Pod Save America - Trump Unloads on No Kings

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

After millions rally at No Kings protests, Donald Trump posts an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown, spraying poop from a fighter jet onto the crowds below. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy discuss how far we've fallen and then get into the news, including the political prosecution of John Bolton, Trump's threat to send troops to another California city, and the prospects for peace in Ukraine, war in Venezuela, and the breakdown of the Gaza peace deal. Then, Tommy sits down with Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, to discuss his recently resurfaced Reddit comments and the disillusionment he experienced after returning from Afghanistan. Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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It's the water gate. Really didn't. MSNBC presents Season 2 of The Blueprint, hosted by Jen Saki. Each week, she talks to leading Democrats about how they plan to win again, including Texas Congressman Greg Kassar, who chairs the Progressive Caucus, Congresswoman Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first openly trans person elected to Congress, and more who are helping to shape the future of the party. The Blueprint with Jen Saki, Season 2.

Listen now wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts. Welcome to Podsafe of America. I'm John Faber. I'm John Lubbett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we got Pete Hegseth and J.D. Vance celebrating the Marines by having them detonate artillery shells over California freeways. Donald Trump showing us he's not a king by musing about more domestic troop deployments and political prosecutions,

all while the President of Peace struggles to get a handle on Gaza, Ukraine, and a growing military conflict. He's now started in the Caribbean. Then later, you'll hear Tommy's exclusive interview with Graham Platner, who's running for Senate in Maine and has had quite a week. He's had a week. There's been a lot of reporting on Reddit posts. he made over the years, some of them pretty controversial. So we walked through a lot of those. We talked about his time in the Marine Corps and in the Army and deployed overseas and what it did to him, how it made him feel about the country, and a lot more.

So check it out. Check it out. But first, organizers say that nearly 7 million people turned out to protest at more than 2,700 no King's events all across the country, which would be 2 million more people than the last protests in June and one of the largest single-day demonstration. in American history. The protests were almost entirely peaceful, quite joyful, and patriotic,

with very few arrests. All this, despite the White House and Republican leaders, were referring to the event as a hate America rally and maligning the Americans who showed up as Hamas-loving terrorists and Soros-funded Antifa radicals. Not entirely wrong, but... Yeah, that was just us.

This bizarre line of attack continued on Monday when Speaker Mike Johnson and other senior House members held a press conference with photos of just four protest signs that supposedly proved their point. Here's what they said, along with Johnson's answer to a pretty shitty question. Congratulations. They didn't burn any buildings down. That's a big achievement for the left. We got to see on display what that hate America rally we've been talking about was really all about. The Marxists, the radicals, and the Islamist, the Democratic Party promoted this weekend.

What does it say that the president of the United States over the weekend released a video of him pooping on the American people The president uses social media to make a point you can argue he's probably the most effective person who's ever used social media for that he is

he is using satire to make a point is that satire For those of you unfamiliar with the video that the reporter was referring to, please enjoy Now, if you're just going to the band zone. Now, if you're just listening to the audio of this pod,

the president posted a video of himself wearing a crown while flying a fighter jet, to King Trump that sprayed what certainly looks like shit all over the Americans who turned out to exercise their right to assemble. Guys, thoughts on the protest and the poop video? You can sort of take them one at a time. I did see that the New York Times described Trump as, quote, flying a jet that dumps brown liquid on demonstrators. And I think that's actually the only accurate thing you could say because it is AI.

It's not clear where the brown liquid came from in the fighter jet that Trump was flying. It would presumably have had to have been loaded up in advance, a payload as it were. I just remember we worked in the White House, and I remember a president put his feet on the desk. And that was a scandal. I remember we went from brown suit to brown liquid. Yeah. Yeah, we're in brown town. Yeah, yeah, right, it goes brown suit, brown poop, and then the brown shirts, that's a real bummer.

Just shitting all over Americans. Did you see Kenny Loggins ask for it to be taken down because it's an unauthorized use of danger zone? as he should song still banks as he should there's also the the shit hit uh an american flag too that was in one of the in one of the scenes which is interesting because trump is so that you can't burn the american flag and he's going to throw you in jail for a year but i guess he can he is the king so he can poop on the american flag if it bounced it off harry sisson's head and lands on a flag yeah that was hair that was uh uh gen z influencer harry sisson very nice smart guy just talks about politics so the president poops on him a 23 year old he

bore the brunt of the shit yeah look it's all very stupid uh but man we just like there really is this double standard where if a democrat says anything remotely critical of a subset of the population these people lose their fucking minds and it is completely acceptable talking about the deplorables i'm talking about deplorables well that was hillary clinton doing it but anybody you know you know and she can't do anything right but the uh but like you can't like anything but meanwhile these guys they love making fun of people from the cities they love shitting on you know urban america and they and literally now and it's just there and you know they they they they clutch their pearls at anything by the way they like they that uh they defend anything these people say in a group chat but then

if grand planter says something it's because democrats are you know will accept anything there's just like the double standard on what republicans are allowed to say about their fellow americans versus what democrats are allowed to say is like unending yeah i just like that uh johnson could only find four fucking lame photos for his press conference like I would I thought to myself that when the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful patriotic joyful that they would just I didn't think that they would be like oh sorry we were wrong I think they would just move on to something else but to double down on it is crazy they're so stupid I mean if you'd been to any protests since what 2017 you knew exactly what it was going to be is a bunch of people out there having a good time

funny signs, people honking, goofy costumes sometimes. And like, I took my kids, you know, like, we made it about 20 minutes because it was basically nap time and it was hot. And they were like, where am I? Why is everyone honking? But it was fun. And like, obviously that was going to be the case. And the most patriotic thing you can do in this country is criticize your country and fight

to make it better. And that's what everyone is doing. And Speaker Johnson knows that. And he's just playing along with the Trump show. Love it. I think you went downtown. Yeah, we were in Hollywood with the kids. I feel like that was a bit, that was the big one.

Yeah, I like, the downtown is where it went the last time, a similar vibe. This time, it does feel like, and I think, you know, this, this does feel like what the No King protest is, which it is the kind of, like, umbrella for all the different protest movements and groups that we've seen because there were, you know, anti-ice protests. There were the No Kings people. There were people out there for Prop 50. There were, like, lefty groups. There, you know, there's everybody handing out there pamphlets. which I try not to grab, because why do I do the pamphlet? Nothing.

Absolutely, nothing. Just give them your email address, you know. It's funny, though, because you think of what should Johnson say? Like, not the right thing to do. I'm not worried about. Like, what should he be saying? And you should say, like, if they were really trying to, like, minimize it, it wouldn't be to describe a hate America rally.

Then it's a big controversy, and you show the protest, you show what he says. People can judge with their eyeballs. You would, if you would say something like, I'm glad they're expressing their rights. I think what they're doing is a bit overblown, but they have the right to protest as anybody else, and I wish them luck.

When they're done, we'll be on to the next thing, right? Like, there's, like, a way you could handle it to try to minimize it politically, which they're unwilling to do in part because I really think, like, that's the bubble that they're in. Like, you know, these guys are now in a little, like, bubble of their own, like, turning each other up and spinning each other up about this. And they're not getting, like, good advice or good feedback or good information.

He did say at one point, he's like the irony of the whole thing is, you know, they were able to protest because he's not a king like if he really was a king they wouldn't be able to protest this was like what literal are you i know once you get past the uh i i videos of shitting on people and the hate america stuff you get some republicans uh and and some not republicans on on twitter and social media elsewhere saying like one is he really a king is he acting like a king because he won a he won a free and fair election and aren't they just pissed the republicans president and and they just want a Democrat president instead. And then the other, you know, critique was, what was the point of that?

What were they, what were they trying to do? What do you guys, what would you say to people who said, what was the point of that? Yeah, just because someone was duly elected doesn't mean they can't do an autocratic takeover faster than you could imagine or slower. Seen that a few different places throughout history. The fact that we are. And currently, would you suggest we wait to protest until we're not allowed? What's the sense in that?

The whole point is to do it while you still. So, Kent, I wish you, I, like, I hope you're right, right? Like, I hope you actually sincerely now have convinced yourself that this is all overblown. But the challenge of, like, dealing with a government like this is your worries feel too early and then they feel too late. Well, I'd rather do this too early, even if you are right. Yeah. I do think it was, the point of it was for a lot of people in the country who don't like what's happening and are probably a little scared, you see that other people came out. And you're like, wait, I'm not alone.

there's a whole bunch of people who had the courage to come out and protest it went okay we did it it gets people like excited it also sends a message to trump that he's because like they can say whatever they want they see the pictures they see the numbers like they know they know what it means and so i think it's really important to like have that show have that like show of you know protest he barely won the popular vote this time but now his approval is underwater a lot of people who disapprove of what he's doing we're out there on the street and it's, you know, sending a message to him and also sending a message to the midterm. It's also like this is not a, it's hard to get our minds wrapped around.

This is not just like election to election anymore. This is like now, you know, in facing an authoritarian takeover of the country, it's going to take like a long movement that spans many elections and maybe many years, to be, to be honest. And I think getting the muscle going of getting out into the streets and protesting when we need to is, really important. Absolutely. I also would say, by the way, it doesn't take right now in America very much courage to go out there on the street. It's completely safe for everybody to protest. We don't live in authoritarian regime. There are... But people needed to know that. I think that's why it was good to do it because people are like, okay, phew, you're right. Totally. No, totally agree. But like, there are acute and very serious threats and warning signs about how dark this could get.

For a lot of people, they already live in an authoritarian state. If you're an undocumented person, you already lived there. Different people are having a different experience of this and it's effective. If you're James Comey, you're in it. It doesn't happen everywhere all at once. I do think when people say, like, what was this all for? What is the point of that? First of all, it's a show of this incredible amount of people that all feel the same way that are part of this big movement. That's great. But I would say when you see that there are seven to eight or whatever millions of people that are willing to come out this way, very organically organized, it does tell you that there's a big amount of enthusiasm and energy that isn't being directed, that isn't being used effectively in the days in

between, that there are ways this big group of people can be mobilized to do more than just stand up and make their voices heard during a protest. There are ways we need to be activated to make us a political force that corporations or institutions, colleges, media companies, others are more nervous about, or more worried about. I do think that's the next phase. J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth spent No Kings Day a few hours south of here at Camp Pendleton to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps. For some reason, they decided that the celebration should include firing live artillery shells over Interstate 5, one of the biggest freeways in California. Our pal Governor Newsom had strongly objected for safety reasons and decided to close a 17-mile

stretch of the five during the ceremony. The vice president's office had responded to that by accusing Newsom of wanting people to think the exercise is a dangerous show of force when it was really just routine training. A statement that did not age all that well after a 155 millimeter shell exploded over the freeway, sending pieces of shrapnel flying onto California Highway Patrol vehicles that were part of. Wait for it, J.D. Vance's Motorcade. Tommy, you have any idea what the hell they were thinking? I don't get this.

