and you're running as a Democrat. Yeah. Literally. I mean, actually, it's funny you mentioned.

Just a very quick digression. And, you know, I, when I ran for Congress, the stupid photos were released of me, like, at this, you know, triple Xmas party. I'm dressed up. And now it's, like, so tame that it's ridiculous to even talk about, right? But at the time, it was a scandal. And I was young. And, yeah, Ryan remembers well, I'm sure. I was young.

And, you know, I have this weird name. And it was a whole thing. Okay. Well, I'm pretty sure that the person who released the photos was my friend who hosted the party's Republican heritage staffer boyfriend at the time. at the time. So, yes. So I feel the story deep in my bones is what I'm saying. I just would say, listen, in the case of Graham, in the case of Zoran, you see the level of where there was an Abdul Al-Sai had reported scandal of like he didn't finish his residency, even though he's like an MD to peach, like super decorated and accomplished person. One of the pieces of this is who is the

scrutiny applied to and why? And Katie Gloo, is an ideological actor. That just is what it is in terms of her reporting. Obviously, the Republican here is also an ideological actor as well. And so I think that is, for me, the main media takeaway is, look, there's things on the record that suggest Susan Collins had an affair in the 70s. Have we had any reporting about that and what that says about her character and voters are grappling with it?

Have we interviewed all of her exes? No. Graham Platner challenges power. He challenges the oligarchy. and he challenges the powers that be on Israel. And we know that is a recipe for people coming after you and doing whatever they can to try to tarnish you and ultimately take you down.

So anyway, that's what I'll, those are my thoughts that I'll sort of leave us with. And I'll let you guys continue on. You can talk about the tattoo and all the things. But, you know, that's where I get angry. In this story is, it's not that they're, you know, that it's unreasonable to report on Graham and his struggles and his past and whatever. But when you see how selectively this level of scrutiny is applied and the type of things they

will print about him that I do not think they would print about, you know, a Chuck Schumer if you had a similar uncorroborated, ideologically motivated allegation against him, that's where it, I think, is very biased and, in my opinion, egregious. All right. You got to run, Crystal? Happy travels. Thank you, guys. Can't wait to watch the rest of your coverage.

Yeah, I've had a lot more side. Ryan, I was just going to jump in and say, I kind of wish Crystal was there, because I was going to say, actually, a lot of what she just laid out. And I have also done some Me Too type reporting. And this was the stuff that drove me crazy during Kavanaugh, is I would say, the powers that be did not want Roe v. Wade overturned.

And I saw so, and this is driving me crazy about the right at this moment, too, but also a little bit about the left. I feel like my head is about to explode because it is frustrating to see the Michael Avanati allegations of what was it like the devil's triangle gang rape in the New York,

it was New York Magazine I think that first reported that. That is, to me, that was clearly done with political motivations by Julie Swetnik I think was who had clear political motivations. It was. Yeah, also just a fabulous, it seems like.

Yeah. Right. And so I think this is a good thing. good moment because it tests everybody's priors. The right now is valorizing and pumping up a story that I think if it were published about Pete Hegset, who did challenge power at the Pentagon, he's not anymore. But before he was confirmed, he was saying he was going to do all these big reforms at the Pentagon and the like. I really think Republicans, if the story were about a Republican, would be saying this is more thin Me Too reporting. I genuinely,

firmly believe that. On the other hand, I think one of the reasons Republicans are running to the story is because they're trying to, they're like, well, you guys set these rules. And so now if we're playing by these rules, he's screwed. And so they're kind of reveling in that. And it's so, so infuriating to see this. Like, it's driving me insane because there is a way to have consistent standards across the board. And I don't feel like anybody is doing that in this. Now, I shouldn't say anybody. I'm not speaking with proper nuance when I say that because obviously, you know, talking to somebody who I think is being very nuanced on this. But it's just like maddening to see the whole thing. Like it was Katie Glouick, probably. I bet she was. I bet Crystal Serious correct. She probably was like selling this to the people to entice them to participate by saying that it was or implying that it was a much more serious story.

But I don't know. Maybe they did have other people. Like what's your sense of how true it might have been that there were other people that were talking to that had more serious allegations. I don't know. So Lindsay said this morning on Twitter that she's in touch with these two other women

who spoke with the, maybe I can find it, who spoke with the New York Times and whose stories were not included. And she said she is, they are considering what to do. Oh, here it is. She says, she said, thankfully,

I'm connected to two of them and we're deciding what to do next. They're much more vulnerable than me, and it's not an easy decision considering what New York Times just did to us slash me. The Daily Caller last night straight up wrote a piece saying that the Times had two women

who were accusing some level of abuse that they did not run, which is an interesting kind of way around defamation law. I don't know if it is a way around act. actually, to say like, because you're not saying that the things happen. You're saying the Times had this thing that they didn't publish. So we haven't heard the last of this for sure.

Which is interesting to me because you're original, you were literally the first person who broke that there was something coming with Kavanaugh. And it was that the Feinstein office seemed to be sitting on it. Right. Right. That was a end run around it in that sense, too. There's this kind of, there's a meta level of coverage, which says, so, you know, what I reported is that

Feinstein had a letter from a woman that she was under pressure to circulate among Democrats and she was and she was not doing so but that the rumors about this letter had circulated around Capitol Hill

and it was not clear what was in the letter just that it was something explosive and then and then she shared letter and then Christine Blasie Ford ended up testified. So yeah, in that sense, that's a kind of

similar thing. But so, yeah, it is interesting because like when as I read Lindsay's quote unquote accusations, I'm like, I don't net, like Peter's saying, oh, you don't, what about believe all women? I kind of believe him.

Like, did he grab her by the wrist out of a cab? I don't know, but like it's not an insane thing to think that that could happen. Like I know. And I think there's this weird distance between the way that we in the media and the media broadly kind of talk about life and the way life actually unfolds in the real world. Like two volatile drunk people who are in this emotional relationship. like did he grab her by the wrist at one point?

Or like kind of tell her to go in this room and slam the door and keep it closed and say don't come out of there until you're calm. Like that's a rather believable story. But on the other hand, so is he lying when he's saying it didn't happen? Maybe. Maybe he doesn't even remember it. Maybe he's saying he's drunk at the time.

on the other hand, the gap between how the media talks about things and how things unfold in real life is so great that in the middle of it, it's unbridgeable. So let's say he said, yeah, you know what? I think, you know, I probably did, you know, push her into the room and close the door. Like the headline would be because now you've crossed that gap between real life and the way media covers life, the headline would be Graham Platner.

acknowledges, you know, physical abuse. And it's like, oh, then he has to drop out of the Senate race. So we've kind of like cornered people into, um, being unable to talk about life in all of its messiness and complication. Even me just saying this here, people are like, oh, look at him defending like domestic abuse. It's like, bro, no, nobody's defending it. I'm like, it's just acknowledging that like, that's, this is a plausible thing that has, like, that lots of people cannot imagine.

And when people lose their temper, I happen to not have much of a temper. So like it's not something that, like, believe it or not, my emotional registers from like here to here. I wonder who's, I wonder who's been arrested more, you or Graham.

Probably you. Right, yeah, probably me. Back in your youth. No violent, no violence though. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. And so meanwhile his life was violence. Like his profession was state sanctioned violence. So anyway, but I think we're the kind of show that should be able to talk openly about that stuff. Yeah, I agree. And openly about where we disagree too. And I think that's good. And my, like, it's, I've actually dropped.

me two stories that I've, one particular story, they spent a ton of time, like, talked to a dozen people, spent like, and I've dropped it, not published it. And I don't think I agreed with my editor at the time. But the way that I look at this story is, if I were an assignment editor, like hypothetically at a fantasy world, I put myself in the shoes of an assignment editor at the Daily Mail or the New York Post, probably the story, you'd be like, okay, that's kind of a New York Post daily mail story. The New York Times, to frame the story as it was printed, is very bizarre. The whole thing is strange.

And I just like, I really believe as somebody who's been, like the E. Jean Carroll allegations are completely politicized. They were used as a cudgel and a weapon by people like Rachel Maddow. I don't know if Rachel Maddo genuinely believes E. Jean Carroll, but I don't think most people who have read E. Jean Carroll's story, look at that and say, as she is describing it,

this probably happened. It's a very thin allegation. maybe it did happen. I don't know. I'm not saying one way or the other. I don't think it did. That's my guess. But it was so, so politicized. And the sad thing about all of this. And I sensed it happening about a month into the Me Too movement. I don't know if you had a similar since Ryan, but covering these stories really closely as a media writer at the time, it was going to permanently destroy our ability. Well, not permanently, but indefinitely and destroy our ability to actually, find stories that should reflect on or that should influence voting choices because somebody has a serious allegation, a character allegation against them, that they abused a woman. And because of the way so much of that reporting was done, it has made the public, put the public in a position, reasonably so, where they don't trust a lot of these stories anymore. And again, I think that's reasonable from the position of the public. And so for Republicans, I think it makes sense right now

that they're jumping all of the story politically. I get it. But at a certain point, it doesn't make sense because people right now have gas four plus dollars a gallon. They are looking at an unpopular war. There's so many different things happening in the country right now that to take this fairly thin story from 10 years ago before Graham Platner said he got help, which he said happened in 2017, he started going to the VA. Now, there are some weird Reddit posts and some of the allegations about him being a bad boyfriend are after that.

We can generously call it a journey. Like, and to be fair, like nobody, you don't snap overnight and get help and all of a sudden you're good. But like, yeah, like, the dog behavior creeped into the beginning of their marriage as he has, 2020. Which is recent.

Which is recent, yeah. And so is there, I think there's a, honesty is going to be an important question for him. He has to come across like he's not lying. I think there have been some cases where it looks like he was fudging, again, to be charitable on that. And I think that's a real problem for populist candidates, because they have to come across as though they are the anti- like all the others. Yeah. Yeah, and you're the anti-Paxon. If you're James Tullerico, you are the anti-Susan if you're grandpa or the anti-establishment. You're going to do things differently. You're not someone who's been bought by Washington, et cetera. And so lying is that is like, such a red flag for voters with a candidate like that. So I think that's really, really important. On the other hand, I think another part that we wanted to, or that you and I should mention, is the Jewish insider story about quote-unquote, my toten copphe that now looks like

Lindsay Fyfield was the person who was talking to Jewish insider, which I think calls into question how the New York Times story came to be, which is a meta question. I get it. But that is also interesting. You have two elements here. let me put up. Yeah, so here's Bethany Mandel, who's her co-host of the Lady Brains podcast.

She says, she came forward with the Totenkov many months ago, naively believing that a Nazi tattoo would be disqualifying. Unfortunately, that was not a bridge too far, much to our dismay. And so, yes, the My Totenkov story was in Jewish Insider.

