Speaker 1: What's going on.
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And again, thank you so much for your support. All Right, so, uh,
just to be clear, because you know, I want everybody
to be on sort of the same page here in
the public square. Things that are Nazi Madison Square Garden,
the ok hand sign, Trump obviously, Uh, everybody who works
for Donald Trump or worked for Donald Trump, everybody who
voted for Donald Trump, anybody who's opposed to illegal immigration. Also,
it's Nazi to wave at a crowd if you don't
sufficiently close your hand for a long enough period, I believe.
Also Nazi Israel and the Jews. Okay, So just so.
Speaker 1: We're all clear, those are all Nazi, not Nazi.
Speaker 2: A Nazi tattoo on your chest that is not Nazi, Okay,
Nazi not Nazi. Nazi tattoo not at all Nazi. That's
apparently the standard that we are now going with. I
mentioned I think I mentioned this guy the other day,
but I did not go in depth, and it turned
out to be quite the fortuitous procrastination that I engaged in,
because Wow, what a difference seventy two hours has made
in this guy's implosion. I mean campaign Democrat Maine Senate hopeful,
Graham Platner. Is his name, Graham Platner. This is going
to take a while because there are a lot of
things that Graham Platner.
Speaker 3: Has going on.
Speaker 2: He's doing a lot of apologies, he's offering a lot
of regrets. Apparently his youthful indiscretions dating all the way
back to about a minute ago, have now been unearthed
and it's causing some awkwardness on the campaign trail and
actually had to result in a tattoo. I think he
may be the first political candidate I've ever heard of
that had to go get a tattoo on the campaign trail. Okay,
so Graham Platner is expressing regret over getting a tattoo
that this is from Politico. The tattoo appears similar to
a Nazi symbol, and by appearing similar, I think what
Politico means there is that it is in fact actually
the Nazi tattoo. It is the logo, it is the thing.
It is the totin kop, which I had never heard of.
I would not know this. If I saw this thing,
I would not know what that is. I would not
realize that that was the logo of a Nazi SS
unit that guarded the concentration camps.
Speaker 1: I would not know that.
Speaker 2: I also would not get it tattooed on me, because
I don't know what that thing means. Right now, he's
got a story for this youthful indiscretion, highly intoxicated, which
that seems to be the recurring theme in Graham Plattner's
excuses and regrets. He's got a lot, but then again
too few dimension Actually it's actually a lot, so he yeah,
and media is now in covering all of this because
he would also apparently be very public in his regretful,
youthful indiscretions from about a minute ago. He got the
tattoo on his chest about eighteen years ago, or as
Politico calls it, nearly two decades ago, and he plans
to have it removed.
Speaker 1: He did not actually have it removed. He had it
covered up.
Speaker 2: He had a different tattoo put on top of the
Nazi tattoo. So I guess he's like gone into hiding
the Nazi. He's like undercover. It's an undercover Nazi tattoo. Now,
this is his latest maya kulpa, after a week of
damning headlines over resurfaced social media posts platners, which, by
the way, he attributes to getting drunk and poop posting.
As the kids say, well, they don't say poop posting,
but they use.
Speaker 1: An analogous term.
Speaker 2: So he By the way, what happened to all the
people that were so very concerned about Pete Hegseth and
his drinking? Remember they were oh so very concerned about
his sobriety and whether he would be drinking as the
Secretary of Defense, sorry, Secretary.
Speaker 1: Of War, What is it good for?
Speaker 2: No, I've not seen anybody raising any questions about whether
or not this guy from Maine, who, by the way,
also was a Blackwater Yeah, he was a Blackwater mercenary,
which I'm old enough to remember when the Left thought
Blackwater was Nazis. Well yeah, so, but it's different. See now,
it's different. This is different because he's a Democrat and
he's this working class you know, works with his hands, fishermen, oyster,
farmer guy. Oh actually, no, that's not true either. That
actually just came out about an hour ago. Not really
so working class. Yeah, we'll get to it. So, Platner's
campaign sought to what Politico describes as front run opposition research.