It's like an M-Tripple-7 howitzer fires a 100-pound shell that can go 19 miles. Why are we doing this over the highway? What's the point? I know it was the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps. It did feel like Vance was trying to send a message being like, this is real America, by the way, we got the big guns, we got the big weapons, go have your little protest, but we're going to do adult shit over here with the things that can kill you. And it's just like, it feels like one of those stories where if roles were reversed and a Democrat did this, Fox News would bury that politician with this story because it's so shockingly reckless. They were so shockingly arrogant about it. And then they were so catastrophically wrong. If news, if news, if news, had not closed the highway, someone could have been killed. Yeah. Shrapnel falling from a howitzer shell on your

car at 60, 70 miles an hour could kill you. Can you done some fireworks, some shot some blanks in the air? I don't know. Plenty of ways to celebrate our troops without firing live artillery over an American freeway.

Yeah, my view on this is that if you're going to fire missiles, you better destroy the five. or quit fucking around. Yeah, the other part of that, I went and looked, and this is the 250 anniversary of means, which is a year long, they're marking it over the course of year,

and you can go look up all their official events that they're doing across the country, which did include events on the West Coast. This is not on that schedule, that plan series of events. There's all kinds of things. There's Fleet Week. There's events everywhere.

This wasn't on it. Like, I don't know when they added this 250th anniversary event. Times talked to a, like a current Marine Corps official and also like a former both went on background and they were like highly irregular don't know why this happened uh the california highway patrol officials were like extremely dangerous didn't know why this like the the highway patrol was like this is a very concerning why are we doing this and by the way like it kind of is part of this like the what vance actually said in his

speech has kind of not gotten the attention it otherwise would have because they um bombed a major thoroughfare but the uh but uh he gives a very you know he like some of it is just a sort of the pro marines patriotic talk he vance was a marine and like kind of had a lot of inside jokes with everybody which i'm sure he was excited to do uh uh but he does also get up there and give a partisan speech about blaming democrats for the shutdown and all the rest and like they are using the military for partisan purposes in a way that previous presidents would never have done and previous administrations wouldn't have done uh and as far as we can tell they don't get any benefit out That's what they were doing with this.

Fake shit on Harry Sisson's head. Real shit on the five. It's just, it's bad, bad out there. and attract clients. Whether you offer consultations, events, or other experiences, Squarespace can help you grow your business. Squarespace offers a complete library

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and a few other comments that may not help him beat the king allegations. I think they want us in San Francisco. San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world. And then 15 years ago, it went wrong. It went woke. But we're going to go to San Francisco and we're going to make it great. I can use the Insurrection Act. 50% of the presidents almost have used that. I'm the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.

You know that, right? A lot of people say, oh, he's the president. He should, no, I'm the chief law enforcement. I'm allowed to be involved in it. I didn't know what was happening, but I see John Bolton just got indicted. That's a good thing. He's a bad guy.

I don't know what he did, but that's a bad, he's a bad guy. Stupid kind of a guy, actually, you know? first of all it's not 50% of presidents that half the presidents did not invoke the Insurrection Act yeah that one jumped out of me too that was not true 15 years ago San Francisco went woke I'm sorry sir do you think was it a conservative bastion in 1960s what are you talking about he's also he's also not the chief law enforcement officer that is the attorney general but I guess because she is just a stooge for him then maybe he thinks he is

So fine. But let's start at the end there with the John Bolton indictment, which we haven't had a chance to talk about. Bolton has a special place on Trump's enemies list after Bolton published a book about his time serving as Trump's national security advisor wasn't favorable. But this indictment lays out a case that seems a bit more serious than the charges against Comey and Tish James. According to reporting by CNN, when he was briefed on the case, FBI director Cash Patel said helpfully, why isn't this motherfucker in jail yet? what do you guys make of this one bolton one so i that quote from patel uh was i felt like revealing of like why this is this one is very fraught right and it is a bit different than the than the tish james one and the james coming one and others that they've been trying in those cases you

had prosecutors uh resign or or uh get fired rather than bring charges they couldn't support in this case you had an investigation that was going on four years during the biden administration into the ways in which Bolton was holding out to classified information for a book. But at the same time, DOJ didn't pursue charges during the Biden administration. Trump administration comes in. They look at it and then tell us like, what the fuck's going on here? We got them, right? We got one of Trump's enemies.

That's so exciting. So Bolton is saying it's a political prosecution. Seems like there's a lot of truth to that, especially because there's reporting that some of the career prosecutors felt pressure to get to an indictment more quickly. On the other hand, it seems like there is a much more legitimate case here than there is in those other examples of someone collecting classified information. And so, you know, I talked about this with Leah Lipman for Pots of America YouTube last week. And this is really unprecedented, a president brazenly saying, let's prosecute my enemies. There are going to be cases where they're going after people in illegitimate ways. But what happens when there is real evidence against someone?

And you don't know whether that case would have been brought but for the fact that it's a political enemy. And I just think that is, that is the danger of having a president who's describing themselves as the chief law enforcement officer and directing his underlings to prosecute political enemies. What do you think, Tommy? This whole thing is so weird. I mean, I got this one so wrong if the underlying facts are true. And there's a lot of reasons we shouldn't trust DOJ or Cash Patel and the FBI guys. But like, I assumed like John, look, for those of no, no, John Bolton's like an old school warmonger. He's like a Bush era warmonger or rock war guy.

I assumed he had terrible policies, but that he would be like scrupulous. when it came to the rules and not, you know, bringing home classified information, not putting classified information in unclassified servers or in his Gmail or whatever. But it sounds like he did that all day, every day, when he was National Security Advisor for Donald Trump. The New York Times wrote the following. After sending one 24-page document about his time as the National Security Advisor, Mr. Bolton followed up with a message that read, none of which we talked about, three exclamation points.

One of the recipients wrote back, shh, these were emails or, um, I assume signal, like some sort of messaging app messages with his wife and daughter. So did he not think to use the invisible ink on I message? I mean, so it's like shockingly that goes away. Yeah. And like to your point, Leavitt, like he was sending himself these notes, presumably to help himself write this book that was uncritical of Trump, which Trump tried to block the publication of. And there was a big court fight and ultimately was published. It seemed like this had been adjudicated and that the FBI had looked at all this stuff.

the Trump administration came back. They raided his house in August. They found these notes and printed copies of his diaries and all the shit. And on top of that, it sounds like the Iranians hacked his email and got all this stuff and then started sending him threatening emails where they were suggesting that they would leak the fact that they had all this classified information as a form of blackmail. And so he informed the FBI about the hack, but not about the sensitive information within the hack, which is a little sketchy.

I don't know. So it's all really weird. He seems like he's royally fucked. he seems like he made some serious mistakes I still think it's a political prosecution but it's quite surprising Tehran 1, Bolton Zero Yeah

Right, but then you think like This is what makes it so strange Because they're all These are like the sort of the damning moment Of like, you know I sent this stuff right But he's a smart guy He also took all this information Turned into a book which he gave

To the administration to do a not To a nonpartisan career That went through the review Not all the notes he sent in class Of course not. But like the problem, right? And this is why it seems there's some reason to believe why the Biden administration didn't pursue this is a lot of people take notes that they deem unclassified, that they take out with them. I'm not saying what Bolton did wasn't crazy, but that they take these notes. If you went through the records for any of the book, the materials people are collecting for books, would you find classified information? The answer is almost certainly yes, because every time someone goes and grabs a box from Mike Pence's house or Joe Biden's house, there's some classified material or there's stuff that isn't necessarily part of a, a classified memo or brief, but that is classified because of the information contained within it. And that is a dangerous thing to pursue. So, like, you're left, like, if we, if John Bolton is being

politically prosecuted for a crime he did commit, like, that doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be dismissed by the courts because he's being targeted, especially because of his criticism of Trump. Yeah, I mean, zooming out on the whole thing, what matters is that you, that the government applies the law equally to everyone in the country. regardless of political party or friendship or with the president or if you're the if you've criticized the president right and Biden's justice department uh did they charge john trump yes did they charge the president's son also yes that that would be an example of okay these some some people may have committed some crimes but it doesn't matter who they are we're going to charge them anyway and

if that was the kind of administration then we would all be like okay here's the indictment let's see what happens with john bolton the trial and who knows but like you can't do that now Equal treatment under the law would argue that Pete Hegseth should be getting prosecuted right now for putting a bunch of targets we were about to bomb in Yemen. Forgot about him. To a signal chat with his wife and his personal lawyer, right? Like, clearly there is no fairness in the treatment of these two individuals. That said, I'm just blown away that John Bolton would put this all in email. It's nuts.

And there's like, and it's like the, the, the, what you're like guarding against and when you classify something is damage to national security, the fact that the. the fact that the Iranians of all places, of all countries hacked his email and got access to all this stuff so bad. God, they're going to find out that Donald Trump's an idiot. But like that's our information. That's a secret. I didn't handle classified information like you did, Tommy, but just having been in the White House and what they told us about classified information and security clearances, every time there is a classified info scandal mishandling. Trump, Biden, Hillary Clinton, Pete Higgseth. I'm always just like, what? Don't bring. documents home. Also, if Donald Trump gets reelected,

burn your documents, John Bolton. What were you thinking? What were you doing? What were you keeping his information? The other, yeah, it's like, remember when Sandy Burger was sneaking stuff out, with stuff in his socks? Sometimes I feel like the people with like the higher, the clearance. The dumber they are. Yeah, or like, just the most, the more reckless they are with their classified information.

Rhodes had a good line on this, which is like, this a lot of these senior national security people think that they are like the key witness to history and they must get it right for the records for the books. And it's like, you can see that in John. bolt and every media appearance is like that's true also he's called his book the room where it happened yeah that's wonderful that's our cringe meanwhile meanwhile trump just commuted george santo's a sentence speaking to cringe after speaking to him personally Santos is now free and back on cameo where i assume he'll be recording a lessons learned series and only fans for some lucky

viewers that was a joke but that's a go maybe it's a joke preview maybe it's a joke who knows who knows Unfortunately, there won't be any mercy shown to the people who were victims of Santos's fraud because Trump said he won't have to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution that he owes. That seems fair, right? Look, it's also the amount of work and effort that the Department of Justice puts into, like, putting together the case, they got, he pled guilty. He admitted to his crimes. He wasn't, like, convicted by a jury. He admitted it.