And also, Kaczynski at CNN, very good reporter, But it was anonymous. Right, it was anonymous. It was called an acquaintance when it was in acquaintance from the tune-in is how Lindsay was described

in a Jewish insider. And then Andrew Kaczynski had said that he saw a text message exchange among friends talking about it like before it came out, which clearly is, that's the text message exchange that she shared with the New York Times.

So when people thought, oh, well, now she's backing up these previous sources. It's like, well, now we know who the source was for this in the beginning. And then one other point, let me find this. Because I actually tend to maybe, I think I kind of believe her on the Toten Cuff story. Yeah, yeah. We can talk about how the wedding still complicates it for me, the 2015 wedding where he took

his shirt off in front of a bunch of Jewish family members. So it's like, could he really have known and done that? And also that he passed these two security clearances. Anyway, the other related thing here, so the Senate leadership fund, the day, this is April, the day that Janet Mills withdrew, the Senate leadership fund, which is Mitch McConnell's kind of super fact that elects Senate Republicans, they start their statement by saying, Graham Platner is a silver spoon charlatan who fantasizes about sexual assault

admires Nazi Nazi stormtroopers and then goes on to the other stuff and when that came out I remember being like what so we now know we now know that this Nazi stormtrooper thing is something that the free beacon published just a few days ago

where he doesn't admire Nazi stormtroopers there's a photo of Swedish volunteers who are under the command of a Finnish unit who are fighting the Soviets using American weapons, a BAR, and a German helmet.

And Platner writes on Reddit, cool photo. Now, the Nazis were also fighting the Soviet Union. So in the Free Beacon article, they say Nazi allied troops. It's like, okay, well, these are Swedish and Finnish troops who are fighting the Soviet Union.

And they had a German helmet and an American gun. So it's like a fascinating photo. And he says cool photo. Cool pick. That becomes in SLF's words, admires Nazi stormtroopers. Anyway, so we know that SLF was had that APO at the time.

That's where they get this, admirers Nazi stormtrovers thing. The one that really raised eyebrows at the time was fantasizes about sexual assault. Because people at the time, like, wait, I don't remember that being in any Reddit posts. Like, what? what are you talking about? And so now we know that Lindsay

has been had been talking to SLF. Like that's the only place that could have come from. And so let's put up this moment from the article. Where the heck? I have so many tabs.

It's brutal. Well, while you look for it, I'll just say... I accidentally closed the New York Times thing. You can respond while I go look for it. Well, yeah, because I was going to say, I actually think this is an important point. The Nazi tattoo point is an important one. Because when Bethany Mandel says,

Lindsay thought the Nazi tattoo thing would be disqualifying, what's so interesting about both of these things is that an argument, and I think actually you'd be open to this. if not fully in agreement, but there is a real problem during like capital PW peak woke, whatever the hell we want to call it,

where allegations of sexual assault and racism, whether it was with the Me Too movement or whether it was with sort of BLM era, political correctness, or I don't hate using the word wokeness, but I guess everybody kind of knows what I mean by that, but where these allegations would be based on something sort of thin And a lot of that was coming from

Like how you experienced it Right, exactly. Yes, very much. Yeah, your truth. I felt traumatized by your behavior. Right, exactly. And so what that did was set a very low bar And it was mostly pushed by the left and in the media.

And a lot of leftists were upset with that at the time. And I think conservatives made common cause with some of those leftists. But part of the problem here is that the right has been enormously frustrated by weaponized allegations, particularly of conservatives, Republicans, who are not genuine secret Nazis, not to say that there aren't some actual racists and bigots, of course, of course, but people who aren't and clearly aren't, but get these weaponized allegations of Nazism or of sexual assault, most of which was pushed by the kind of center left in the media. And now they're like, well, if we were playing by these rules, of course, you'd have to

disqualify grand platinum of course you would x y and z and so part of this is republicans now saying well screw it i'm throwing up the rule book uh which i don't think is correct but i also it's frustrating because some of this does stem from that like five year period uh maybe 10 year period between like i don't know like 2013 and 2023 of hysteria cultural hysteria does that's which is it's back yeah and which is itself by the way rooted in yes not that long ago are our country had a horrible history of racism and sexism. We've made enormous progress in that direction, which is kind of what was frustrating to me about that 10-year period.

But nonetheless, that's the immediate context here. And it is frustrating to see, from my end, although it of like the both parts of it. And it's very disappointing to see, I think, some people on the right then be like, oh, this story is, it just qualified. Because nobody believes Grant Platner is a secret Nazi. Nobody believes that.

That is a key point, actually. Yeah. No, so here's a good example of the rights kind of deployment of left-wing therapy speak. Bethany Mandel, her good friend and podcast co-host, she says, I've been close friends with Vinzie Fifthfield for 15 years. I've known about Graham since they began dating. She carried a lot of trauma from their time together. I'm so proud of her for her bravery in coming forward. Like, yeah, it's very left-wing coded. And it feels like purposely so to like

kind of get back at the left for like, okay, you say that so-and-so was guilty because you felt you carried carried a lot of trauma. Well, now we're going to say it as well. It does sound like it was kind of... Well, I was going to say, like you said,

I do believe that it was a traumatic relationship. It sounds like it was a mess. It sounds like a total mess. Yeah. So she... You want to go through, you want to go through a little bit of her own post. So she says,

so she'd shut down all of her social media. And now she brought it back on, which is a very Washington operative thing to do. Like we in Washington, we can't stay off social media. Well, I also love your recent searches, looking for your own posts on. It's hilarious. So,

I do that also. Let's see. So she says, anyone who has ever extracted themselves from a relationship with a narcissistic abuser knows it isn't clean or easy. And so this is the kind of thing that the right would have just been livid about

if the left was doing it. Just throw out words like abuser after saying in the times, like he never hit me. Okay, he grabbed my shoulders and he pulled my wrist. But I think she's clearly using the word abuser or abusive in the sense of emotionally abusive. Yeah.

But the way that headlines are written, it's hard to keep that distinction. Agreed. So she says they connected me to two of the other victims so we wouldn't feel so alone. I insisted to each of them that I trusted the New York Times journalist and that we were doing the right thing despite. their sadly very accurate sense that something was wrong. One of the victims and I realized our relationships with Graham overlapped completely. He had been cheating on both of us the entire time we were together. And this goes into something I had posted yesterday.

The word cheating suggests they were exclusive. My understanding is that they were not. That, you know, Graham was a dog at the time. She's saying this went until 2016 and 2018. she does that famous podcast where she talks about breaking off her wedding and she had been in a long-term relationship

for several years before that so the timing is off here to say that there's that cheating could even be possible given what seems to have been going on here and then she was I blocked so then so then this is more about the New York Times

the weeks dragged on they kept coming back to a saying the editors needed more. I needed to go on the record. We need more screenshots. I'm at every benchmark they said, eager to provide more sources as evidence. Why does it say nobody could corroborate when I offered them sources that could corroborate? And we don't know exactly what. I suspect we may learn soon what she's talking about in the Daily Caller or somewhere or somewhere else. Why did they include that an out-of-context quote from a friend joking, do not call Graham after I called off my wedding.

Where were the screenshots they said they would use? Or the mention that I'd supported local Democrats and that most of my family and husband are liberal. I'm sorry, but that doesn't mean much when you're a, you work for the Nikki Haley campaign in the heritage, but anyway. Right. Yes.

So I, again, I actually believe her here. Like, I think that the reporter probably did make a lot of, of promises. Like that, you know, reporters do that to try to draw out their sources. So again, like,

within the article itself and her, and that claim there that like the time just kind of misled her. I actually believe, you know, I tend to believe her. But I think, but I think main, main voters,

which are only, the only ones that matter, um, aren't going to find anything in that, that, that, fundamentally changes their impression of who Graham is

or the kind of arc that he's telling. Some people I think it's going to damage him because I think some people will and we can talk about the tattoo think that he's not being straightforward here. Because

so Chris Hayes asked the question on the chronology. If she was talking about in August and you said you didn't learn about it in October, like, how did she know about it? Now, like, clearly, and what her argument is is he told her about it. Now, I've also been told on the internet that everyone knows what this is, that it's the most common Nazi symbol after the swastika.

So if that's the case, everybody who saw it, I don't, I don't believe that. I didn't even know what it was when I saw it. Yes. And I'm not a World War II buff, but I don't, you know, You're deep. Half buff. I didn't know it. And people were like, oh, it's on that meme. Are we the baddies? It's on the guy's collar.

Like, okay, I don't study these memes. So that to me seems plausible. I saw Zedgelani saying, look, let's assume that he didn't know what it was when he got it, which all of his fellow Marines say, but that he learned at some point later what it was. It does stand a reason that you wouldn't get it covered up if you're just a regular person

and you're just keeping your shirt on. Like, let's say he learned after he was at this Jewish wedding, right? That's the part. It's like, okay, two security screenings plus to get it, you know, to re-enlist and then also taking his shirt off at this wedding famously. but let's say he learns after that what it is but he's not running for office you know he had it has a connection

like he got it with his comrades to honor not because they were anti-Semitic but to honor their fallen comrades people who died like that's why they say they got it so to get it covered up would be then

and I'm just you know putting myself and who knows to get it it covered up could would be its own kind of traumatic moment to feel like a betrayal of your of your friends both living and dead um and also just politically is it any better to be like yeah it's true i had a nazi tattoo for 14 years but i've had it covered up for the last three i don't think anybody who's mad about it would give him any grace over that so my sense is he probably knew about it, like at some point in the last several years, that's hard to imagine

Lindsay making that up. But there's a lot, you know, but I kind of, I don't know. I wouldn't want to bet my life on it. I also think just as a political matter, that part of it is kind of baked in and that it's too far into the weeds. The timeline is too far into the weeds. Agree. Or normal voters who like, I've heard about the tattoo and they're like, well, we all make mistakes. So I don't know, where are you come down on on that timeline and what it says? Yeah, I think I think you're right. It's hard to believe that at some point he didn't realize it was a Nazi tattoo. I think you're, I believe that he was absolutely hammered and split Croatia on leave with his Marines, Marine buddies and did it without knowing. So I believe that. I

believe he probably did know at some point. I do think, again, like just the dishonesty is a problem. I've been saying this with Tala Rico, too, where Tala Rico is on tape saying, of course, there are at least six biological sexes. And now he's saying, of course, there are only two biological sexes. I just think the basic honesty thing is what makes it hard if you're trying to be the anti-Paxon or anti-Susan or anti-Susan Collins because it becomes a litmus test for voters as to whether they feel like, you know, voters feel like they've been duped by this time and again, George W. Bush running and saying, we're not going to do nation building and then becoming the king of nation building. I think that's, it's just, it's a litmus test for voters. But honestly, I think the big picture from all of this, again, I wish I was still here because her story is going to be, I think that actually might historically be the beginning.