I've never heard this term, front run opposition research. I've
never heard that term before. The term that we usually
use in this case is that they are trying to
get in front of They're trying to get in front
of a scandal. They want their narrative out there first
to address it. So you address it first, and you
break the news, You give your explanation, and you allow
the media then to take up your explanation, advance that narrative.
It calcifies, and then any future reporting always has your
narrative embedded in the story, and any time it comes
up after that, you can say, I've already addressed this,
let's move on. I'm focused on the people. I'm focused
on winning this election for the mayners, that's what they're called.
I did not realize that people who live in Maine
are called Mayners. I don't like the term. I'm thinking Maynias.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I mean, if they elect this guy, definitely Maynites, Manians,
what about Manians.
Speaker 1: Main Owens. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maynor just seems like it's missing an extra syllable there
for I don't know. That's just the way it hits
my ear. So again, he is front running opposition research
about his tattoo, which as Political once again describes it
here as resembling a Nazi skull and crossbones. Again not resembling.
Is it resembles the Nazi skins and crossbones logo because
it is the Nazi skull and crossbones logo.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: He did an appearance to get out in front of
all of this on the liberal podcast pod Save America.
Speaker 1: The podbros and his campaign shared.
Speaker 2: The video of him that was going to get released
against him as part of an OPO research dump. And
the video, according to Politico, shows him dancing shirtless, which
is true, but it doesn't provide the whole story. He
is not just shirtless, he is pantless as well. Yes,
he is in his underwear prancing around a bar at
what appears to be a wedding, because who among us,
right hasn't just stripped down to their tidy white although
they're not white.
Speaker 1: He's not wearing white underwear. It's like the it's got
like the boxer briefs. They're black.
Speaker 2: But who among us really hasn't, you know, imbibed too
much and taken off all of our clothes at a wedding.
Platner said he had no idea of any Nazi link
to the logo when he got the tattoo quote. It
was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC
insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol.
Oh so he's using the term that it resembled the
Nazi symbol. So Politico just picking up his terminology, using
his preferred narrative to advance that. He said, I have absolutely,
I absolutely would not have gone through life having this
on my chest if I knew that, and to insinuate
that I did is disgusting. I am already planning to
get this removed. So he had no idea except there
are people who knew him from back in the day
and they're like, oh, yeah, he totally knew. You know,
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a message here to do you do to do to
do from some anonymous uh to anonymous person. So I've
just labeled them as South Carolina leftist because that's.
Speaker 1: The it's an eight oh three number.
Speaker 2: You forgot to mention the members of the Young Republicans
who literally self identified as Nazis. You guys really suck
at creating a narrative that the Nazi talk is unjustified.
Your condescending tone doesn't make reality not real. Uh well,
let's see, I did cover the Young Republican Group chat.
Speaker 1: I did cover that.
Speaker 2: I disagreed with the the approach that some people on
the right, aka the woke right, are taking that there
are no enemies to the right of me. This uh
sort of dictum that people are adopting, so you can
never criticize anybody on the right.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: I don't agree with that, just like I don't agree
with the dictum that you don't criticize if you are
on the left, that you don't criticize anybody to the
left of you, because all that does is allow the
crazies and the radicals to hijack your organization. And so
I was totally fine and totally supportive of firing all
of the people that were involved in the Young Republican
Group chat totally fine with it because it was completely
inappropriate the stuff that they were saying. You got to
excise that cancer. Now that being said, if you want
to cite that as a reason or an example sc leftist,
you want to cite that as an example that Republicans
are Nazis and that somehow or another, that's an argument
against Graham Platner literally tattooing a Nazi logo on his chest. Well,
that would be dishonest, right, that would be a double standard,
which you know, I'm reminded of the frequent criticism that
people on the right have of people on the left
that if y'all didn't have double standards, you'd have none
at all. Right, But I'm not saying that. I'm just
saying I've heard that criticism. And even so, see that
might work on somebody who has not condemned the people
in that group chat. It doesn't work on me, though,
because I did see sorry not sorry, And that also
exposes you as a hypocrite because you're not disavowing your guy.