This is why you can be angry about the Bolton prosecution. You know, like whether or not the facts line up and he actually did it, right? Like this, like, he commuted George Santos's for what, for nothing? Did he serve a lot of time? No. It was a seven-year sentence? It was like three months? Was he prosecuted for defrauding a disabled U.S. Navy veterans dying service dogs go-fund me?

Or was that just an allegation? I looked, I'm not, I believe that what he pleaded to was only the campaign finance-related crimes. Got it was the living off of the money and the defrauding people. and also don't he did a lot of recurring payments like these aren't like the money and restitution wasn't for like fancy people it's for a lot of that money is for people that were charged for these recurring donations that they hadn't agreed to yeah the Navy veteran did say uh in one of the stories that he was like sick to his stomach when he saw that this was about to happen that this is like actually a bad guy you know it sucks that he's become this like media darling he's like doing fox and friends and he's like kind of seen as like funny being rehabilitated the guy sucks if you commit a crime and you kissed all Trump's ass, good chance that you get off. If you say something bad about Donald Trump and you did or did not commit a crime, you're eligible for prosecution and under this government. That's where it stands.

On San Francisco, Trump's been talking about this for a while, though I'm not so sure that they want us their part. Unless you count Salesforce founder and CEO, Mark Benioff, who told the New York Times from aboard his private jet that he'd welcome federalized troops and then he fully supports Trump. This is a man who donated millions of dollars to Democrats, one of the, one of the big Democratic donors in years past. A few days later, the Times reported, based on internal documents that they've seen,

Beniof is trying to get ICE to use Salesforce technology to meet its hiring goals. Try ZipRecruiter, ICE. The day after that, Beniof apologized for asking Trump to send troops and said he realized they weren't necessary after all. Amazing. Peak 2025. Let's just talk about Beniof for a second. What do you think the apology was about? That's what I want to know.

Like, did you, did you mistakenly think that there should be federal troops in San Francisco? Or did you just mistakenly say it and your PR people got upset? Well, so in that Times interview, the very end of the story, I'm just going to quote it. At the end of the interview, he, Bennyoff, turned to a public relation executive. He could be heard asking why her mouth was wide open. And if he had said anything, he shouldn't have. What about the political questions he asked? Too spicy?

So I think that gets where the thing began to. Two spicy, too spicy, too spicy, to becante, much. That's so good. A little spicy. Little pecante. Yeah, so it seems like something like, there was a story about downtown Los Angeles. It's a street on downtown Los Angeles where a bunch of fruit vendors that have fruit they haven't sold, but they don't want to pay the commercial dumping fee. They just pour it on the ground.

They just go. They open their trucks. They dump it on the ground. It's huge problem because it piles up over the week. The trash comes once a week. Big rats. Big rats downtown. I imagine a lot of flies, too.

Chris. And so this becomes a political problem, right? And you have, like, the mayor has to get involved, the city council has to get involved, and they're calling sanitation, and they're calling the police, and they're doing patrols. This just happened a couple weeks ago.

But it was getting worse and worse for a long time. So you get the press in there. You get a controversy. You get people to care about it. Where are the cops? Where is sanitation? Who's responsible for this? Because it's politics, right?

This is a new problem. You're going to have to be punitive. You're going to have to be reparative. You can have to figure out what to do, right? But like all of these guys that like are on their private jets, like they don't want to do politics, right? They don't want to persuade people in San Francisco that they need more policing or that they need to change policies or they've been to lenient on whatever, on drug abuse or on street homelessness, right? They just want Donald Trump big daddy to come in and solve it. But what happens when Benioff goes out there and says this?

Well, he hears about it from maybe his own staff. He hears about it from politicians he works with, right? Because he's a local leader and his company works closely with the government, right? what happens is politics erupts all around him. And then all of a sudden, politics prevails. And he's like, oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want Donald Trump to come in and solve all my problems because I talk to the people that are actually part of making this decision. And also, there's no evidence at all that any of these National Guard deployments have solved any problem anywhere. In fact, San Francisco has a relatively new mayor and Daniel Lurie who has

been doing a great job and actually sort of, you know, handling their crime problem. And again, If it flares up, maybe you want the local police to sort of help crack down, as opposed to national guard troops who, when they went to D.C., and other places, were literally just cleaning up trash and taking pictures with tourists. I'm pretty sure Mark Benioff lives in Hawaii. Maybe that's why he didn't realize that San Francisco has started turning itself around. I mean, all the rich people in San Francisco live in an area called Billioners Row, which is a beautiful place in like Pack Heights where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge.

And they're all mad about... These are your former neighbors. I lived in a eight-story building in a one-bedroom. apartment, but yes, I was close to them. I was the east of them. But they're all mad about downtown because there's a serious homeless problem and there's like really horrible open air drug use, et cetera. But the National Guard is going to solve that? Are they going to be policing fentanyl use in the tenderline? Like, I don't think that's the way this is going to go down. Really, he's just like picking cities now and sending them and then he's doing the whole

Insurrection Act thing. So it's like, you know, I mean, the, the Ninth Circuit ruled on Monday that Trump can deploy the National Guard to Portland over the governor's objections. You've got a different ruling in the Seventh Circuit about Chicago. So that's going to the Supreme Court. But I think the Trump people are thinking, like, whatever the Supreme Court rules, we think they're going to rule for us. But even if they rule against us, then we'll just use the Insurrection Act. And we'll get them there anyway.

So either way, they're getting troops in the cities. What will they be doing there? What will they be helping? There's just no plan. There's nothing realistic about what they would actually do to help solve anyone's problems. It's just, I think, a show of force to fucking scare people. I'm snatching nitrous balloons in Dolores Park. Probably arresting some tech guys for talking about their equity loudly at the bar.

I mean, that should be a crime. This is what we need to deploy National Guard to cities for. If there's a Democratic president someday. So no word yet on whether ICE is going to shell out for Salesforce, but we do know that they are spending a ton on new tech. The Washington Post reported on Friday that the agency is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on technology upgrades, including an iris scanning app, that would be your eye, new surveillance drones and software that allows them to hack into people's phones or track their location without a warrant. Lovely. Remember that Trump's bill earmarked $170 billion for border and immigration operations, so they got a lot of money to play with here, $172 million of which they're apparently using to buy

two brand new Gulfstream jets for Christy Gnome. Nome said on Monday that the planes are, quote, necessary for the mission of the Coast Guard, which I guess is to like transport her ass around on private planes. That's a boat thing. That's a boat. Hey, come on, that can't be right. That's a boat thing.

Which is under DHS for some reason. I think the worst part of- Because of 9-11. Yeah. So I think the worst part about the story is that, as I was reading through it a couple of times, like DHS and ICE refused to even say when asked by members of Congress or reporters

that they won't hack into the phones of American citizens without a warrant, which leads you to wonder, how are any of us supposed to know that our government isn't spying on everything that we say? And they could be. I mean, this is the scariest part of them

designating Antifa as a terrorist organization because it allows you to unlock all these authorities to spy on people and do things that are just extra, that are not constitutional. And, you know, I think there was a point in time when spying was a time and labor intensive thing

you like wire top of house you have to record everything the person's saying someone transcribe it you'd like piece it together now it's all bulk collection and it's all searched with AI and it's very Sam Alton

yeah I again thank you tech and it's just very scary to think what DHS with certain authorities and certain technologies and a big palenteer contract could do

like we could all be swept up in this stuff it's also like so many of these actions that the Trump administration is taking like pretty quickly get challenged in court and this is like who who's going to challenge it in court if we don't know that they're spying it's like I don't know what like I know Congress is trying but you get some Democrats asked

like hopefully maybe you get people like your Rand Paul's and your Thomas Massey's that are concerned about this but like what the fuck in the examples where like they've grabbed somebody during an ice protest and they said this person assaulted a police officer and was impeding an investigation And so we've charged them with a felony and then or we're planning to charge them with that's why we grab them. That's why they've been in jail for three days or whatever it may be. And then they just quietly drop it, right?

Because they can't back up the evidence. So they scare people, make people feel afraid to be at these protests. And then when they have to present the evidence to a judge, it all falls apart. Like what happens when they start unleashing this kind of technology on a massive scale and sweeping a bunch of people up? Does it ultimately hold up at some point human beings have to become involved and make an art. argument in front of a judge for now. But in the meantime, a lot of people are going to be scared, a lot of people get swept up on it if it, if it is, if they kind of take it to its logical conclusion. I remember when, like, in my previous relationship, like Ronan was a journalist

and he was dealing with companies like Black Cuban others that were developing these technologies to hack into people's phones. And I remember him talking about how dangerous would be. If this became used by law enforcement in the United States, that foreign autocratic governments were already using it. What happens if it comes here? And I remember feeling like, boy, that's far-fetched. Well, and apparently the Biden administration had a contract with this company that can hack into your phone without you knowing. And when it came to light and they were like civil libertarian concerns about it, they like canceled the contract back in like 21 or 22. And of course, the Trump administration probably came to office and was like, what? You canceled the contract?

This is amazing. We want this. We want this in the hands of Christyneum and Tom Homan. This proliferation of basically spyware for hire is one of the scary things that's happened in the last decade. There's this great group in Toronto called the Citizen Lab where they just try to help people who have been attacked. But like basically it's a bunch of the industry is really prevalent in Israel and it's a bunch of ex-Massad, X Unit 8200 and tell people who then go into private service and basically recreate the tools available to state actors and sell them. to the worst regimes on the planet and they use them they claim it's been the name of terrorism but they go after journalists dissidents critics jemal koshoggi right like that's what's happening out there but the other the scary piece of this for us americans is that dhs has been fully politicized right like corey lewandowski trump's uh on again off again campaign manager was is reportedly

like the shadow secretary of homeland security maybe also dating christie gnome uh all these professionals in career people who would say no are getting pushed out like lawyers are getting pushed out inspectors general are getting pushed out all the people that would put the brakes on things that are unconstitutional or illegal are no longer in the building in a lot of cases and like god help us if you know mark benioff and a lot of the silicon valley geniuses you know where they could be really useful is coming up with the technology to block this kind of spyware for people that would be a useful thing for america now you sound like the antichrist i think it's um i think it's um i think I think you just turn your phone off.