Because at the time, I remember how it was covered, Ryan. This was, she was like the millennial Facebook candidate. And it produced a lot of hot takes to that point. Right. And so what we're now in is this weird adjustment period. where people who started living their lives online, because so much of our personal and professional lives were exported to the internet, particularly starting in the mid-aids, when that happened,

you then have all of this evidence that's going to get thrust in the court of public opinion without context, often, sometimes with it, but often without context, without any nuance being weaponized. And sometimes it's legit. Sometimes it's stupid. but when people who have lived their lives online, not like political candidates, not like people who are going to run for office,

but over the course of 10 plus years into their adulthood, this for some people in the future is going to start when they were literally kids on Roblox. Like, are we legitimately going to have like Roblox screenshots from 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds in our politics 10 years from now when 25-year-olds are running for house or 26-year-olds? We should set a line now.

Is it 12 and under? you can actually they went after Mamdani's wife for posts when she was 13 or 14 teenager yeah and so I just think early teens not even like 17 and Cavanaugh was 17 allegedly

well he was 17 when he allegedly assaulted and none of that was internet that was still like hard diaries calendars and that type of thing the diary with squeak remember yeah yeah yeah squeak who could

Who can forget? But 10 years from now, like, this is already bad because we're taking scraps of people's lives and thrust it. And this is why, like, I wrote a ton about this. I did, like, a lot of stuff spilled way too much ink during, like, the peak woke era on this stuff because I think it's very interesting. And I think it's a tech story. I think it's a human story. It's a meta-media story. We're taking these scraps of people's lives and thrusting them into partisan politics.

and it's changing the way that we look at each other, we relate to each other, that we live our lives. And it's just getting worse by the year, and we are not learning. And this is a moment, if there ever were one, to learn a little bit about

what we should be doing in the media, as journalists, what should be taken in one way or the other way, but instead it's just going in the opposite direction, and it's only going to get worse. Yeah. I wonder how do you think Republicans are going to respond to this over the next week or two? Like, are they going to just try to get these three people, Lindsay and the two others,

and force that somehow to the public. And then, like, what's your, how do you think they'll handle this? Looks to me like they're all in. You know, the first press release, and I think we might have even been on air because I think I sent it right away. The first press release I got from the NRC after Janet Mills dropped out was calling Platner a Nazi. And that was actually very interesting to me because it suggests they think they have a really big weapon to use against him in an election where people will probably be going to the polls with gas prices north of $4 a gallon, probably. And I honestly, right. And so like Platner, we've interviewed him.

you know him. I think he seems like a dude who would be very interesting to have a conversation in a beer with. He, or maybe not a beer now, but he,

you know, is by Republican standards, extreme and by the average voters standards, extreme on certain issues. The guy referred to himself as a communist. He referred to himself as a socialist.

He says neither of those things are true. But it's very telling to me that Republicans are focusing on the not. Nazi stuff and not saying this guy is a communist who's going to make inflation worse. And again, just like steel manning what the Republican argument could be, he's going to make inflation worse. He's going to make your standards of living worse. He's in extreme on trans issues, et cetera, et cetera. They barely even talk about that stuff. It's all just been Nazi, Nazi, Nazi instead of

something that is closer to the average voters, like immediate concerns. And I think that's why my expectation is that they're going to go all in on this going forward also because. Because Lindsay knows a lot of people in D.C. Republican circles. People are like kind of excited to have something that they feel like is electric from someone they know is plugged into the network. It's different than somebody who you've never met. And so that's my guess of what happens. Before we wrap, there was one, what I thought was an error in the piece. that, but you know this IWF better than I do.

So here, let me put this up here. So at the, she says, so Ms. Fyfield said she had no connection to the campaign of Senator Susan Collins, Mr. Platner's likely Republican opponent. She acknowledged that independent women had been supportive of Ms. Collins, but said she had not been active with the organization. organization recently. And however, so on April 16th, April 15th,

here she is quoted at a House Republican event described as stay-at-home mom, independent women's forum. And she gives a quote, I have 13 friends who, it's a, you know, it's a conservative women's rights like event. This is, and it's something about probably, a pro natal policy, something I probably like, actually. But so, so here she is three, what, six weeks ago, identifying herself in a political, at a political event as IWF, after telling the times she hadn't done anything political with them for years.

And what was the year on that one? 2026. 226. Yeah, that's six weeks. Yeah, we were talking six weeks ago. Yeah. I mean, I would say that's typical because the way that it's their like kind of fellow thing is structured is that it's, I was saying this earlier with Crystal, it's kind of like a brand ambassador thing. There are some people who are fellows there who are like full time on staff and there are some people.

I legitimately don't even know if I'm still technically a fellow there. But I was at one point, I might still be listed as a fellow now. I haven't taken money for them. I've spoke for them without getting paid like a month ago. But other than that, like not much in the last several years. And so the way that it works is that like IW gets their branding basically for some people who use it a lot to go on Fox News and they'll book some people on Fox News, Fox Business or radio interviews or they'll place op-eds for them. Again, that is not the case with me, but that is how some people use it. And the conceit of the program is that conservative women are underrepresented.

These are underrepresented voices, especially like moms, underrepresented voices. IW doesn't take a position on abortion, which is really interesting and frustrating for some conservatives. But they're like very hard line on that. They won't go one way or the other on it. But they, the goal of the program is just to like get more conservative women into media. But they also do have, I think, if I'm remembering correctly, they have a C-4 arm that is, like an actual political, because you're not, if you're C3, you're not supposed to technically be political. It's a legal distinction, meaning you can't be involved in partisan politics, Republican,

Democrat, et cetera, but you can be involved in ideological, like politics in a different political sense. It's just not supposed to be partisan electioneering type stuff. And so that's, I don't know if she's affiliated with the C4 at all. I put all of this on my website, by the way, people can can look at, I just keep a running list of groups that I've spoken to and four and disclosures. It's a link to my ex-bile. But that may mean that she was just leaning into the brand ambassador part of it. Or it could mean that there was something more formal. IW says it was only, I think in the New York Times, they said she made like 15 grand between 2021 and 2022.

That would be very typical. And there are people who are just sort of like raising their kids and refer to themselves as their with their IW fellow title. at public speaking events because IW also sends people to go speak for things. So that would be my best guess. It's kind of like complicated inside baseball stuff,

but it's a, that's just how it works. The thing I had just put up there, like she has an author profile on her visiting fellow page and the most recent post was from October 2025. Hmm.

So she was so writing for them. So she was writing for them as recently as October and identifying herself with them at a public event six weeks ago. And I understand why she wanted to say, I'm not, you know, I'm just a mom now, Virginia. Like, I'm not a Republican operative,

but like, it goes to a little bit of credibility to when, when she is also, like, I think both sides here, kind of shading and fudging things. That one seemed like an actual material. It looks like I am technically still a senior fellow. I'm still on the website. Need your fellow. Well, look, it's still got counterpoints with Ryan Grimm there.

Let's see, what is it? Yeah, oh, yeah, I was on this podcast a lot several years ago. Okay, anyway, just like, I literally didn't even know that that existed. So just to make the point that it is used as like, for some people, it can mean something more formal. For other people, it can just be like an affiliation. Yep, that makes sense. And in the way some of these, the way they, I don't know if IW does this, but, just to let people in on how some of these things work.

For some, like say, New America Foundation, the person is responsible for raising the money. So like the fellow. Oh, wow. Yeah. So the fellow, well, sometimes New America will have its own pot of money and accept applications for fellowships. Other times you go out,

let's say you ran a big nonprofit and you built some good relationships with donors, when you leave that organization, you go to those donors and say, hey, I'd like to do a fellowship where I'm going to write a 50-page paper about how we're going to save climate

and you get a climate donor to give 200K or whatever to New America. New America takes a third for its administrative costs and the desk and Internet and overhead or whatever. And then they give you the title, New America Fellow, and move.

move the cash then through to you. I mean, I smart. Like, hey, okay. So we get 50 grand and we get like this nonprofit person's name and picture on our website. So not only is it free for us, we make money. Right. So yeah, that's a thing that happens in Washington. And C3s are really supposed to be like about influence and the entire C3 structure.

Like some of it is just like I'm actually here for another C3. I'm in West Virginia for a C3. Again, I have these all listed. But, like, C3 structure sucks. It needs to be changed. It allows for way too much grift and graft. It is a disaster. I think it is, like, sucking the life out of American politics in many ways.

So you just have to be kind of conscious of which, and like, C4s are very different than C3s. C4s are also very tax deduction for a C4, right? Right. Yeah. And C4s are very sneaky ways to be influential. like that's actual, I would call that dark money. Do you think as fair as I see fours? It is totally dark money because you can get it from dark vehicles to the point where you

never have to disclose. Yeah, if you have enough layers of darkness, it's very hard to get the light through. Yeah, which is why I think it's best to just disclose it all if you have any. I learned that from Tim Carney, who's my old letter. I think you know him, right? Oh, yeah, that's for sure. But anyway, if you're like an ideological person on one side or the other, it's hard to avoid coming into contact if you want to have like a normal middle class journalism lifestyle. But anyway, all that is to say, that's like way inside baseball. But all that is to say she's definitely a political operative. And it's foolish to act like otherwise, we both know that political operatives can have true stories. Like it doesn't necessarily mean it's not categorically BS because it's coming from a political operative. But it obviously, is a fair question.

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to play IHart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. Number one hits, millions of records sold, awards, sold out tours. You think that Jonas Brothers are satisfied? Nope, it's podcast time. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Hey, Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one. Paul Rudd.

You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition the office or something? I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchorman. Clearly, I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen. Listen to me, right?

Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused, stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We The UnHouse is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host, and for years I've created a space where the Un-House and their advocates can tell their own stories. the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQTIA plus community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. Woody Enhous is a two-time webby and Signal Award-winning show with many exciting guests

on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Whitcher, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to Wey and House on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Quick update on the California results, which continue to come in and continue to actually pretty dramatically shift the possibilities of what might happen. Election night looked very much like the top two in the L.A. mayor's race. We're going to be Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt. In the California governor's race, looked very much like it was going to be.

the Javier Bacera and Steve Hilton, the Republican, with Tom Steyer coming in third. Nothing is certain yet. Well, I shouldn't say that. Actually, two things are certain. Karen Bass will make it through in the L.A. mayor's race and Javier Bacera will make it through in the California governor's race. But the top two slots are now significantly up for grabs because as predicted, as more ballots are counted, the later ballots are favoring the left-wing Democrats.

So Steyer is closing the gap on Hilton and Nithia Rahman is closing the gap on Spencer Pratt. Let's go ahead and put this analysis up on the screen just so you guys can see the numbers here. This is from Zachary Domeni who's been tracking all of this or Domeni for Vote Hub. And this is the L.A. mayor's race. So in the late mail, you can see that Nithia Raman is performing quite well. In fact, she's very close to Karen Bass in terms of her positioning in some of this late mail. And his analysis here is that Rahman is hitting her benchmark to overtake Pratt. At this point, it's fair to say she is favored, though outstanding turnout remains uncertain.