In fact, it looks like this guy, Graham Platner, he
very well could win the Democrat primary. The maners in
the Democrat mayners, they love what they love. The heart
wants what it wants, you know, and they really want
this kind of leftist and so you are employing the
very same dictum, no enemies to my left, you will
not excise the radicals. And that's why, by the way,
the Democrat Party has moved further and further and further
to the left. That's why your party is captured by
this radical base. It's why so many people on the left,
so many people in the Democrat Party come across as
insane because they're celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder. Right, there's all
this what aboutism, because you just cannot bring yourselves to
criticize guys like say Jay Jones, right, who fantasized about
murdering a Republican and that Republican's two young children in
front of his wife.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You guys just can't do it, and that's how your
organization gets corrupted, and that's why you lose. By the way,
that's why you guys are losing these like the swing states.
That it's why people are leaving the Democrat Party. North
Carolina Democrats hemorrhaging registered voters. That's why I've been telling
you this for years. You don't want to listen to
me because I'm a Nazi. Apparently, oh there you go.
Pete called himself a Nazi. Just absolute idiocy. So Platner
said that he got the tattoo while he was out
drinking with fellow Marines while on leave surely or whatever
in Croatia. So that's I think, really where we need
to direct the blame here, the tattoo parlor in Croatia.
They slipped a fast one by these marines who asked
for the Nazi logo as a tattoo. He said that
the similarity to Nazi iconography never came up. Include but
if you guys were completely sauced, then like maybe the
guy did tell you at the tattoo parlor, like are
you sure? Or maybe there was a language barrier. I
don't know, but here's the thing. You've had the tattoo
for eighteen years. And Genevieve MacDonald, the former political director
for Platner, his own political director, quit and said, maybe
he didn't know it when he got it, but he
got it years ago, and he should have had it
covered up because he knows damn well what it means.
A former Democrat state lawmaker McDonald resigned from the campaign
last week after revelations about his numerous controversial posts on
the platform Readit. Jewish Insider dot com also reported this
week that an acquaintance of Platner recalled him referring to
the tattoo the tattoo as quote my totin kop which
is what that thing is called. Although Politico is not
into dependently verified the reporting. Toten kopf is a German
word typically referring to an image of a skull and crossbones.
During the Nazi era, one form of the image was
adopted by the Nazi police, leading to a lasting association
with Nazism and continued use by white supremacists, sort of
like the okay symbol that we have to kick a
bunch of guys out of the West Point over right
because they were playing the circle game and you guys were.
Speaker 1: Like white supremacist. The people who hear all the dog
whistles somehow just don't see this. It's amazing.
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Speaker 3: It's because murder had played into that and had an
impact on Blue Line rider ship. Brent Kagil also attributed
the lower numbers to stepped up fair enforcement. Health insurance
getting more expensive for all of us.
Speaker 6: The average employer based family health insurance plan costs nearly
twenty seven thousand dollars this year, of six percent from
last year, according to a survey conducted by the health
research group KFF. Employers are picking up about three quarters
of that, with employees contributing nearly six hundred dollars a month.
Kff's chief executive says he's a wave of employees potentially
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go up. Employers cite the biggest factors in rising costs
as prescription drug coverage for some covering the use of
GLP one, weight loss drugs, long term illness rates, and
more use of medical services. Chris Foster Fox news.
Speaker 3: Of fatal fire in Roanne County. One person found dead
after a blaze last night at a town of land Is.
Happened at a home on West Taylor Street. The fire
and death are currently under investigation. In New York City.
Their current mayor, Eric Adams, has made his choice on
who he wants to succeed him as leader of America's
largest city.
Speaker 7: Adams will endorse ex New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in
this closely watched mayor's race. Adams spokesman Todd Shapiro, in
a brief statement, said the mayor intends to campaign alongside Cuomo,
but those plans are still being finalized. Cuomo, who's running
as an independent, continues to trail Democratic nominees or on
Mom Donnie in polling by Fox News and other outlets.