I think that's a good place to start. Yeah, I'll be throwing the river. That's fine. and cancel your unwanted subscriptions monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Their dashboard lays out your total financial picture, including bill due dates and pay days in a way that's easy to digest. You can even automatically create custom budgets based on your past spending. If you've got a goal you'd like to save for, Rocket Money can analyze your accounts to find the best time each month to put extra money aside. Get alerts if your

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recently ordered the sixth and seventh known military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea, allegedly carrying drugs. The strikes occurred last Thursday and Friday, although we only found out about the seventh strike after Pete Higgs had tweeted about it on Sunday. Trump announced on Saturday that two survivors of Thursday's strike are being repatriated back to their home countries, Ecuador and Colombia, for, quote, detention and prosecution. On Saturday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on Twitter that an attack in September had killed an innocent Colombian fishermen in Colombian waters and accused Trump of murder, Trump then accused Petro of being a, quote, illegal drug dealer with a fresh mouth toward America. A fresh mouth. He said he would

cut off aid to Colombia, subject them to new tariffs, and seem to threaten an invasion. Meanwhile, huge amounts of American military personnel and equipment are massing in the Caribbean as Trump continues to hint at some kind of offensive against mainland Venezuela. Tommy, what's the situation down there right now? Is this saber? rattling. Is this actual prep for war? Like what the fuck are they all thinking? I'm really, really scared about what's happening with respect to Venezuela. Like I saw a paper from CSIS the other day that said more than 10% of all deployed U.S. naval assets are currently located in the southern command area of responsibility. So remember, we've all been talking for like a decade that China was the real threat

and dealing with them in the Pacific. That was the threat we had to counter. But 10% of naval assets are in the Caribbean for Venezuela. Like that's that's pretty disconcerting. And just think about the policy that we just talked about with the bombing of these boats that are allegedly narco traffickers. So the people on these boats are so dangerous and such a threat to the United States that the U.S. military can kill them without a trial, without charging them with anything. So extrajudicial murder. But when we capture them, we return them to the countries they came from. We don't bring them to the United States to prosecute them. That doesn't, That doesn't suggest an administration that is confident in the legality of what it's doing, right?

I haven't heard of a legal justification yet for this, except for Marco Rubio saying, well, we've designated Trendairagua as terrorist organization. But, like, the U.S. government designates a foreign organization as a terrorist organization that does not then give you the right to kill them. Like, it's suddenly a war. It does give you right to, like, freeze finances and gives you some other tools. But that doesn't give you the right to do extrajudicial killings. Well, their justification is that because they've described the drug cartels as terrorist non-state actors, the members of those cartels are unlawful combatants, which they can kill at any time, I guess, anywhere on Earth. Which they also can't do because Congress do not authorize that action. There's no war.

The reason that Al-Qaeda fell under that is because Congress authorized the action. I don't think they should be doing it. No, I'm just saying. It's even crazier. It's not justified. But forget like not being able to prosecute them. Wouldn't these people have information that you want? You claim that these are the most dangerous people on Earth,

that at risk of killing 25,000 this one boat could kill 25,000 Americans. You don't want to ask a couple questions? Yeah. What do you report to? I think the broader challenges. Like, first of all, they're making up this policy rationale because fentanyl is not produced in Venezuela. It is chemicals from China. They get shipped to Mexico.

They get turned into fentanyl there. that comes to the United States. That's how it goes. That's how it works. Everyone knows that. Cocaine is a problem in Southern California. Yeah, but like, yeah, like 60% of cocaine, I think, is produced in Columbia. A lot of it goes through Ecuador, maybe 10 to 13% of global cocaine supply goes through Venezuela. A lot of demand at Marlago. A lot of demand of Marlago. What this is is an ideological desire to take out Nicholas Maduro, the president of Venezuela. And like, let's just be clear, he's a bad guy. He's a left-wing autocrat. He lost the last election, and then he stole it, like, I'm not a Maduro fan. But again, you have 10% of

naval assets deployed to the Caribbean. You've got the president having the CIA, he signed off on the CIA taking covert action in Venezuela to do, we don't really know what. You've got the military like practicing operations 90 miles off the coast of Venezuela. And all of the Venezuela, the government, the people are preparing for war. Like, they think there's going to be an invasion. And if that happens, like Venezuela is a big ass place. It's the size. of France and Germany combined. They have like pretty real deal, pretty modern Russian air defense systems

along the coastline. Like everything about this is so insane to me. But these guys, like Trump is, like every, there's like 10 flashing red lights right now that he wants a conflict with Venezuela. I mean, you know who else wasn't a good guy who didn't have a lot of fans in America?

Saddam Hussein. Was that a good idea? Or Kim Jong-un. To take him out. Also, like, are we drawn Colombia into this too now? Because he's a lefty president that they don't like. Well, Petro was mean to Trump when he was at the UN. He said something about Palestinian rights. So we like kicked them out of the country. And now I guess we're threatening them. Yeah, I also worry that one lesson Trump takes away from, like, Iraq and other conflicts is, as long as there are no American boots on the ground, you can really get away with whatever. The American people don't see it as a war unless there are American troops on the ground.

And so he thinks that he can escalate and escalate. And now all of a sudden we're in some kind of a bombing campaign against Venezuela. And we're getting deeper and deeper into this conflict. But it's not going to, he's not going to, he doesn't worry about the political ramifications of it because he is afraid of putting troops on the ground. Yeah, I think the boots on the ground, he probably knows would be crazy. I don't think air strikes is off the table. I think it's probably pretty likely. He keeps threatening, like, now we're going to take out the land crossings, which means bombing Venezuela proper.

I've talked to people who worked in the first Trump term who said, like, it really seemed like he wanted to take out Maduro then. And when he says, like, we should have taken the oil, he sincerely believes that. And Venezuela's got a ton of oil reserves. And I think they think that they could take out Maduro, maybe install. some more, you know, U.S. friendly dictator in there, and then things will be better. But I just, I think that's insane. I think it's very likely that if you take out Maduro, there will be power struggles and civil war and the migration crisis that makes the one we've seen to date from Venezuela

look pretty tame. And it just- Well, I'm sure we'll welcome everyone who comes from Venezuela and potentially Columbia, right? On the other hand, letting the CIA stretch some old muscles. Right. A South American coup? Yeah. John Bolton will be like, I fuck this up.

This is what I'm made for. Shut up around, I know. No longer in the room where it happened. Not every country in Latin America is at odds with the Trump administration. One place where the relationship is going swimmingly, for lack of a better word, is Buckele's El Salvador. On Sunday, the Washington Post revealed that in order to gain access to Seacot, the Salvadoran Torture Dungeon, where the administration ultimately sent hundreds of migrants, including Kilmower-Breggo-Garcia and Andri Romero. Marco Rubio promised Buckele that the Justice Department,

would, per the post headline, betray U.S. informants. Tommy, you and Ben covered this story on Pod Save the World. You've talked about it here before, too. But like, any new details from the Washington Post Rubio story that you think are worth mentioning? Yeah, I mean, I think the very, very quick back story is in 2019, Trump set up this effort called Joint Task Force Vulcan, which was this law enforcement initiative that was designed to take down MS-13. As part of that, They arrested a bunch of people from El Salvador, brought them to the U.S., and were prosecuting them. Fast forward to Trump 2.0, and they cut this deal with Naya Buckele, who calls himself the world's coolest dictator, who's the president of El Salvador, where the U.S. gets the ability to send these men, Venezuela men, mostly, to this transnational gulag called Sukkote. And in exchange, Buckele wanted back some of these guys we arrested, the U.S. arrested as part of Joint House Force Vulcan from the United States.

And it all speaks to the fact that Buckele's government cut deals with the gangs to reduce crime. Basically, he cut deals with these gangs. Some of his people cut deals with where they said, kill who we want to kill, but just hide the bodies better. So it's not a public thing. So it's not a political issue. And the gangs did in political favors. And what we learned in this post report was that Rubio personally assured Buckele that the U.S. would hand over MS 13 leaders, even ones that we'd cut deals with to get information.

It's like immunity for information or some sort of like treatment for information. So Rubio just like undercut people that agreed to work with the United States. And this is not just about like, oh, we should have been nicer to the gang members that we cut, who cut deals with us and we're informants. Donald Trump has, you know, reliably informed us for two administrations now that MS-13 is incredibly dangerous and that we've got a, and they're walking among us and they're, you know, they're murdering Americans. And so we've got to crack down on MS-13. So what do we do? We have a justice department and FBI trying to build cases against MS-13, try to flip MS-13 members so that they can give them information that would help them, you know, sort of capture other MS-13 members.

And instead, we make a deal with a government that has let MS-13 members roam free and kill people quietly in their country and just sort of ruined the cases that all of the law enforcement officials in the United States spent years building against MS-13 with these informants for what? So we could send them to the gulag where they then were sent back to Venezuela

after that? Like, this was for nothing. So they could just have like snuff films of people being tortured and scare everyone about the, about SICOT? Like, there was no benefit to any of this. The, there was a 60 Minutes did

a story about this over the weekend of what it was like being inside the Department of Justice while this was all unfolding and you had this incredible amount of pressure to get these planes into the air which included lying if not just misleading a judge about what was happening

in real time all because it was so urgent to get these planes off the ground as quickly planes of Venezuela men to El Salvador to El Salvador off the ground as quickly as possible and it all came to what just nothing nothing it just speaks to like look so what we just talked about was trump threatening to invade or you know sanction leftist leaders in latin america and his right wing buddies pukle uh haviya malay and argentina people go to seepac and kiss his ass and are willing

to do his bidding on immigration they get favors they get uh you know gang members who could turn on them return to them they get 20 to 40 billion dollar bailouts if you're an argentian so it's The League of Autocrats. Completely personalized foreign policy. The illusion of order and control, in reality, it's just a corruption racket. And fuck everyone else. You don't get real protection. You just get, you know, Trump and Buckele and everyone's having the illusion that they are tough on crime.

Yeah, I mean, look, Buckele did, like, reduce the homicide rate, but he did it by, like, indiscriminately throwing thousands of thousands of people in jail without charge, many of whom did absolutely nothing wrong. and they're just rotting in hell now. Yeah, and apparently also letting gangs just kill people but quietly so that we don't have to report it. And letting gang leaders walk free if they help him politically. Let's talk about one word Trump has so far failed to resolve. The Friday meeting between Trump and Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky was apparently not as, quote, cordial as Trump claimed. The Financial Times called the meeting volatile, the Washington Post tense and CNN acrimonious. But every outlet confirmed that Trump pressured Zelensky to give up a critical region, the Donbos.

to end the war as quickly as possible. Coincidence of all coincidences, just a day earlier, Trump had spoken with Russia's Vladimir Putin, who again demanded part of the Ukrainian territory. So in about a month, Trump went from saying that Ukraine is, quote, in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form and pondering whether to contribute

U.S. Tomahawk missiles to telling reporters on Monday that while Ukraine could win the war, he doesn't think they will. Tommy, Trump is taking both sides of this one a lot, but it's pretty clear he's more easily. swayed by Putin than by Zelensky, or at the very least, the last person he talks to. What do you think that's about? Is it more he loves the autocrats, or is there something else going on where he's just... I don't know, man. The more times this happens, my head goes to

straight up 2017, it's Mueller time, conspiracies, because there's just no making sense of this. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's bad. My mind goes to, he's an idiot who, uh, I know He's a feral genius at marketing and communication. But he's an idiot when it comes to the last person I talked to, I'm persuaded by, and Putin's going to butter me up and say this to me. And so I buy the talking points and then I'm going to be pissed at Zelensky. Yes, yes, but like he just had the Alaska Summit in August. I think going into the Alaska Summit, Steve Wickoff, his like Swiss Army knife,

golf buddy turned diplomat, had met with Putin and came away with a totally inaccurate impression of Putin's policies. Like he thought Putin was ready to make a bunch of concessions that didn't happen. So then they go to the meeting in Alaska and Putin gives on nothing. Apparently spent like two hours lecturing Trump

about like, you know, 17th century Ukrainian history and all the bullshit Putin does all the time. And Trump nearly walked out of that meeting and then canceled the lunch and left early. And like to save face had to pretend that things went okay. But it was disastrous and he was angry.