The race is still tracking toward a very close finish. And Ryan, my understanding is part of what has shifted the analysis to is that they underestimated the number of ballots that remain to be counted here. The more ballots that are left, the better that is, obviously, for Nithia Rahman in L.A. and also the better it is for Tom Steyer statewide. Yeah, yes. And credit to Dave Deyen, who warned us on Monday, he said, be careful. Like there's going to be an enormous amount of Democratic vote share that is outstanding.

And it's going to be counted over the coming days. And on election night, it's going to look like the Republicans are doing much better than they will end up doing. Credit to me, I think I said if I would rather be Rama than Pratt on Tuesday. day. It's really impressive. At me. Good job, big guy. There you go.

The governor's race, I'm like, I feel like such a like East Coast Chopinist and I apologize to, we have a huge audience in California. I just, that state just politically frustrates me. Yeah, I know. This one party state,

which is dominated by corporate interests and doesn't have the same kind of urban cores that allow like a DSA-style movement that you have in like a Philadelphia or a New York to take hold, like the DSAs in California, I think car culture, you know, damages them. And the nimbiasm that comes along with, you know, having such, you know, having the kinds of cities that they have there. I think also then, you know, you know, poisons the ability to kind of organize in the same way that you get in like a Chicago. too, for instance. I think some politics may be more akin to like Westchester or like Long Island than like New York City.

Yeah. So, but Rahman, you know, looks like she's going to make the top two here. And Karen Bass, you know, former what trained with Cuban revolutionaries as the Republicans reminded us, you know, down the stretch. But the implication for the billionaire tax are significant. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because, and especially for the statewide top two,

because if you do end up with a Democratic shutdown and there's no Republican on the ballot there and no Republican on the ballot in L.A., which obviously a very large city and consequential in terms of the political dynamics in the state of California, Republicans are going to be pretty unmotivated to come out and vote, like, oh, do I want it to be Karen Bass or Nithia Rahman? Do I want it to be Javier of a Sarah, Tom Steyer?

And so you would expect that disproportionately Republicans would be the ones voting against the billionaire tax. And I think there are a number of other ballot initiatives where this could be consequential. Also can be very consequential for the congressional races because just like the statewide, you know, it's this jungle primary system. So they're, you know, you're going to have sort of lack of motivation to come out at all and vote for Republican candidates who are down ballot too. My understanding is that based on the numbers. And Mac, maybe can put this next element up on the screen here, that Steyer is gaining on Hilton. And exactly what he needs to happen is happening, which is that the longer the count goes on, the closer they get to, you know, the latest ballots that came in, the more the shift is going towards Steyer. And this other Republican candidate, Chad Bianco, who, you know, is kind of, you can imagine, is taking votes away.

from Hilton seems to be hanging in there more or less with his vote total because that was another danger that if he just totally collapsed in the final days and everybody voted for Hilton, who was a Republican, that would make it more difficult for Steyer to catch up. However, based on the analyses that I'm saying, it is more likely that Raman ends up in the top two in L.A. than it is that Steyer ends up in the top two statewide, although that is also appears to be basically a coin flip at this point. It's going to be very close based on everything I've scene. Well, I guess for the political consultants out in California, we hope that the, and for the influencers and the, you know, the TikTokers, the Instagrammers, all the paid influencers.

Tweeters, like, we can root for, we can root for Steyers, you know, many, many, many millions to continue to flood our social media feeds if he, if he wins. Wasn't the Sarah also caught doing that too, though? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, he had a whole astro-curf to, like, social media campaign that as soon as Walwell was out, like, like all of a sudden it's like the seramentum. And then people are like, who? I'm sorry? What?

I asked this is the guy. Javier's Hellrazers. And then all of a sudden it just vanishes. Like where'd Javier's hellraisers go? Huh. Just left with Steyer's influencers here. It's even though Steyer says like everything I kind of agree with generally, I'm like, he's still a billionaire.

And it's like better, I guess, that a billionaire buys it than. and like other billionaires buy it on their behalf? Yeah. But good Lord, is this what we have to deal with? Speaking of billionaires, though, trying to buy stuff, let me put up Rokana's district real quick. How much did these all-in goons and the rest of these, I don't know about the all-in guys specifically,

but how much they put in a lot of money behind an opponent to Rokana. Who doesn't even show up there in that graph? You have to view all candidates. To see him. Ethan Agarwal, I'll check the FEC and the Super PAC stuff later to see like what they spent on behalf of this guy. But at 4,000, so far, 4,896 votes, like you could have paid everybody $1,000 or something to vote for your guy, Ethan, and done better maybe than what they spent so far. And so it looks like.

As we got closer to this contest, I heard less and less from them about this candidate. Suddenly it got very quiet from them on this front. Data-driven gentleman in the end, yes, they saw the data not going their way. But now speaking of wasting enormous amounts of money, I remember we had Randy Villegas on the show, community college professor, auto shop owner from Bakersfield, who had the support of like Justice Democrats, I think Working Families Party, Bernie Sanders, AOC, like that whole congressional progressive caucus, I think even the congressional Hispanic caucus,

because it's a Hispanic district, like, got behind him. And the D-Triple-C and DMFI, Democratic majority for Israel, came in and dropped like more than $5 million for his opponent and coming after him with millions of dollars of attack ads, basically calling him like a child sex abuser in like incredibly gross ways. None of it true, but like the kind of like 30 second ads where you're like, wow, that's awful. And they spent millions and look at him. He's up right now, 2,100 votes, 5% as the votes keep coming in.

So it's hard to see how Jasmine Baines overcomes this. Jasmine Baines, you guys may remember, she's the one who said, well, she sponsored a resolution in the California legislature condemning a genocide of between 30 and 50,000 Sikhs in India. So she understands how to condemn a genocide.

She was asked at a forum if she thinks that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. She said yes. Then DMFI and D-Trivel C get behind her and she said, oh, no, I misheard the question. I don't think it is. And here she is now

may fail to make the top two. And in the process all Democrats will have done is spend millions of dollars of democratic money damaging their own candidate. Yeah. David Vallado is the Republican incumbent here. And this is, to me, a super important race because it's an attempt by,

like, Bernie to show, like, I'm not just Vermont. He loves doing that, like going to Montana, like where they got behind the Union smoke jumper out there who won and saying like, no, my stuff can work in Bakersfield, too. Yeah, I think that's never been more true than this moment as well. You know, I think there were other times when maybe that was more of a stretch. But now, for sure, he has that appeal and his style of politics have that broad-ranging appeal.

There's no doubt about it. What do you think in terms of, let's say that it does end up Bass and Ramen in the L.A. mayoral race, you'd have to think that Bass is favored in that circumstance. right? Do you think Raman has any, Nithia Raman has any shot? And just for people to know, she's not backed by the DSA, but she is, you know, certainly seen as more left wing than Karen Bass had relatively unimpressive campaigns, struggled in the debates, etc. But obviously, looks like it's going to be enough to knock Spencer Pratt online phenom out of the top two. But in any case, do you think she has any shot in the general, or do you think that in either case,

Karen Bass kind of has this thing locked up? I don't quite know enough about, you know, people there seem to think that Karen Bass, like, you know, I would trust people there more than my own instincts on this. It's hard to knock out an incumbent. You know, the fact that it even went to a runoff that she didn't get the 50% on night one is very unusual. And I think Pratt voters, even though a lot of them are like upset the Applecart kinds of voters, like they don't want to upset the Applecart with a deal. member. Right. You'll probably just stay home. Now, there's an interesting one unfolding in,

was it California, I think this is seven, or we covered the Doris Matsui-May Vang race, where Doris Matsui is in her 80s and has spent, her and her husband for more than 40 years have had this seat. She spent, and her back, put together a super pack to lift up like a Republican college kid to get it, try to get him into the top two. And they're close to getting there. I don't think they're going to make it.

But so this kid, Zach Wooden, is currently ahead by just 200 votes or so over May Vang, who's a, you know, I think she had justice, Democrats, basically the whole left wing. I think you're right. Yeah. Apperatus. We had her on the program. she seemed really impressive and Matsui agrees

like that's why Matsui has desperately spent and loaned her campaign tons of money to try to keep May Vang from making from making the top two and the fact that he's only up by a couple hundred votes

with like half the votes still to go and all of the Democratic votes are the ones that are outstanding suggest that Matsui's probably going to lose like I think in it in the general So that'll be one of the few incumbents. Interesting.

That actually gets knocked off. And she's, um, you also, did you see the Jimmy Gomez scandal? Speaking of sex scandals. No, I don't think I did.

So, uh, and it, consensual stuff, a little bit of, well, whatever, people can decide what they want.

Uh, Jimmy Gomez, um, the New York Daily News or, or is it with the post, the post now has like a, a LA tabloid. And they've just been going to-

The Daily News like not exist anymore. Right. Didn't Kushner like buy it and kill it or something like that anyway. I think there's like four reporters there left. But they're going hard at Gomez because he got caught and making out with Eric Swalwell's chief of staff a couple of years ago at some party in California. And it turned out they were in a long-term thing while he was the chair of the dad's caucus and like, doing this whole I'm such a great dad and blah blah. So he's getting busted.

He's getting busted for that. Now it's all no abuse alleged. It's all consensual stuff. You know, that's between him and him and the Lord and his wife and his mistress or whatever. But he has a Justice Democrat opponent who did make it into the runoff. Oh, interesting. Angela Gonzalez-Torres. and they waited, it seems like the Los Angeles Post or whatever this New York Post knockoff in L.A. is, waited until the primary was over to start dropping this.

And they're probably just going to, like, they've been putting him on the cover and like it's going to get ugly. I think they're just going to dog him, you know, throughout the summer and fall. And APEC in the past has spent millions to kind of bail him out from progressive challenges. But a lot of people think that this is the year that he goes down. So that's at least, that could be two incumbents that get knocked off. Wow. We miss it because it happens on Election Day in November and everybody's focused on like. The general election stops versus like who won.

Is there a Dempity party? Yeah. Yeah. One other question for you. Statewide. I mean, I don't think anyone thinks that Steve Hilton is going to be. be governor, so it's pretty clear if it's Hilton versus Becerra. Bacera is going to be the next governor of California. If it's Bcerra versus Steyer, though, you think Steyer has a shot? Because

I actually kind of do. You know, Bacera is not an impressive candidate. He is very corporate-backed. Like every major corporate interest you could imagine is basically gotten in behind him. Even some of his Biden administration colleagues have come and like, this guy was a terrible cabinet secretary. So it seems to me like, more time for voters to process the choice between these two candidates could actually benefit Tom Steyer. You know, I don't know how much like the identity politics plays into it. Obviously, there's a large Hispanic population in California. Does that make them more inclined to vote for Bacera? I don't know.