And that was why he started sort of talking up the Ukrainian side afterwards and like saying like, oh, yes, we could support a security guarantee if it comes from Europe and we could be a part of that in some sense or at least sell them weapons. And then he set up a bunch of fake like in two weeks deadlines. Like I'll let you know in two weeks if Putin's tapping me along or not or whatever it was. And so like nothing happened, nothing happened. And then in the lead up to this meeting, there was all this conversation about giving Ukraine Tom Hawk missiles. And Trump played along with that only. to just let one phone call completely change his mind?

Like, I don't, I just don't get it. Well, I wonder if, I mean, Putin probably knows that that meeting in Alaska did not go well, or at least his advisors do. And maybe they or he came up with a new strategy to deal with Trump. It's like next time instead of lecturing him about the history of Ukraine, maybe you just say, hey, I want this war over too. And I just want a little land that we won fair and square. And then I want to give them the rest.

And I don't know. I think Trump is easily, easily persuaded. Yeah, he's easily persuaded. He's also sent out there. He's also directed. And not in a sort of nefarious way. He's directed by his staff about what he's meant to be doing in this moment, right? What was, you can make sense of a lot of what's happened since he's become president a second time.

If you take out this strange aberration of him suddenly becoming basically a neoconservative for like what, like two weeks. On Iran. on on on on on ukraine when he goes and he says actually i think ukraine could win and we're going to get behind them right like you can take that out and then he would been like you know like he's valueless he doesn't care that putin is the invader he accepts the putin language on like what happened here that and that he accepts that this is some sort of longstanding conflict that could only be resolved by both sides making concession because oh my god they hate each other and this is i'm going to be the one to end it there was just this strange moment where he suddenly sounded correct and said the right things

according to all the kind of foreign policy establishment types. And you have to wonder, like, did someone say, hey, you know, we're trying to get something in these negotiations right now? Can you go out there and, you know, a signal that you'd be willing to be harder on Russia? And he only has two set. He only goes a hundred. You know, he doesn't have it. He's not a subtle man. But, you know, you can't make sense of it because he's not a sensible person.

Meanwhile, the eighth war, Trump claims to have resolved briefly roared back to life on Sunday. Israel cut off eight to Gaza for the day and launched a series of deadly airstrikes after saying two of their soldiers were killed. Although Hamas denied involvement, both sides accused the other of violating the ceasefire. But as of this recording, both also maintained their commitment to the deal with aid reportedly flowing again on Monday. Vice President J.D. Vance is also expected in Israel on Tuesday after Trump's co-piece prize winners, Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, spoke with Netanyahu in Israel on Monday. What's your sense of the fragility or strength of the deal, Tommy? Do you think it's a big deal or? It's hard to say. Look, I think my fear. is that Trump will primarily view success as being getting the hostages back, and that's all he'll care about.

And so if once a week the Israelis breach the deal, bomb some targets in Gaza, restrict aid, refuse to open the Rafa crossing, he might just not care about that. And again, like, this is what's been so frustrating about the coverage of this deal generally. Like, I give him credit for doing a ceasefire, getting a ceasefire, and a hostage release. Nothing about this is a permanent, you know, rethinking of governance in Gaza, nothing, none of it's about Palestinian determination. There is nothing about a next generation of leaders for the Palestinian people. It was just this little narrow thing, which is a big and important piece of it. But Gaza reconstruction is going to be a generational project.

It hasn't even, the war is not really ended. the war's not over. And figuring out how that next part can begin is going to require like Hamas disarming, some sort of stability force, like all these other steps. And it's just, it's kind of bumping along. Yeah, you know, it certainly hasn't been a 3,000 year piece as he claimed it would be. It wasn't even what like maybe three days. And so it's like, is it a ceasefire at this point? It's kind of a secession of hostilities you hope holds. But it's like Trump's ego. then gets wrapped up in the fact that he considers himself a peacemaker and he looks at any ways in which that's violated as like an ego wound to him. So when there are the videos of Hamas killing

people inside of Gaza, he defends it in a deeply strange way. Like, oh, those are criminals. So don't worry about that until he realizes it's getting to the point where it's reflecting poorly on him. And then he says, oh, we're going to actually eradicate Hamas if they break the ceasefire. And so like he like everybody dealing with Trump knows that it's about it's about how it looks to him about him yeah and and so like then yahoo will will suck up to him and figure out a way to try to make him think it's Hamas's fault if it falls apart by the way they're like you know like Israel's claiming that Hamas is breaking the ceasefire israel Hamas is going to claim Israel's breaking the ceasefire meanwhile like it's not a peace deal because it's just a brief ceasefire

because the the fundamental conflict in the region remains and by the way in the west bank things are getting worse in real time as well. I mean, what Trump wants more than anything else is for this conflict to just go away. Yeah. He doesn't care about peace. He cares about, like you said, the perception of peace. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's all he cares about.

And honestly, that's the same with Ukraine. He just wants the war over. He doesn't care if the Ukrainians are screwed. He just wants the fucking hostilities to end, or at least he can say that he helped end them. This is all he really wants. It's just perception. He wants a Nobel Prize. He wants to be called the Pete and Spaker.

He wants us to all buy his. line about you know stopping eight wars even though it's all made up and it's like who's going to make deals with the united states or let the united states broker deals when trump's word is you know worth shit because like he only wants to get through the next news cycle and get a few good headlines like no one all right when we come back from the break you'll hear tommy's conversation with main senate candidate graham platner but uh two quick reminders before we do that alex wagner's great new series runaway country goes live this thursday october 23rd this show all about talking to the regular Americans who are actually being affected by the Trump

insanity. It's excellent. Very excited for everyone to hear it. Make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. Also, Love It's special series, Bravo, America, about how reality TV drives our culture and our politics drops every Tuesday in the love it or leave it feed. Who'd you get this week? I talked to Poverty Shallow, one of the great survivor players of all time. She was raised on a hippie commune becomes one of the most renowned villains of reality television in part because she was a smart woman, which was enraging. But like she talks about what it's like to be seen as a villain. Chuck talks about what it was like to be a woman in reality TV as reality TV and our culture

started being more honest about the way women were being treated on and off screen. It was like a fascinating conversation, which is out right now. Check it out in the love or leave it feed or on YouTube. Pods of America is brought you by ZipRecruiter. The holidays are upon us, and businesses are hiring for seasonal roles. Everything from haunted corn maze workers to lead elves and real bearded Santas to snowplow drivers. Okay. That means that people with certain skills experience or even a special license are in high demand and not easy to find.

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Graham Platner. Graham, great to see you. Thank you very much, Tommy. Thanks for having me here. Thank you for doing the show. And thank you for bearing with 15 minutes of Amazon Web Service, Amazon-related tech problems at the jump here. It's been very fun.

Thank you, Jeff Bezos. Okay. I want to cover a bunch of stuff with you. But first, I just wanted to ask you about this kind of flurry of news reports about Reddit posts you made between 2009 and 2021. There's an Axios headline this past week that described the week for you guys. is a Bernie back main Senate candidate melts down. So maybe by the end of the conversation, we can fact check that headline too. And you tell me if that's how you feel.

The, yeah, Axios, yeah, they summon it all up for you, primary in June. So the first Reddit post I wanted to ask you about is from 2013. So someone wrote on Reddit, what is one question you've always wanted to ask someone of another race? You responded, why don't black people tip? I work as a bartender, and it always amazes me how solid the stereotype is every now and again, a black patron will leave a 15 to 20% tip, but usually it is between zero and five percent. There's got to be a reason behind it. What is it? How did you feel rereading that post? And what's your response to people who hear that and think? That is like textbook racism and it's offensive. One, I was legitimately asking the question. I mean, that was the point of the threat was to ask

the question. Amusingly enough, a couple, I remember this time when I first started bartending and then I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was black, who was a bartender, who did a great job of walking me through structural injustice and the fact of feelings of lack of agency. There were a whole bunch of reasons, and after that, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes absolutely perfect sense. It was certainly not meant as a malicious thing. I was asking the question because that was kind of the point of the thread, actually. So you're saying that this is not something that you were, shit posting about this was not something that you felt it wasn't meant to be a commentary

it was a question you were sincerely asking on a Reddit thread because you thought there might be some sort of like cultural explanation or something is that what you're saying yeah I like there was a I grew up in Maine I had never bartended before I was living in Washington D.C. And I mean I honestly I've I reread a lot of the comments for obvious reasons many of them I'm like oh God that one I must say I mean, I was legitimately curious and it was not certainly not meant in any malicious way

and I got an answer soon afterwards in reality from an actual person but got it. Okay, so another one that's gotten a lot of attention is there were posts from 2013 where it seemed like you were playing down the challenges faced by members of the military who were trying to report sexual assault

allegations. The first post was in today's current climate when every whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a feature-linked film anyone who actually thinks the military is purposely covering up rape to save a career of some goddamn captain is clearly both an idiot and junior enough in rancor life experience to think it matters. And then there was another post where you suggested that the way to avoid getting sexually assaulted was not to get blacked out drunk.

Again, what do you say to someone who hears those comments? It feels like it's minimizing a very serious problem, if not suggesting that the victims are the ones to blame for sexual assault. Yeah, I mean, they would be correct in that. I mean, I didn't know what I was talking about. At this point, I had just gotten out of the infantry. It's important, like, my time in the service was in the infantry. At that point, it was an all-male branch.