I tend not to really buy into that line of thinking, but that is an argument that's out there. But what do you think? Yeah, I think Steyer has a real shot. Also, like the endless money is going to help. So, yeah, I think it's a, I would put it at a toss-up if it becomes Steyer and Vassera. The other fascinating statewide race is, did you follow the Jane Kim insurance commissioner race at all? I did that. We should actually have her on next week.

So she won. And she put it up here. Like, this is actually quite something for California. because it's such a corporate dominated state. So she ran, as you're seeing here. Like, if you look at her, if you Google her, it says Jane Kim endorsed by Bernie Sanders. Like that's like her tagline for who she is,

affordable, available insurance for all. And so she's really trying to bring kind of state power to bear to try to like fix the brokenness of California. California. Are we talking about a, like, property insurance, all insurance, I guess, because I know they've got, you know, property insurance or sorry, yeah, homeowners insurance issues in a way that like Colorado and Florida and other states do as well. That's why we need to have her on. What on earth kind of jurisdiction does she have? Yeah. And what can she, because, you know, they've been pushing. Yeah, disaster. Here's disaster insurance. Which, you know, disaster insurance is becoming like auto insurance,

Medicare for kids, you know, flood insurance, disaster insurance, all this earthquakes, like this is all becoming with climate existential for places like Florida and California. This is actually something I, we have an interview with Oliver. Larkin who's challenging Jared Moskowitz and the Democratic primary. And first of all, Jared Moskowitz, such a villain, it's unbelievable. And when you learn all the things that he's done and said, describing himself as a Ron DeSantis Democrat and all these things. But in any case, one of the things that Larkin was also highlighting is what a crisis this is in Florida as well. I think

it's probably more of a crisis in Florida than anywhere else. And it's their real estate market is a mess right now, in part exactly because of this issue. So it's a major, increasingly major concern in a wide variety of states across the country. And then the other thing, just to note, you know, to go back to the Staira Bacera, Ray, since you mentioned insurance, I mean, Steyer does support Medicare for All in the state of California. And you can imagine, because this is one of, always one of the knocks on Medicare for all. It's like, well, you know, no state has ever tried it. It's never been successful. No one can pull this off. It was contum, you know, they tried to do it in Vermont and they failed.

And they, it basically got killed by Gavin Newsom without getting into the legislative weeds in California, even though it had a lot of momentum behind it. So if he was actually able to, you know, successfully implement universal health care in the state of California, which already is pretty close to having universal coverage, it's one of the top states in the country in terms of health care coverage. But that would be an extraordinarily significant development that I think, you know, would a lot of people would take notice. And also if it didn't work out and it had all kinds of problems. People would definitely take notice of that too, probably more so than even if it's successful. Yes, indeed. So I wanted to update everybody on a crisis that is developing here

in this country in the beef industry. We can put this up on the screen from NBC News. So they say that flesh-eating screwworm has returned to the U.S. after 60 years threatening the cattle herd. The case of New World screw-worm was confirmed in a three-week-old calf in LaPryor, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rawlins. A flesh-eating parasite that had been kept out of U.S. livestock for decades has been detected in Texas, threatening the nation's cattle industry and food supply at a time when prices are already high. They say that the parasitic flies larvae feed exclusively on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals while the fly is capable of infecting humans and pets.

Such cases are rare and pose a little risk to the broader public. The parasite does not pose a food safety threat, but a wider outbreak could still cost the livestock industry billions of dollars and put additional pressure on beef prices that are already at record highs. They go on to say it follows months of warnings from U.S. and Texas agriculture officials and cattle industry leaders as the pest steadily moved north through Mexico toward the American border. This is a quote from the Texas Agriculture Commission, Sid Miller. He said for months, the screw worm has rapidly advanced through Mexico in spite of the USDA's existing game plan. Instead of using every available tool, USDA moved to

slowly and relied solely on a partial solution that takes years to fully implement. So I don't know much about Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller, Ryan. I'm going to guess he's probably not a not a Libtar, I'm going to guess, probably relatively right-wing fellow who is criticizing the Trump administration here for their lack of concern and their lack of, you know, fully addressing this situation and allowing it to get to this crisis point. And to that point, if we can put this Forbes article up on the screen here as well, they did a look at, okay, well, who is to blame here? You know, is it fair to blame Doge for their cost cutting? And basically the answer here is yes. Screw worm in Texas cattle could drive up beef prices after Doge axed prevention efforts.

They go on to say that containment efforts may cause the government to implement widespread cattle movement restrictions, the return of screw worm, after the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency cut funding last year for a project dedicated to monitoring and containing new world screw warming Central America. So Doge cut that funding. That funding was apparently axed days before the U.S. ended a temporary suspension of cattle imports from Mexico, meaning livestock, was then allowed to cross the border

without any of the monitoring previously funded by the U.S. AID. So not only did they cut the funding for this project to monitor it, days later, they said, come on, you know, we can we can let more livestock across the border. And they also cut the funding for the USAID that would have been used to track that livestock going across the border. So truly, truly a perfect storm here that has resulted in this, you know, this development. And at the time, you had a bunch of, you know, American cattle ranchers and, uh, processors freaking out about allowing in the the Mexican cattle and arguing like this is going to bring in screw worm. And it's it's so ironic because Trump's entire schick is that he's protecting American manufacturers

and American industry. Yet when it came to beef in particular, he was, I guess it's the, he's just trying to get down the price of beef. You know, you could get down the price of energy inputs, and that would do more. But, and then he wanted to help out Argentina. So he also brought in a bunch of Argentinian beef. And the American cattle ranchers have also pointed out that because of the way that they determine what is American and what's not American, you can actually get a bunch of, like,

labels that say, you know, made in the USA on beef that isn't at all made in the USA. It's also this a really prime example of the way that business really does require good government to operate. Like there's this like fantasy idea that, you know, business would do so much better if it could just, if government would just get out of the way. Like get rid of the red tape. Like let the free market do its thing. And, you know, the screw worm has something to say. about that. Yeah. And so the, and no individual company can address the screw worm problem, obviously. Right.

That has to be a public, like, hemispheric wide approach. It's just, it's just infuriating and depressing. And you couldn't predict exactly what the doge cuts were going to do. But on this one, you could actually predict exactly what it was going to do. But overall, you couldn't predict which ones were going to manifest. This was one of the most predictable of them. Like, it's like, these screw worms are nasty. They were marching north.

Yeah. Everybody, they knew this was happening. And you're like, at that time, you're like, you know, we're going to defund that program and we're going to let more livestock across and we're going to defund the program to track that livestock. Yeah. You know, and now the response effort is is hamstrung too by all of the cuts to the agency and the demoralization and the loss of expertise and talent. Well, and these are the same people that, like, don't want lab-grown meat, but they also want to destroy the capacity to do the factory farming. So I guess they're probably just like Trump is ushering in the era of kind of clean energy by blowing up the fossil fuel industry. He's ushering in the era of lab-grown meat by just destroying the factory farm system.

Yeah. And obviously, beef is already extraordinarily. expensive. You know, we talked a while ago about how the Costco, one of the Costco executives, I think it was the CEO, came out and said, you know, first we saw people shift from beef to ground beef and from steak to ground beef and chicken. Now we're seeing them shift to like canned meat, canned tuna, canned chicken, just looking for the most inexpensive form of protein that they can possibly find. So, yeah, so this is another situation where, you know, things that we sort took for granted as kids that, you know, you could as a middle class family or working class

family, you could enjoy a stake now and again is going to become increasingly a rarefied thing that only the, you know, the wealthy in the upper middle class are able to even even contemplate and certainly not as a part of their normal diet. The other thing, I saw someone make this point on Twitter and I think this is a really important one too. Your screw whirmer is the sort of thing that it would be good for none of us to have to know about this, right? This is not a topic that I particularly want to have to study and be aware of. It's the sort of thing that in an era of a functioning government, you just take for granted that there's someone who is an expert on this, who is spearheading a project to make sure that this isn't a problem. And it's the way that good government

becomes sort of invisible when it's actually functioning. This was working for what 60 years, we didn't have a problem. Those people who were doing the work, they weren't celebrated. We didn't know about it. But it was actually a good use of money. And it's only now that that has been dismantled by a bunch of arrogant idiots who think that nothing matters and nothing ever happens. And you can just go in and smash things without any sort of real consequence.

It's when that happens that you go, you know, we probably should have a screw worm tracking program. That was probably actually a good use of tax dollars. So it's only in the absence. of those things functioning, that you recognize how important these programs truly are. Yep.

Yeah, exactly. It's utterly infuriating. Yeah, the arrogance combined with the, the fact that the people who drove this are going to be fine. Like, they can get steak, they can get burgers, they can get whatever they want.

It's everybody from the consumers to the ranchers to processors to everybody involved in the industry. And yeah, It's like, it's an un, it's an indefensible industry other than the fact that burgers are delicious and steak is, you know, like it's utterly indefensible, like how, you know, horrifyingly cruel it is to these living creatures. And so, yeah, maybe this is Musk's long game. Maybe he's a secret kind of vegetarian that's been, that's pushing to end the factory farming system all along. Five D chess from, he's always a few steps ahead.

Yeah, because he needs that lab grown meat to really develop so he can take it to Mars, right? Yeah, that's true. Hardly take a cow to Mars. Great point. You can imagine. Yeah. I can imagine the Fox News segment during the Doge era where they're going through all the ridiculous things that the government is spending your money on.

Like, I can imagine them being like screw worm. Studying the mating habits of screw worm. $100 million for screw worm. What even is that? You know, I mean, you can just. imagine the contempt. And they were probably literally studying the mating habits of screw worms, which is even funnier.

But of course you would do that. Like, how does it reproduce? That's a rather important thing to know. But yes, if Jesse Waters saw. And God forbid they did a transgenic study on it, then forget about it. Right. It was a trans like continental problem. And they're like, oh, get rid of this.

Done. We laugh. That literally could have happened. Literally could have happened because, you know, I did this podcast with Matt Bernstein, the BitFruti Pod. And we went through the testimony of these doge guys who were being sued. And that was how they went about it. They typed into, they fed the programs into chat GPT. I think it was. They didn't use grok, which is amusing. Anyway, into chat GPT. And then, you know, it would spit out like, here's the ones that have something woke in it. And they'd be like, okay, check the box. Like, they don't know anything. They're just going through, letting a chatbot pick out the words that they thought were like woke and objectionable. And then tossing out programs. That is the way that this operated.

A guy in the Navy told me that they came after a program that had non-binary in the name because it was about game theory and decision making. And it was a non-binary choice. In a naval battle, right. There was like non-binary. There were multiple different things that you could do in this moment. And they were like, you have to cut this. And he said they stood their ground. But it was a massive fight.

They're like, we are not cutting this and we're not changing the name because this is English. And we speak English. And they eventually won. But yes, but that was great. They had a lot of power. So, yep. So they did actually come for some of these Pentagon. People said they didn't go for the Pentagon.

They actually did come for some of them. the Pentagon stuff. Yeah. Searching for non-binary and stuff in the Pentagon, getting rid of anything that they thought was DEI. What a joke. What a joke. And here we are having to now deal with the consequences.

Who could have imagined? Indeed. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride, Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers. Plus personalized and curated playlists, like back in the day pride.

Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone. Listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. Number one hits, millions of records sold, awards, sold out tours. You think that Jonas brothers are satisfied? Nope, it's podcast time.

We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Hey Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one. Paul Rudd. You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition at the office or something? I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchorman.

Clearly, I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me, right? Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. Like, Prince, he dropped, like, 30 albums.

We dropped, like, five right now. Like, that's the rate we got to be going. Yep, that's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed when Nas' early videos. Which one? One love. Wow.

I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. and Nans was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations.

Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So, guys, we've covered a lot of important political campaigns throughout the cycle. We're going to continue to do so. But rarely do you have so many of the most central stories of our politics come together in one race like we do. With this one, you've got the Dem Tea Party, you've got an APAC-backed candidate who is losing support.

You've got the redistricting wars. You have an Assan Piker endorsement thrown in there for good measures. So joining us now to talk about his campaign for Congress in Florida's 25th District against Jared Moskowitz is Oliver Larkin. Great to see you, Oliver. Great to see you again, Crystal. Yeah, of course. So you've been running against Moskowitz for a while. We've spoken before. But the whole thing got kind of turned upside down because Florida decided to completely redistrict everything. So bring people up to speed, just a little bit of your background. We'll get into Moskowitz in a moment and what the redistricting did to your campaign, how it's all shaking out there. Yeah. So I'm running in this race as the only candidate who's organized a union in my workplace with the News Guild communication workers. of America. So I'm a union organizer. I'm a former Bernie Sanders campaign staffer. And I'm someone

who's not taking any corporate pack money in this race. And that's something we're really proud of. It is quite unique in South Florida, which for so long has been dominated by establishment politics. But we're showing that something different is possible. And it's never been more needed as we've seen the bottom fallout for the Florida Democratic Party. And that's really left us powerless to this latest redistricting scheme that Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have embarked on against the Florida Constitution and the Fair Districts Amendment. And what it did was it split our district into three new ones. So we're running in the new 25th district, which constitutes about 50% of the old district. But we've seen Republicans just try to grab at more and more seats. We've gone from a state

that was 16 to 12, a pretty even partisan redistribution. Now we've seen it go from a 20 to 8 map. Ron DeSantis drew the maps in 2022 behind closed doors. Usually when you do redistricting, it's done in the legislature. It's done in the light of day. It's subject to legislative review. But because of fair districts and that amendment in the Florida Constitution, Ron DeSantis knows that the partisan redistricting scheme that he's embarked on if it was seen in the light of day would be completely illegal. So that's why they've done it behind closed doors. And they've just gone even further at Donald Trump's behest. So this district, is this supposed to have been drawn in this redistricting to be a Republican seat, and I know you have some polling showing whether that's going to work out or not.

Yeah, so this is absolutely one that Republicans wanted to draw to advantage themselves to win in November. This is a seat that Donald Trump won by nine points in 2024, but Joe Biden won it by five points in 2020. And in 2018, when the state of Florida was decided at the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate election by a one-point margin of victory, Democrats also would have won this seat in that race. And we've done polling that shows me ahead of the two leading Republican contenders by nine points and 12 points respectively. Democrats have a 12 point generic ballot advantage. People are so upset with the cost of gas, groceries, housing. People are actually leaving South Florida in a reversal of the COVID trend because it's becoming so unaffordable down here. And so we have an advantage to

press and we see non-party affiliated voters breaking towards Democrats. And this is our moment that we need to assert the strongest candidate possible to motivate the Democratic base. We cannot miss this opportunity because, again, if we nominate the same milk toast centrist candidates that we've been doing, then we're going to see more of the same in Florida. So we're really trying to turn our state around. All right. So let's talk about your Democratic primary contender. So you're running against Jared Moskowitz. He is a current incumbent member of Congress. I think he would probably describe himself as proudly pro-A-PAC. I'll play a clip in a moment of him saying, of course, I'm going to continue to take APAC money and how dare you even question those of us who are recipients of these funds.

He also describes himself, I think, as a Ron DeSantis Democrat, which is something I've never heard of before. So that's very innovative on his part. Voted for the Lake and Riley Act. He called Rokana and Thomas Massey's Iran War Powers Resolution, the Ayatola Protection Act. He is, I think, you know, pretty steadfastly, one of the most pro-Israel Democrats in Congress, certainly. So let me go ahead and play this clip.

that you shared recently of him getting asked about his APAC funds and whether he'll continue to take them. And then we can get your reaction on the other side. I think one of the areas that some people may end up criticizing you on is, you are someone who do accept donations from APAC? Are you going to continue to take money from APAC? And what do you say to those critics who say that APAC has been a malevolent force here in the United States and many congressional races?

Yeah, am I going to take donations from Jewish? American, yes, I am going to take donations from Jewish Americans. Okay, and that's what APEC is. It is not anything other than Jewish Americans donating through an organization, just like there are a number of PACs, very progressive packs, by the way, in which very progressive people donate through a PAC and that PAC gives. And so this is part again of the singling out of just the Jewish organization. By the way, I don't even think they make the top 100 of PAC donations in the

country yet they're being singled out. So yes, Jim, I will continue to take donations from Jewish Americans who care about America. Your response, Oliver. He can't actually say he takes APAC donations because he knows how politically toxic it is. And I just want to set the record straight for people across the country who have any misconceptions about South Florida. In this new district, in the 25th district, one of the highest representative Jewish congressional districts in the country with about 25% of respondents in our poll in both the primary and general election, 86% of Democratic primary voters. 86% want to place conditions or even cease entirely military aid to Israel. One in every two Democratic primary voters wants at minimum conditions placed. One in three wants

to cease U.S. military aid. And this is a winning general election argument as well, because 68% of general election voters, Democrats, Republicans and independents want the same thing. So we talk about how support for Israel is a 90-10 issue where the people of the United States want to see these conditions placed or cease military aid entirely, which is my position. And APAC would have us believe differently, but it is not true. There is a majority all across this country that is disgusted by what our members of Congress on both sides are enabling by taking these APAC donations. And as Jared Moskowitz has done, authoring the House resolution to bar the State Department from citing data from the Gaza Health Ministry, it's literal genocide denial. And then he's gone ahead. And then he's gone ahead.

and centered Rashida Taleb, as you mentioned, with his opposition to the War Powers Resolution, his four purchases of Lockheed Martin stock hit an all-time high on the market the Monday after Donald Trump launched these illegal strikes. So there's a tremendous amount of corruption. And just to set the record straight about APEC as well, this is a group that supported 109 insurrectionists in the 2022 midterm. So this is not simply about, you know, Israel. It is about Apex's corrupting influence in our country and what they are empowering with the fascist. right. Yeah. Well, and when he says, oh, it's just support from Jewish Americans, I mean, that's not actually what APEC's mission is whatsoever. It's to enforce the lockstep support of the

positions of the Israeli government and, you know, has many supporters that are not, in fact, Jewish, and there are many Jewish Americans who, of course, pose deeply what APEC is up to in the positions that they support. Tell us a little bit more about Jared Moskowitz. What does he mean when he calls himself a Ron DeSantis Democrat. How has he positioned himself politically? Yeah, so the reference to being a DeSantis Democrat is Jared Moskowitz was politically appointed twice, not once but twice by our governor, once to the Florida Department of Emergency Management, and then to the Broward County Commission.

So Ron DeSantis has been Jared Moskowitz's stepping stone to Congress, and it's why he's so reluctant to criticize the governor when he's gone after Pride Flag Street Art in the city of Fort Lauderdale in our district and in other cities across the state, Jared Moskowitz has not spoken out against it. When Jared Moskowitz went to tour Alligator Alcatraz, which was set up by the DeSantis administration, Jared Moskowitz said, don't call this a concentration camp, as he is literally taking max out donations from the private security contractors

working not only at Alligator Alcatraz, but that we're also putting in bids for the Gaza Board of Peace. So Jared Moskowitz owes his political career to Ron DeSantis, and that is how he is position. himself. He doesn't have a bad word to say about any Republican. If you've heard him in some of his viral clips on the House committees, he is saying not that Donald Trump can fail, only that he can be failed by his subordinates like Pam Bondi and Christyome. Jared Moskowitz was considered to be Trump's FEMA pick, the only Democrat in Trump's cabinet. And the day that we launched this campaign,

a poll went out in our district asking if the election were held today and the candidates were Jared Moskowitz, a Republican with Donald Trump's endorsement and Oliver Lark and the Democrat, for whom would you vote? So Jared Moskowitz, I fear very much as someone who could be a turncoat after winning this election and crossing over to the other side. And again, using the excuse of anti-Semitism on the left, I just saw before we jumped on here that he's once again criticizing Hassan Piker. This is someone who is punching left reflexively and doesn't have a bad word to say about the fascist, right? That is driving our state and our country into the dustbin. My recollection is he takes big tech and crypto money as well.

Yeah, he took over a quarter of a million dollars from Sam Bankman-Fries Pack in 2022. He also is very much enmeshed in the artificial intelligence kind of support. I mean, Palantir just moved their corporate headquarters to South Florida, to the city of Aventura in the 25th district. So it is open season for these fascist collaborating organizations. and corporations to move down here. We've got the headquarters of the Geo Group, the private prison corporation,

headquartered in Boca Raton, right across the street from Florida Atlantic University in our district. And we can talk about how Jared Moskowitz publicly recommended a Geo Group private prison executive to lead a public university in our district. As we now see the new ICE director, the acting director,

was a 12-year executive at Geo Group. And we see the controversy around their administration of Delaney Hall in New Jersey. we are at the epicenter of this in South Florida, and we cannot allow Democrats to be paying lip service to these corporations that are increasing mass surveillance over Americans that are violating our civil and constitutional rights. We have to make a stand, and it has to be here in this primary.

Let's talk a little bit about you and your journey. I was reading a profile of you that you were working for a political consultancy. You found yourself like sending out all of these Adam Schiff fundraising emails, and you had kind of like a, how did I end up here moment when you were at a fundraiser for him. There were Gaza protesters outside. You're like, wait, I'm on their side. What am I doing here? Can you talk just a little bit about what that journey has been for you and what made you decide to want to jump into this race?

Yeah, absolutely. So when I was 23 years old, I was graduating from college with a mountain of student loan debt. And I was working for eight bucks an hour as a line cook in my college campus restaurant. And I saw Bernie Sanders talking about a $15 minimum wage and Medicare for all and college for all. And for the first time in what felt like my life, I heard a politician describing the material conditions that I was working under and providing a path forward to make my life better. So I was so inspired by that as he was down 50, 60 points in the polls that I actually quit that job as a line cook.