I had only recently separated, and my frame of reference was that world. And that was not a world in which, frankly, I had very little interaction with women in the service. Very soon after, actually, this time frame, when I started going, college, I became very close friends with a number of vets, female vets at George Washington, and all of them had a story. And I very quickly changed my tune. I think you'll find even not that much later in my Reddit history, me acknowledging that. That was a moment in time in which I had not yet been exposed to things. And I had a opinion or I had thoughts that were colored by my experience in the service, but my experience in the service was quite, was frankly

limited. And I'm, I mean, that's when I reread those, I, I see me not knowing what the hell I'm talking about. Yeah. And, you know, sort of beyond like the substantive concern with the comments you made, I think is a political one, right? Like, as you know better than anyone, Maine is a really important Senate race. And Democrats are worried that if you're the nominee, like Susan Collins, or the many super PACs that support Republicans will spend $50 million, $100 million. on negative ads featuring a bunch of these Reddit posts. There's ones where you call yourself a communist. There's ones where you call police officers bastards.

There's one where you say that rural white Americans actually are racist and stupid. What do you say to that? And how do you combat that? Yeah, I mean, first, I mean, those were definitely, that was me trying to get a rise out of people on the internet. Those are not reflective of my, those weren't even reflective of my opinions back then. I would say that it is a little, rich hearing about this right now when just last week there was a pro Susan Collins ad run

with Janet Mills in it saying nice things about her like it is a and I also quite frankly think that as I go around the state of Maine and talk to people which we've been doing I mean we spent past month has been me on the road going all over the place as I interact with people directly as I hold town halls as I get myself out there more, people are going to recognize that this is not at all the person that they've come to know and come to interact with in reality. So, I mean, look, they're going to call me a communist. They always call us communists. They're going to call us socialists. They're going to call us wacko lefties. They called Hillary Clinton a communist. Like, there's, in many ways, there's no, we're not getting away from it.

I also think that a lot of that's kind of run its road. And the way that you combat it is the way that you can bat, frankly, a lot of this negative, negative nonsense online is you just interact with people in reality. In a state like Maine, with 500 to 600,000 voters, and we have a year before the election, we can do that. We can really go out and spend a lot of time interacting with people. And that's, I mean, that's exactly what we're doing. Yeah. I saw I was talking to a couple of people who oppose your candidacy who are working for other organizations or candidates and they said to me like look these redid posts some of them are from

that long ago um there are more posts that are out there that we know about that have not been written about yet um and kind of the the suggestion is what else do we know about this guy the argument is you're unvetted it's too risky to nominate you what would you say to democrats who who share that anxiety there is nothing that I can remotely think of that is out there is out there there that is any worse or really any different than what has come out. I mean, I post on the Internet for a long time when I was in a point in my life where I was looking for a lot of, I would say, community, looking for an outlet. I had an immense amount of disillusionment, an immense amount of anger.

I use the Internet as a place to find an outlet for that, which I think is fairly normal. but there is I mean if that is they're concerned then they can go find more stuff but I mean I've honestly racked my brain about what I've not lived a very I mean I haven't lived a boring life

but I haven't lived a very complicated one I've never been close to money in power I've never had the opportunity to like screw people over in an awful way I mean I was in the service I certainly struggled after afterwards. But even then, I mean, my struggles were my own. They didn't impact other people. They just impacted my life negatively. And the time that I was active on the internet was the

exact same time that I was active on the internet. And it's that is that part of my life. It's no surprise to me that I'm no, I was no longer active after 2021 because that's frankly when my life kind of began to get good. For those who were worried about me not being vetted, There is just nothing that I, besides like stupid internet comments, besides, I mean, honestly, I've never robbed anybody. I've never beaten anybody. The only violence I've ever used is, frankly, violence that the United States government asked me to go conduct. There is very little. And I certainly was never close to money in power, which I think is also a, things are pretty simple when you live a simple life.

Yeah. I do, I really want to ask you about your time. in the U.S. military, your thoughts on bigger picture things, but I did want to just sort of ask you about all the shitty stuff that's getting thrown your way, because I know it's been an intense week of sort of, it's clearly like some sort of opposition research switch was flipped, right? There's been a lot of incoming. And I've heard a couple more sort of strands of attack. So for one, you know, you made this video. It's about five minutes long. It's on Twitter and other platforms explaining the Reddit posts and talking about how when you got out of the military,

you had kind of like crude humor and crass language that was the hallmark of the infantry when you were in the Marine Corps. The NRC interpreted those comments as you blaming your fellow servicemen for the Reddit posts. So that was sort of one strain of, I guess, attack on the attacks. Second, I've heard that there's a whisper campaign questioning whether you should be getting disability benefits for your bad back or your bad knee because you also released a campaign video where you're swinging kettlebell. By the way, that's what the kettlebell is for. The bad back. I mean, I've done years and years of physical therapy, and maintaining a strong core is legitimately what keeps my herniated discs

from putting me into crippling pain. Like, it's a, I mean, it's amusing to me. It's not amusing. It's infuriating, actually, to have people like question my disability rating question my I mean the reason that I'm doing well is because of the help I got that that's the point that's the purpose of therapy that's the purpose of support like to look at someone and say oh my God look they're living a good life because after we provided them support and continue to give support for them to live that good life they're living it

is absurd. Like, what's the, I don't, like, what's the pitch here? We're supposed to, like, strip benefits from disabled veterans that we're supposed to, like, look at people with multiple combat tours, with banged up bodies and, and struggles from trauma. We're supposed to look at that and say that, like, you're not supposed to get help.

I mean, this is something that actually deeply angers me. It took me a long time before I was okay with asking for help. Because coming out of the infantry when I did, and you can ask any infantrymen that came out of the wars the time I did, this was not a thing that we did. There was a taboo around it. There was shame around it. There was this idea that if you did, you were going to no longer be able to get a job that you'd be ostracized by society. And the fact that, like, I got through all of that.

and when I go to serve again, when I go to run for office in my state, my own party comes after me saying that I am not deserving of the life that I've been able to build with help from the VA because of my military service. That gets me pretty pissed. Yeah. The suggestion seems to be you shouldn't get better, you know? That's right. Right.

Or the idea is that by getting better, you're then. how just better and you're no longer in need of the things that got you better. That isn't how any of this works. It's not how physical therapy works. It's not how normal therapy works. It's, it is all into, for me to run and do this and put myself out here as a, essentially a very regular person. My wife and I do not live an extravagant life. We have not lived a life of power and wealth. We have not lived, we've lived a very simple one. And this, This to us feels like a way of giving back in doing something good for the state of Maine and for the world in some ways.

And by doing that, I get attacked by Democrats about being a disabled veteran. What does that even send as a message to other guys who might be, or men and women who are disabled veterans who might want to get involved? This is brutal, like getting your life ripped apart and having people go. go after your military service and go after your struggles afterwards as some like political football, it doesn't feel good. And I don't think anybody's going to look at that and be like, oh, I wish that would happen to me.

And I mean, if the goal here is to keep disabled veterans from running for office, then they should keep it up. But that seems like a pretty ridiculous goal at a time where the Democratic Party seems to be hemorrhaging demographics of all kinds. You'd think you'd want it to make it more inclusive, not the opposite. Yeah, I would argue too that, you know, there's someone who's, I've never served in the military. I've worked in politics for a while now. I have noticed that I feel like veterans get held to a higher standard than almost anyone else when people are looking at their record, right? It's like, did John Kerry throw his medals or not?

It's like, well, you know, he served in Vietnam and got two Purple Hearts and, you know, served with valor and distinction. Right. Yeah. Tim Wall's similar thing. It's like, well, you know, he was in for 20 years. Let's pick apart his record anyway. Thank you for addressing that, though. And then, you know, finally, like this one is probably equally as offensive.

But, you know, this other person I was talking to said, he said, this person said you were being called a blue falcon on internet forums, which I never heard that term before. But I think the suggestion was maybe you were blaming your service or your PTSD for the Reddit comments rather than taking responsibility. And I just wondered what your thoughts were on that that line of attack is similar. Of course not. That's not what I mean, that's literally not what I said. I do think explaining the fact that I struggled with alienation, isolation, and the effect. affects the PTSD after my military service. And that's why I was on the internet, frankly,

getting in fights with people and shit posting. I'm not trying to blame anything else, but I do think it warrants explanation. And that, it was a dark time in my life, man. Like, I'm just gonna be straight up. I didn't, I was not doing good for a couple of years there. And it took me a long time, even after I moved back to Maine,

even after I started to settle in. It took me a long time to really begin feeling settled again. And like I said, it's no surprise to me that I, like, stopped really using the Internet around 2021 because that's when I'd settled in. I got back from Afghanistan. My last trip was in 2018. So I get back from Afghanistan summer 2018 for my last time over, fully disillusioned, fully convinced that the whole thing was utterly pointless.

And that got me really, really sensitive. for a number of years. And it took about a year and a half, two years for me to settle back into, frankly, society. And I'm lucky. I'm immensely lucky that I come from a small town, that I move back to a small town, that I'm very connected with my neighbors of my community and my family. I got to meet my wife. I mean, like, life got good. Is that what pulled you out of that sort of place of despair? But also, I mean, there was a time, I mean, there was a time there where I was really down on this whole project. I was really down. I'm like, because I just, I saw everything as a complete waste. Like I got very nihilistic. I got very critical. And then you

like settle in and you reconnect with human beings in the real world, not on the internet, but like in the actual world. And you build a community and you find yourself connected with folks. And that entirely rebuilt my faith. It rebuilt my faith in America. It rebuilt my faith in America. It rebuilt my faith in our ability to be what we say we want to be. It rebuilt my faith in people. And like I got that because I got to move back to the place that I was from and because I got the support that I got from the VA to put me in, frankly, a much better place, both materially and mentally.

And I got support and help. That's what got me through it. And that's what allowed me to reconnect. And that's what gives me, frankly, the immense amount of hope that I have to understand undertake this project. I'm not doing this from a place of cynicism or a place of ego. I'm doing this because I honestly think we need to do something different. We need to try a different kind of politics.

What we are doing right now is clearly not working. There is so much resentment, there's so much hate. And coming from a tiny town where a lot of my neighbors and I do not agree on politics and yet we're all friends. all know each other. Everybody still supports each other. Like for me, I see in that the way forward and that that colors my politics and it colors how I'm running. And to, yeah, to have people like look at this whole experience that I've gone through in my life and want to throw it in my face. And to know that it's coming from the same political establishment that frankly made me go

fight in these wars in the first place is like doubly infuriating yeah it's like you made me go like i volunteered to go do this stuff you sent us off you took advantage of us you took advantage of her patriotism you took advantage of a willingness to sacrifice ourselves of our willingness to take part in this stuff and we come back and struggle and then we in it for years struggle without help and then finally get help finally rebuild a good life finally find like a place of real community in depth and and a connection to this world and then to have that exact same apparatus take that whole experience and try to weaponize it it's uh it's disgusting man it in it actually legitimately infuriates me i can understand it there the obviously like people's votes and

quotes and you know life experience is going to be part of a political campaign but um the Appa Research World gets pretty fucking disgusting at points, and I think you're kind of hitting at that. Speaking of which, in kind of a non-traditional campaign move, your team actually shared some opposition research on you with me. It's a video from, I believe, a decade ago. Let's just watch an excerpt, and then we should talk about it. First of all, what we're watching there was, singing. Marine Corps, Silks. Those are Marine Corps running shorts.