And I drove to New Hampshire just to show up at the office and show up every single day until I could get a job on his campaign staff. and I traveled the country with the Sanders campaign. After that campaign was over, I went to the digital marketing agency that the campaign used. I helped organize a union as a member of the organizing committee, one of the first political consulting firms to win a union in tandem with my comrades' efforts to establish the Campaign Workers Guild to unionize the political campaign industry in that 2018 cycle.

But you go into politics with this belief that you are fighting for something greater than yourself, that you're fighting for your ideals. but in this corrupt campaign finance industry and in the kind of corporatized and business like political campaign industry, we just see these recurring themes of layoffs, of taking advantage of these young, bright-eyed campaign staffers, laying them off and then having them start over from scratch after election after election. And so after having gone through that a few times and really just ultimately for my own job security, taking a position and finding myself at the same time that I was working to oppose Donald Trump and was hired to start working with

Adam Schiff two months after the January 6th insurrection. I felt like there was a tremendous amount of importance in what I was doing. But at the same time, I felt that I'd strayed so far from the original values that brought me into politics in the first place. And after we saw, just as in 2016, in 2024, everything that you are told to accept as a matter of course, everything that you are told to tolerate from this Democratic Party establishment in pursuit of a larger goal of defeating fascism, of defeating Donald Trump, we saw that that just was not true. And you're exactly right, Crystal. When I found myself at a fundraiser for Joe Biden in South Florida, and I saw three Palestine protesters on the other side, it was clear to me that I was

so far from where I had originally entered in politics to affect the kind of work and change that I wanted to see. And then when I saw my congressman, Jared Moskowitz, blaming progressives for why we lost the 2024 election in the same breath that he is becoming the first Democrat in Congress to join Elon Musk's doge caucus. I just knew that I did not want to go back and continue to do more of the same. I actually was offered a position to do Jared Moskowitz's emails. But instead of doing that, I decided to stand up to him because we have to change this campaign finance industry. It's gone from the empowerment of small dollar donations against the corporate packs and the super PACs to now this just total invasion of privacy where we see big tech rearing its ugly head and creating more and more incentive not to affect political change, but to raise the stakes of the kind of partisan furor that is really driving people so crazy. with our politics. And I just needed to break out of it and really return to my roots that I found on the Bernie Sanders campaign and be that kind of change agent that I wanted to see for over

a decade in South Florida where I grew up. And this is the race where I had to make that stand. Can you give people a little bit of a window into the sausage making of that campaign fundraising industry? Because, you know, I ran for Congress at this point. It's been a million years ago in 2010. And obviously, fundraising dominates your day. At the time, you got all these calls sheets. You're just calling through donors endlessly. It gives you some like data on them and what they've given to before. We were, you know, we're sending on emails. This was really pre text messages, but we're constantly trying to come up with like, okay, what's the email that's going to grab their attention? And there's almost like this arms race of attention grabbing. What does it look like today? When you were doing fundraising for Adam Schiff, what was the sort of like mindset that you had? And as political events would unfold, or if Trump, like, said his name or called him a name, how were you thinking about how do I maximize what I can pull out of people's in the grassroots pockets? Yeah, it's all about that rapid response as soon as Donald Trump tweets something as soon as

there's a breaking news event. You are going into the text messaging platform. You're going into the email platform, and you're sending it out. And we even see how this is used now to prop up establishment candidates. And there's one very prime example here in South Florida with the Senate candidate that's running against Angie Nixon in our U.S. Senate primary. There are D.C. politicians, establishment Democrats that just select at the very start of a cycle, this is the person we're going to get behind. We've seen how Chuck Schumer has done that with Janet Mills and Maine with a candidate out in Iowa, who's up for election today against a more progressive candidate. And they just funnel all of this energy, all of this money into,

pre-selecting for us rather than letting the voters decide, these are the people that we're going to boost and to elevate. And there's a tremendous amount of violation of our data privacy. I remember when I got into political fundraising, you would run petition campaigns on Facebook to sign up in support of Medicare for all to get on Bernie Sanders email list and affirmatively opt in. Now, with the way that the political finance industry works, you're just seeing who ran for my seat last time.

I'm going to buy their entire list. And before you know it, you donate to one candidate and you end up on the fundraising list of 12 that you've never heard of before. And it just becomes an overwhelming, oversaturated, politicized kind of effort that really does not directly connect with people the way that they believe they should when a candidate reaches out and asks them for money. So what we're trying to do is very different running on this grassroots fundraising model. Of course, I don't have any politicians in Washington, D.C. that are boosting my campaign from the very start. This was grassroots from the beginning. And the only way that we've been able to grow it

is by just going out there and speaking the truth. And I think one thing that I've been really proud of on this campaign when I went on Hassan Piker Stream, Wired wrote an article after the fact to say, this is how political fundraising is changing in this new environment where people expect a greater degree of accessibility. They don't want to see, and I'm sure candidates, including myself, don't want to spend all day, every day on the phone. So if we can speak to mass audiences and connect on issues and discuss ideas and also use that as a means of fundraising, that's, I think, the recipe to at least elevate more grassroots candidates. But then when we get in there, we absolutely need to enact campaign finance reform

with public financing of elections. We cannot continue to ask people across the country to donate five bucks, ten bucks, 20 bucks for what is this, the most important election of our lifetime for the fifth cycle running. I mean, we need to change and actually move. afford and overturned Citizens United and return our democracy to something that's more participatory and less, you know, subject to whether or not you pay at the door. I'd never been more convinced that that is absolutely existential if we're going to continue forward with anything approaching even like assemblance of democracy. It's just gotten so

incredibly out of hand. I wanted to ask you a little bit about Florida and this issue in particular, this is something that Sager and I've covered a bit, which is the housing market in Florida. and someone shared with this with me recently. I wanted to get your reaction to it. So this says as of this morning, 12% of Florida's four sale homes are an active fire sale territory. That means they've been sitting on the market,

the sellers actively cutting prices and increasing the frequency of those price cuts. Pressures mainly concentrated in Tampa and Fort Myers, where fire sales now top 30% of listings in some submarkets. That means sellers cannot find buyers even though they want to.

And the angle that Sager and I have covered is how difficult and expensive it is increasing on sometimes impossible to get homeowners insurance in Florida, primarily because of climate change and hurricane and flooding risk in vulnerable communities. And so I wonder what you can tell us about the housing market in Florida and how much that comes up on the campaign trail for you also. Yeah, it comes up all the time. And running a grassroots campaign, I'm out there canvassing every weekend. I'm talking to voters face to face. And I've been in working class communities in our old

district in Margate. I spoke to a Puerto Rican Marine Corps veteran who's over the age of 65. He's on Social Security on a fixed income and his homeowner's property insurance doubled from $3,000 to $6,000. And the math just doesn't add up. And so people are now fleeing the state of Florida and looking for more affordable places in the country to live. There's long been this narrative since COVID and since Ront de Sanchez was campaigning on the pre-state of Florida that we were having an influx of in migration and the population is growing. But we've seen in recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal and other outlets that people are now fleeing South Florida because the property insurance crisis is so bad.

And this is connected to other parts of the country. In Florida, we suffer from hurricanes from flooding. But if you go out west, it's wildfires. It's extreme drought. And it's really precipitating a need for a national homeowners insurance solution to lower costs and get control of these rates. But Democrats like Jared Moskowitz aren't helping. If you look at Lenar Homes, the private home construction industry, their top three donation recipients in the 2024 cycle were Jared Moskowitz, Jared Moskowitz's PAC, and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

So if that doesn't tell you where Jared Moskowitz's priorities lie when it comes to affordable housing, this is who we have as the Democratic Congressional Committee boosts Moskowitz in our primary as a frontline candidate despite being the least effective Democrat in Congress, and it's directly tied to his inability to address the homeowners insurance crisis, his inability to address the rise of utility rates as he's taken over $27,000 from the parent company of Florida Power and Light, not only to mention a Southern company in Duke Energy and Next Air Energy, FPL's parent company is now trying to merge with Dominion in a multi, multi, multi, multi billion dollar deal. Jared Moskowitz is not addressing these concerns, but we need to lower the cost of housing. And it has to include repealing the

Fair Clock Amendment and passing legislation like Ilhan Omar's Homes for All Act to really build, you know, millions of new affordable homes across the country because the cost of housing in Florida is far too high and climate change is only making it worse. And then my last question for you is about the Democratic Party in Florida. Obviously hasn't done very well in recent years. I'm old enough to remember when Florida was the ultimate swing state, no longer. What did Trump win it by double digits? I know like 13 points this last time around. Ron DeSantis seems to be dominant.

But I have seen some polling recently that shows both the Democratic gubernatorial candidate and the Senate candidates are in range of, you know, having a shot. So I wonder if you think that that is a possibility, why you think Democrats have, you know, fallen off so hard in the state of Florida. and what you think needs to be done to write the course if it's possible. Yeah, I was having a conversation about this with Richie Floyd, who's another Democratic socialist who was recently reelected, unopposed to the St. Petersburg City Council.

And we had a call on Florida Emancipation Day, and we were reflecting after I had worked on a 2018 amendment four campaign to restore voting rights to over a million Floridians in that next election, Ron DeSantis was making political propaganda out of arresting recent, returning citizens with the recently restored right to vote. Of course, the Florida legislature passed what amounts to a poll tax after by requiring that returning citizens would their right to vote restored, would have to pay for court fees before they were actually eligible. So they're creating political propaganda to discourage recently reenfranchised voters from participating in the

process. Of course, they have purged the voter rolls and made people who are inactive voters just purging them from the roles entirely. So Republicans have been touting, this $1.5 million voter registration advantage, but it's not actually reflective of how people in our state feel. And right now, the way that we feel after 30-plus years of unified Republican governance in Tallahassee and a trifecta in Washington, D.C., is that our problems amount to the Republican Party's leadership.

And so we are looking for alternatives. There is not a tremendous amount of trust in the Florida Democratic Party, which is why campaigns like ours are so important to show people that are sick of both parties, that we're asserting a new vision for our state. I do really feel like there is a chance to win more seats in Florida this cycle. We've seen in our polling, non-party-affiliated voters are breaking in some cases 20 points towards the Democratic Party. And this is a state where NPAs make up, I believe, more than both Republicans and Democrats independently. This is a working class state. It's a state that is rejecting partisan politics. And I think that's why we're seeing this kind of movement. But to, again, again, take the greatest advantage of it. We cannot simply kowtow to what the Washington, D.C., corporate democratic establishment wants because what they've prescribed for us over the past decade has only led us to more and more failure.

So we need something different. All right, Oliver, to help you more, they can support your campaign if they are so inclined. www. www.oliverfor Congress.com. That's where you can find us on social. You can donate some money. And if you're in Florida, you can volunteer. And primary is August.

Am I right about that? August 18th. Okay. So you got, you still got a little bit of time, but it's a fast approach. I'm just thinking about, you know, all these campaigns that are coming up like this week and next week and whatever. But certainly in the home stretch here. Oliver, thank you so much for taking the time. It's great to reconnect with you.

Thank you so much, Crystal. All right, Ryan. First AMA question we have here is from Andrea, who says, can we see Ryan on Theo Vaughn? Would that be a possibility? I think you guys would vibe. That would be good, Ryan. I think that would be a good vibe. That would be fun.

Yeah. I think he was got a call. I'm not pitching. But where does he tape? Is he a Texan? What's his story? He's Nashville, I'm pretty sure. Okay.

This is a funny one from Lee. Well, I guess it's kind of funny, but it's also kind of serious. Lee says, why is China not making Cuba a solar-powered state? So I actually have an interview that I need to get up with the Cuban official who oversaw or is overseeing the energy transition and it's fascinating to clean energy. And she said that it's China. Like China is totally responsible for what they've been able to do. And at times, they're getting to 25, maybe 25% renewable generation. But China could be doing a lot more. Like they have, they have so much stuff.

And they could, they also have so many people. Like, if they, they can apparently build a city of 10 million people in like six weeks. Like, they could send over a couple thousand people plus just flood it with the panels and set it up. Like they could. So the fact that they haven't, like they've, they've been very helpful. Cuba would be screwed without them, but they could do so much more. And I think they don't want to poke the U.S. bear. Their approach has always been to just focus on their.

They've been a bit careful in Iran, too. Yeah, they are the opposite of the U.S. when it comes to how we kind of engage with the world. We're everywhere all the time and violently. They just want to like come in, build a road, get you on the hook, extract your resources like the road collapses like too bad got your resources

and they have like this minimal like intel footprint but they probably don't want to jeopardize that because what that could mean the foothold for them in the future could be really important so I guess maybe they wouldn't want to have some type of full scale military

it wouldn't be in their interest if there is some full scale like military blow up over Cuba because then they probably if Trump does to Cuba what he did to Venezuela then there's no Chinese foothold there, I guess. It is sad because it's like, you know, the island is a wash and sun. Yeah.

They should not be relying on oil. Mm-hmm. This one is from Benjamin T. who says, do you think Massey could still win his congressional seat by running as an independent? My first answer to that would probably, my instinct is no. I wouldn't say it's impossible,

but it's just a very, I mean, he lost the Republican primary in a very Republican district. So do I think there are probably some, like independent dem leaners who could help get him. I mean, he was 45% in the Republican primary. So it's, I think mathematically possible. But I would just say probably unlikely because all that same money that came in this first time around would come in even hotter. They've got plenty of money to spend against him. So, and he did well raising money, small dollar money in particular. But I don't

know, Ryan. What do you think about that? You know that district much better. Yeah. That's So, yeah, it would be really tough, given all the money. Would the Democrat drop out? I assume there's a Democrat who won the nomination, but it has no chance. That's a good point. That's a good point, actually, because I bet, you know, even if there's 20%, 15% like hardcore dumb voters in that district, they're probably not going to vote for Massey.

So most of them. Yeah, right. If you're a national Democrat, you like Massey because he's been bucking the Republicans. If you're a local Democrat, you probably are annoyed at his. him for like because you know him better and you know that freedom caucus history. He's never been HFC. Technically, I used to like, I used to have to get reminded by HFC by that all the time and be like, hey, you guys have, yeah, anyone, but he was HFC a Jason.

Yeah. Yes, yes. He hung out with them. This one I'm curious. Joe says, what's your take on Zorro Ranch Epstein, New Mexico cover of allegations? And Ryan, I'm very curious what your take is on that. Because I don't know that you, I've ever heard you talk about it. But that story is endlessly fascinating.

Yeah, I don't know enough about it. But, yeah, like, again, like very little investigation. Speaking to the New York Times, like, come on. Like, there's a lot, like, if you're going to put months of resources from your top reporters into, like, investigating something, I don't know if Grand Platner's ex-girlfriends are the place you're going to strike gold, like, send them out to the ranch. Like, yeah. Like, there's a lot to uncover still when it comes to the behavior of Epstein and his

cohort. Yeah. What do you think? I mean, there's so much. What's the craziest part to you about it? How incurious New Mexico officials were about it for so long. Very, very, very, very bizarre. I went on Google Earth and spent like a

honestly way too long probably an hour one day scouring the entire area around the ranch because the ranch's address was in all of the emails so I popped it into Google Earth and just was like it is so so remote and from what we know they knew all of these high wealth people were coming in and out and it's in the middle of absolutely nowhere

it's just so so strange I don't know that there's going to be How are they going to do one on this Albanian island? Right. Yes, that story. Tom Elliott had an interesting breakdown on his sub-sac. People could go read about that. Yeah, it was quite an interesting piece. So if we do, I don't know if you have any more thoughts on that, Ryan.

I can pull up one more AMA, if not. Okay. So this one is, okay, so we'll end it on this one from Robert, who says, pundits are always comparing the conditions in the USA to the fall of Rome. I'd like to hear them compare conditions here to France before the revolution. Can you? Ryan, that's a great question for you, I think.

Wait, what was that one again? So pundits are always comparing the conditions, Robert says, in the USA to the fall of Rome. I'd like to hear them compare conditions here to France before the revolution. The conditions in France before the revolution were that the food prices were going insane. And inflation was bankrupting the country. And that's specifically why they called the National Assembly to enact some type of policy to turn around the inflation and the bankruptcy. And once the assembly was gathered, they were like, how about we'd go a little bit further and do the whole, you know, it took many years for that to unfold. So yeah

Ironically You know We have the same blue-red Situation where The rural areas of France Were not at all keen On how Paris was going about this And in fact

They're like The bloodiest Part of it where You know they say 20,000 people were killed or whatever in the in the terror like almost all like there were a decent amount you know beheaded by the guillotine in Paris a lot but almost all of them were killed in the von dera these catholic kind of opponents of the revolutioners went out there and just slaughtered them by the that by the thousands i saw twitter keeps sending me an ad for some right-wing film

about the Vandei. Have you seen this? No, that's so niche. I'm like, man, I want to say, I actually want to see this. Like, and look, I will cop. What the left did to the right in the Vande is horrifying. Down in the south, they were putting Catholics on barges and sinking them. The Spanish Civil War, too. That's how, yeah, that's, was a huge component of that too.

Um, but so, you know, there, so there was a, And basically that was that was actually draft related. That that wasn't like they weren't they were like okay revolution whatever. They want the Paris wanted them to serve in the wars and also they were coming after the Catholic priests and making them sign loyalty oaths and if they wouldn't sign loyalty oaths basically killing them. It was it was ugly. I want to go see this movie. Let's let me see if I can find it. Yeah.

I mean, there's always this debate about, you know, is Rome about the fall of the, is it about economics? Is France about economics? Is Rome about economics? Is Wymer Germany about economics? And I think it's, or is it about culture? And I think it's like very obviously always a combination of like you have this, there is this thread of elite cultural decadence that you always see. It seems to always presage the fall of an empire. But I don't think it's just one or the other.

I think Weimar, you clearly see economics and culture. I think that's the same thing with Rome. I think it's probably the same thing with France. DeSat and all of that stuff happening as people can't afford bread. And so, I mean, actually, you could probably talk, well, I was going to say Russia, but that may be more debatable. But that's, go ahead. Want to watch the trailer? Let's do it.

It's called, it's called victory or death. And this is about the reactionary von derby region. So this is a right wing. This is a right wing attempted a film. Let's see. See how they do. The Convention National has decreed the level of 300,000 for combat to the frontier of the East.

No! The war! My brother, you don't believe not they're not in French. The right wing's doing it in French? A man. I can't believe they're doing it in French. It's all French? Now here come the revolutionaries going out in the countryside.

Earth to be ath in. Bring off against war. And now the rural folks are about fighting back. And it's soldiers. We go, the boys. We're in. Wow. I think we're going to have to do a screening in this.

We need to stop that. Victory. I mean, listen. January. I'm watching that, and I'm thinking as a non-Catholic, I'm still frightened that you're going to put me in a camp, Brian. But that is interesting that they're doing a film on that, that there's like a right-wing film on that now.

It was an indefensible slaughter. overreach by my comrades, my citizen comrade. I cannot defend it. It's always, I mean, I wouldn't get a good revolutionary because like it, it was like essential, I guess, to like locking in the gains of the revolution. I would know, I don't have the stomach for it. Well, but that's also.

Big of mind knows, knows that too much of squish. Well, there's, yeah, you get dangerous when you start getting to end, justify the means territory, which is kind of. the theme of the whole show, like even when we're talking about on a much, much, much, much smaller, smaller scale of platinum stuff. Like, that does get, you don't want to be on the person, you don't want to be the person who's causing people to throw out the rulebook or the person throwing out the rule book, the rule book, if that makes sense. Like, because what happens is you get Donald Trump saying, he who saves his country violates no law in all caps on freaking

true social, which is maybe an apocryphal Napoleon quote, but a, apolle, attributed to Napoleon nonetheless. And so that's maybe the, the theme of the show today. That's the 1793 French Revolution for three years now. Shire, a young man retired from the Royal Navy, has been back home. Ah yeah, you got to have the retire guy who just wants to be left alone. In the country, the anger of the president's rumbles. They call on the young retiree to take command of the rebellion. The fight for freedom has only just begun.

Oh, yeah. So it's got that thing where they're like, he's like, I'm out of the games. son, don't bother me with this rebellion. No, the radicals, they're coming for us. They're coming for our way of life. And they literally were coming for their way of life. Like they were trying to. Yes, they were trying to kill all the priests.

They replaced the calendar. Yes. They replaced the week. They don't want that Christian calendar. They got rid of the week. They made it a 10-day week because they were like, this whole seven-day thing is irrational. We're doing 10 days.

Yeah, they, they, anyway. There's a good rest of history series on the French Revolution, Tom Holland and Dominic Sanbrook, if people want to brush up. So yeah, I'm going to watch that. Yeah, it looks good. How is Mel Gibson not involved in that? I do not know. Yeah, it's like French Revolution Apocalypse. Yeah, actually, he's probably involved somehow.

There's no way he missed out on that. Oh, man. Well, Ryan, I guess we can leave it there. We did our AMAs and I love the AMAs. So that was a little bit of fun. Actually, not really that much fun because we were talking about Revolution. But anyway, we'll let everyone enjoy their weekends on that note. Anything else, Ryan? I think that's it. All right. Well, thank you everybody so much for tuning in. We're going to be back. Of course, we're always here over the weekend if there's breaking news. So stay tuned. If there's a major story, you can bet we'll be on it and we will come to you with the news as soon as we can. Otherwise, we will see you back here.

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