Pardon me, Silkeys. First of all, great song choice. Tell us what's happening there where you are. There's probably some listeners who are very confused. And the reason we are showing this video is because at the very end, can see a tattoo on your chest. I've been told that some of your political opponents are telling reporters that that tattoo has a Nazi affiliation.

And I would like to know, is that accurate? Are you a secret Nazi? I am not a secret Nazi. Actually, if you read through my Reddit comments, I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and anti-Semitism and racism in general. I would say a lifelong opponent. The video is from my brother's marriage to his wife, to my sister-in-law, who I was serenating. I told him that my wedding gift to them would be my embarrassment.

And so I performed a lip-sync version of Miley Cyrus's wrecking ball to my sister-in-law on the day of her wedding to my brother. And now, of course, that embarrassment, which was mostly just... held internally in the family, as we always watched that video at family events and laughed as now shared with the world. So I feel like I'm just going to give them a wedding gift for the rest of my life, which is great. I love them. The reason, by the way, the reason of this video, Saturday was their 10th wedding anniversary. Oh, congrats. And my sister-in-law was showing everybody the video. And I was like, oh, yeah, there it is. There's me being embarrassed. But we also, yes, so in 2007, I was a machine gun section leader with Kilo company

Thurbitainate Marines. We were on the 2-2-Mew, and it was my third deployment. My previous two had been to Fallujah and then Ramadi, 2006. And we went ashore and split Croatia, myself and a few of the other machine gun squad leaders, and we got very inebriated. And we just, we did what Marines on Liberty do. and we decided to go get a tattoo. And we went to a tattoo parlor in Split, Croatia.

And we chose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing. And we got those tattoos. And then we all moved on with our lives. And I actually joined the army after that where I got, you know, I had to go to maps. I got screened.

Later on, I got a security clearance. clearance and a full screen when I went to work for the State Department as a contractor doing security for the ambassador to Afghanistan in 2018. And I've also just lived my entire life like a regular person with the skull and crossbones on their chest, which by that I mean taking my shirt off, performing Miley Cyrus songs in front of my extended family and to my sister-in-law and just taking my shirt off at the beach. Right, presumably going to the beach, yeah. I mean, I went to college.

I went to the gym. I did all the things. And at no point in this entire experience of my life, did anybody ever once say, hey, you're a Nazi. It never came up until we got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo. And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I've not been a dude. doing a very good job for the past 18 years. Yeah, you're a self-described communist, but also a Nazi.

I will say the fact that I've managed to go from communist to Nazi in the space of four days, according to the people who are trying to, whatever, do this to me, I find to be quite a spectacular turn of events, but, you know. Well, like Miley, you've got range. Okay, so, like, you came into this. You're just like, you're a normal guy. You want to make the country a better place. Did you know this shit was going to happen?

Did you go to your staff before and being like, look, I was a Reddit shit poster for a long time. There's some things that are going to come out. Let's delete this old account. Like, let's get ready for this. Or has this just been a gut punch of like stuff you've forgotten you'd written coming back at you? I'm an elder millennial. I am well aware that everything I wrote on the internet exists. I know with the way back machine.

I mean, the idea that like I went through years on the internet and now think that like there's some way to make that go away is absurd um so no i mean and i you look i knew they were going to throw i knew that they were going to throw the book at me right like i i knew that we are up against the machine we were told not to run this race i was specifically like we were sent messages saying we were not supposed to do this we had to wait our turn we didn't have permission and that if we did it they were going to try to just destroy my life and that is what they're trying to do Um, I will say the Nazi part did not, did not see that coming. Sorry. Um, that, that one, that one's out of right field, I guess. Um, but the, uh, yeah,

I mean, I was, yeah, early on like, look, I, I posted on Reddit for years. I'm sure I said some dumb stuff. It was also a dark time in my life. I also used to like get drunk and post on Reddit because that was fun when I was angry and alone. Uh, and pretty sure. that accounts for most of my bad behavior. Again, not trying to make excuses. It was me. I did it. And the things that I said that I do.

I mean, there are things that I said. There are words that I use that I'm utterly horrified by. And I'm not blaming anybody else. But the idea that like that a person cannot like evolve and grow from years ago is I think pretty laughable to the average human being, especially this day and age. Everybody's posted something stupid. on the internet but yeah i look for what it's where i also appreciate that you wanted to come on here and talk about this stuff and just have a shitty uncomfortable conversation because how else are you

going to move through this i the thing that people hate about this i mean like regular the thing that i've hated about politics for a long time is that people are not real right like it's there's this whole thing there's a show that gets put on it's this it's it feels so so devise of emotion, it feels devoid of depth, it's always driven me insane. And like, I knew some of this was going to come. I knew that I was going to have conversations like this at some point. And I think the way to deal with this stuff is you take responsibility for it. You offer explanation. You also, you also show how it isn't you anymore at all. And I think, frankly, I mean, I'm very, I'm very proud of the person I am today.

I'm very proud of my politics. I'm very proud of the work I've done in my community for years. I'm very proud of the relationships I've built. I'm proud of my marriage. I'm proud of all of these things. And I don't get any of this without having gone through all of that. I don't think that we need to come up with bigger structural solutions to our problems without getting disillusioned.

I needed to get disillusioned before I thought that, maybe the thing that we have now is not the answer. Like, it is, and then I needed to get really disillusioned. And then I had to rebuild some faith. I had to rebuild hope in my community, which came from actual, like, work, work, and therapy. I mean, if there's one thing I can say, I went to therapy for years, I still go to therapy.

Super helpful. It's great. More people should do it. Makes you a better person. Makes you all around happier. It gives you a lot more tools to engage with thoughts and feelings that you otherwise don't have tools for. So it's a, like, I'm not embarrassed by any of this stuff. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm embarrassed by things that I said, but I'm not embarrassed by my life. And I'm more than happy to talk about it openly. Yeah, and I appreciate that. Last question on

internet comments. You never posted on the website, nude Africa, right? I did not. Okay. I, I avoided that one. Thank God. And, but, oh, boy, I remember that story. Mr. Mark Robinson, we miss you. Okay. Are you a soldier? I think something like that. Wow, you've a good memory. So you enlisted in the Marine Corps.

You deployed to Iraq in 2005. You got back. You later enlisted in the Army and then you did this additional tour of duty in Afghanistan. Can you just like, can you tell us about what were those deployments like for you? What did they teach you about yourself and about the United States? Like, take us through that journey. Yeah, I joined up in 04. I was 19.

and I joined the infantry. I wanted to fight. I wanted to be a soldier since the day, I mean, as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a soldier. I joined the Marine Corps because the Marine Corps had the reputation as being the Marine Corps.

I mean, if you want to fight, then you join the infantry and you join the Marine, like that's, everybody knows Marine Corps Combat Infantry. That's where the action is. And I did not get disappointed. I joined in February of 2004, and I was on my first deployment in January of 2005, outside of Fallujah.

We operated from Abu Ghraib Prison. I was, we just used it as a patrol base. I wasn't involved. This was after. Abu Ghree prison area, Nasserwa Salam, Al-Qarma, pretty much the area to the east of Fallujah proper. Now, we were there for seven to eight months, came back, was home for five months, and we redeployed to Ramadi in, I believe it was February of 2006, February or March. And then I spent eight months in Ramadi, and that was, that was the most intense of my deployments, hands down. Ramadi, 2006 was wildly.

Notariously horrifying time there, right? Yeah. And I was a kilo company, the company I was with, we were tasked with the defense of the government center, which was the, it was the capital building of Alambar province. So essentially, anybody that had a grievance with the occupation, came on down to the Gov Center and expressed your, expressed your unhappiness generally with RPGs or mortar rounds or direct fire. So we, it was an intense deployment. It was very violent. It was an immensely violent city at the time. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had really. consolidated itself within the city at that point. So there was just an immense amount of violence against us, a much amount of violence that we were committing. The civilians in the city suffered immensely from, frankly, just being in the middle of all of it. It was hard.

It was a very, very hard deployment. I don't think you'll find anybody who fought in Ramadi in 2006, who will say otherwise. I got back from that deployment. At this point, I was a corporal. I'd served as the machine gun section leader. And I had the opportunity to either get out of the Marine Corps or extend for a few months and redeploy with my unit.

And so myself and frankly, a bunch of the guys with two deployments under their belts who were all in leadership roles at this point, we pretty much all extended so we could stick around for that next deployment, which we thought was going to Afghanistan. And then it wound up being the 2-2-Mew, which meant that we primarily bounced around the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, did some anti-piracy operations off Somalia, went ashore in Kuwait, did some training in support of, and some stuff in support of OIF. Mostly, though, it was going to go into Liberty ports, which means you pull into a port, and Marines and sailors get to go ashore and have an evening ashore and get to drink and

party which is fun when you are 22 23 years old and at that point suffering from an immense amount of trauma so we we there was a lot of heavy heavy drinking back then I mean the infantry is all is all is always a you know historically a heavy drinking place but but going ashore and partying pretty hard getting tattoos that's that was kind of the the bulk of it got on got But home from that deployment, got out of the Marine Corps. I'd been accepted at college, George Washington University in D.C., started the GW, promptly realized that I was, I was, you know, not, like I was not ready for that. It was 2008, the war was still on, buddies were still deploying.

I really felt like I was kind of not pulling my weight. So I wound up going to reenlist in the Marine Corps, but I have, sleeve tattoos, forearm tattoos, and the Marine Corps changed the rules. 2007, they changed the Mar-Admin. Yeah, so no more sleeve tattoos, even though I got them all in, they're literally Marine Corps tattooed. It's an Eagle Globe and Anchor, it's 031, my M-OS. What a stupid fucking roll.

Okay. Well, if any Marines are watching this who are in around the time I was in, they're all nodding along because they know how stupid fuck. It's like, it drove everybody insane. Needless to say, couldn't reenlist into the Marine Corps because of my sleeve tattoos, went to the Army. Army doesn't care about tattoos showing on your forearms. And so I joined the Army as 11 Bravo and infantry as well. And went to a long-range surveillance company and became a reconnaissance and surveillance team leader.

And then deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, 2011 in support of a rifle company from Iowa. And I served as a rifle team leader and a rifle squad leader in northeast Afghanistan. Got back from that deployment in 2011 and got out of the Army in 2012. And so, I mean, you served in both of the post-9-11 wars. I mean, was your, and the takeaway was the same in each theater, just sort of like disillusionment with the mission, the cause, the purpose. So when I got, when I was, when I got back from my, when I got out of the Marine Corps, the big issue was that I had felt we were doing things wrong. I believed in coin. I believed in counterinsurgency doctrine.

I really thought that there was this kind of like intellectual way of fighting the war where we were going to connect with civilians. We were going to build relationships, build this whole thing and that we were going to. And when I went to college, that was kind of my idea. I was like, okay, I'm going to like engage with these more intellectual concepts. This is going to give me a better foundation. I'm going to go back into the military with this foundation. So we do this right.

When I went to Afghanistan in 10 and 11, and at this point, I'm going back because I think that we've learned the lessons. I'm hearing all the words from the General Petraeus and General Mattis have written the counterinsurgency manual. And it's all right. I'm reading it all. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is what we're doing. And then I went to Afghanistan, and we were doing the exact same bullshit. We called it different things. We used different words.

It was the same bullshit. shit. It was just metrics. It was like how much money did we spend? How many people did we kill? How many buildings did we build even if they're now empty and nobody's using them? It was like all nobody ever asked like how much better off are the Afghans in this part of Afghanistan than when you got here. Nobody was ever interested in that question. It was just all these metrics and I was just I left that I left in 2011 my mom could have I got home from that deployment and I was like we need to leave this place yesterday like we are going to lose this war this was a 2011 yeah um I'm like there is no there's nobody knows what we're doing there's no plan I mean it's just a it's a it's a joke and that was when I began to

get in my criticism I began to get incredibly critical of U.S. foreign policy I began to see it as everything I had taken part and felt like it had zero value. You know, 2014 rolls around, or 15, and then, like, Fallujah and Ramadi fall to ISIS. Yeah. And I was like, all right. Like, what was like, I'm just like, what was the point of any of this? This was like the most, like, and I took part in this, some of these appointments were just immensely violent. And, you know, I watched friends die.

I watched friends get seriously injured. We killed people. I mean, like, it was a very, these were, I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't J.D. Vance. You know, like, we, I wasn't, like, writing up, I wasn't writing up, like, a report on Camp Volusia. Like, we were fighting the war. And I still struggle with this because I still have an immense amount of pride in my military service. Yeah. And I'm still very, I'm, and in many ways, it was like one of the things I was best at.

And I'm very proud of that. At the same time, I don't know what, I don't know what happened in Ramadi in 2006 that made life better for the people of Sullivan, Maine. And I don't think anybody's ever going to be able to convince me that there was anything. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're struggling with something that like everyone who worked on these conflicts struggled with. Look, I think there's an argument the war in Afghanistan should have ended after Osama bin Laden was killed, right? There's all these windows when I think we should have ended that war.

I think everyone talks about these wars struggles with what you're struggling with now, which is like, how do you honor the service and sacrifice and patriotism of the people who went overseas and fought and did something incredibly brave and noble with the end results, which are apparent to all of us, which is, you know, the Taliban currently running Afghanistan and, you know, ISIS coming back. in Iraq and all the challenges that we don't need to re-litigate. But, you know, I will just say this too. You know, I went back in 18. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that because you went back. So you get out of the Army, you go to school for a while in D.C., you go back to Afghanistan to work for, as a security contractor for the State Department in Kabul. I think it was with a company called Constellis.

Yeah, Constellis. Consellis essentially bought up all of the old security companies that used to provide these So it used to be, you know, back in the day, there was like triple canopy, Blackwater, Right. SOC, SMG. They were like a bunch of, and they all vied for the same contracts. Over time, amusingly, just like everything else, ownership got consolidated. By 2018, Constellus had pretty much bought up everything.

So they were, they were, like I worked for a company. My first contract was a company called IDS, International Development Solutions. And then within like a month or two of being in. Kabul that promptly turned into triple canopy. But it was all Constellus. It was the exact same company. They just kind of like changed the, you know, it's all. I mean, this was when my disillusionment became, I went from being disillusioned to just

being nihilistic because there I am in Afghanistan, seven years, seven years after the last time I was there. But now I'm on the ambassador security detail. And now I'm like seeing things from the higher level. last time I was there, I was an infantry sergeant, right? And now I'm here, like, interacting with the NATO leadership, U.S. military leadership, the diplomatic leadership, the U.N. leadership. Nothing had changed. Seven years. Nothing had changed. No new ideas. It was like, you know, they reframe things. They had new projects. Everybody had a new project

that they were doing, all bullshit. Yeah. And the only thing that it was happening was we were expending in immense amount of taxpayer money on all of these projects, including like the contract I was on. I mean, I look at this, I look back, it all seemed like a big jobs program, frankly. I mean, like just a way of moving taxpayer dollars into the pockets of all these security and defense companies. Because I, because nothing I was saying made.

any sense. It wasn't moving us any closer. It didn't, I don't even think anybody knew what they were trying to move closer to. I lasted about six months. I got, I quit that job. I quit in July of 2018. I was, I was there for six months and I was like, this is, this is the dumbest goddamn thing. I can't, I cannot. I was, I could not be engaged with the system anymore. I was fully checked out. And then I went back to Maine full, like I bought a boat. I got into oyster farming and I essentially never looked back until now, quite frankly. I guess my only question was how, what, you know, after like these really demoralizing tours, the final one in Afghanistan, what made you think like, okay, one last shot maybe as a security contractor,

like that might be the right thing for me? I was utterly lost and had no idea what to do with my life. Yeah. Like the one thing that I was good at, that I was good at, that I. I knew I was good at. The one skill set I knew I had was being a soldier, carrying guns in war zones for the United States. That was like the last time I'd been good at anything,

that I felt I'd been good at something. The last time I'd felt confidence in myself and my skills was doing that. Like I'd spent the intervening years going to college and being like having a lot of untreated PTSD, having a lot of, and the struggles that coincide with that. I was lost and I went looking, I went looking for answers in the one place I thought I could find them. And then very promptly was like, oh, well, that's just clearly not going to do it.

And then I went and that was when I decided that I probably had to start looking in totally different places. Like, say, becoming an oyster farmer in my hometown, which was never on my list of things to do with my life. But also, neither was running for U.S. Senate. So things go in weird directions. Things get weird. I have two more questions for you because I've kept you for like nearly an hour now. Is there an oyster farming season? Are you out there all year round?

Yeah. So in my part of Maine, it's fairly seasonal. We start in April, and we usually finish up the season by January 1st. And then between- Freezing your ass off. Yeah, it's cold. Winter times, winter time's cold. That's what that's what clothes are for.

And then January through April is fixing all the equipment that broke during this. I mean, it's farming. You have a harvest season, a growing season, and then you have your off season in which you prepare all the gear and all the stuff. I mean, it's the ocean. The ocean is destroying everything constantly. Boats, their natural habitat is at the bottom of the sea, so we have to constantly coax them along to stay up with us. Outboard engines. I mean, there's always stuff to work on in the winter.

So wintertime is very project kind of focused. And then April through January is when we're kind of in like either, I mean, it's very, I'm not going to get. get in the details. It'll take hours. But there's a lot of kind of ups and downs to how the oyster season works. But it's it's, dude, it saved my life. It absolutely is like being able to become connected with like the sea, making a living on the ocean by myself. I mean, I spent so many of those early years on the boat alone, which frankly was like just everything I needed. And if I hadn't done that I would I would not I would not be where I am without question it was it's a and it's growing food I love farm I love farming I it's like it's such a beautiful thing so it sounds

cool and it sounds fun I'm just a huge wimp and being on a boat in Maine and January sounds challenging but you're clearly tougher than I am well there's also it feeds my inner infantryman that still enjoys a little bit of suffering so yeah you like you embrace the suck big big picture final question what is bro. with the Democratic Party today, and how are you different and how do you want to fix it? First and foremost,

I think the Democratic Party has is no longer representative of Democrats. So when I've spent the past month going all over the state of Maine, holding town halls. I don't meet a single Democrat in real life who thinks that raising taxes on the wealthy

to pay for health care is a bad idea. I haven't met a single Democrat who thinks that we shouldn't be thinking about big structural changes in the way of FDR. I mean, Democrats across the party believe in the party of working people. They believe in it being a party that represents justice, a party that represents decency, and making this whole society work for everybody in it. That is what Democrats believe everywhere I go. And I firmly believe that if the Democratic Party was run by the majority of the people in it, it wouldn't be that party.

I think the real problem is at the highest echelons in leadership, it is not that party. In the higher echelons, it is a party that is very concerned about the donor class. It is very concerned about its relationships with fundraising and money. It is very concerned with holding on to like personal power and not expanding power and in frankly empowering people to build power through organizing, which is something we're really focused on on my campaign. It's I just think it is entirely the people driving the decision making at the highest level. they do not understand the moment in history they are in. They do not understand that there is a deep, deep need from the electorate, from the American people for real answers, big heroic structural change. The kind of stuff that gave us Social Security, the kind of stuff that gave us Medicare and Medicaid, that's what people want because the crises that we are facing, they are huge.

We are not talking about stuff that can be fixed with a block grant here or a tax credit there. We need to be thinking big again. And so many people in this country want that. And they understand that they are living in a system that has been built to screw them. And it's been built by these same people. It's the same people that sent me to Iraq. It's the same people that sent me back to Afghanistan. The same people that over and over and over again do not show up to fight for big,

courageous change for American working people. That's what people want out of the Democratic Party. That's why I am a Democrat. It's why I'm running as a Democrat. I believe in that kind of Democratic Party. And that's what we're trying to build. And yet the leadership of the party sees that across the country, sees candidates across the country that represent that.

And its only response is to crush them. Its only response is to try to bury people, rip their lives apart, call them communists and Nazis within four days of each other, just try to embarrass people, I guess. And we're not going to get working people into politics. We're not going to get a politics that represents everyday Americans, all of whom have lived complicated lives, all of whom who have lived lives that are based around evolving as people.

We're not getting that. We're not going to get that if this is what the party does. And we have to beat them. That's the only, I mean, for me, that's the only option. We have to build power and we have to beat them. And that's why I, like all of this stuff, there's nothing these people can take from me that I actually treasure in my life. They can't take the town of Sullivan, Maine, can't take my boats, my oyster farm is still

there, my friends are still there, my neighbors are still there, my wife, my family. That's the stuff that I take seriously. All this other stuff, you can, like, rip my life apart, call me whatever names you want, insinuate whatever you want. But I'm not in this for myself. I'm in this because we need to do something totally different. And if the sacrifice that's required is getting dragged through the mud, then so be it. And I'm staying in this thing because of that. Well, Grant Planner, thank you so much for doing the show.

I really appreciate your time and for being willing to talk about all this stuff. And hope to see you again soon. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. That's our show for today. Thanks to Graham Platner for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new pod on Friday. Talk to you then.

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