Adams dropped his bid for reelection nearly a month ago,
citing in part the city campaign finance boards withholding of funds.
Speaker 3: Correspondent Granald Scott and the Charlotte Hornets had a franchise
record nine players finishing double digits in their season opening
one thirty six to one to seventeen win last night
over the Nets at the at the Uptown Arena. It
was also the first night that fans could take in
the nearly quarter billion bucks and renovations to the Spectrum Cinemas.
Speaker 8: Building, reopening after two summers of renovations, and it looks
like a brand new arena. I mean, obviously every seat
in this building was ripped out and they brought in
new seats, addams some extra seats as well. The capacity
now just over nineteen thousand.
Speaker 3: Queen City News gave McDonald. There's also a new concourse
with more bars, bathrooms and food options. The reno paid
for by the cities tourism tax.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 3: Now out to those afternoon roads we go and pan
the jam is still looking pretty good out there.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it is still looking good, especially as the far
as the drive times go. But we have had a
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Bloc Rocky River Road for a hit and run over.
In Wash Charlotte fifty three hundred blocks South Boulevard a
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Speaker 1: Now, all of those have.
Speaker 10: Checked in within the last fifteen to twenty five minutes,
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Speaker 3: WBT News Time one thirty three.
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Speaker 2: Cheers Regarding the near naked Dancing Russ says another reason
to not do the cash gift up front at the wedding.
If they don't let you dance around the bar in
your underwear, then you could just pro rate the gift.
Some good advice there, and some good advice from the
WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick GMC a text
from evil Lefty. At least Platner serve the country. What
have you done? That's a fair question. I've not gotten
a Nazi tattoo on my chest, so there's that. I
feel like that's a pretty big deal, not putting Nazi
logos on my body permanently.
Speaker 1: So yeah.
Speaker 2: So from this is a from Politico. Plattner apologized last
week for a series of offensive Reddit posts. For example,
twenty thirteen, he downplayed sexual assault in the military twenty
eighteen suggested that violence is necessary to enact social change.
He also this is from CNN. In a comment from
Youthful Indiscretion twenty twenty one Long Time Ago twenty twenty one,
he says I got older and became a communist. He
was posting in a subreddit called anti work. He also
later in twenty twenty one, reflected on his life after
his military servicing. He was a vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist.
These days, after the war, I've pretty much stopped, pretty
much stopped believing in any of the patriotic nonsense that
got me there in the first place, and am a
firm believer that the best thing a person can do
is help their neighbors neighbors and live a loving life.
Still got the guns, though, I don't trust the fascists
to act politely.
Speaker 10: Hm.
Speaker 7: Let's see.
Speaker 2: Oh, he called all of the cops, remember the a
cab acab All cops are fatherless children, right? You talked
about that? He called rural white Americans racist and stupid.
He also would post prolifically on a subreddit called Socialist
r A, a self described anti capitalist left firearms education
forum that says it is unaffiliated with the Socialist Rifle Association.
He said, I did used to love America, or at
least the idea of it. These days, I'm pretty disgusted
by it all. He also told CNN that he he
no longer feels that disillusionment with America that he had
once long ago, three years ago, four years ago, that
he posted online. He has evolved on these matters. He
says he's not a secret Nazi, which, like that makes
sense because a secret Nazi wouldn't, you know, put the
logos on their body like that. According to a person
this is from Jewish Insider dot com, one person who
socialized with Platner when he was living in Washington, DC
more than a decade ago. He had specifically acknowledged that
the tattoo was a totin kop, the death's head symbol
adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit that guarded concentration
camps in World War Two. I know people are arguing
with me about this. I don't know what the logo is.
I'm just telling you what Jewish Insider is telling me.
That's what they say. The logo is, which, by the way,
appears on Hollywood costu ums in Inglorioa's Bastards.
Speaker 1: What was the other one.
Speaker 2: It's like three different movies prominently displayed onlike their lapels,
on their collars, on their hats. Anyway, he told this acquaintance, Oh,
this is my totein cop He said it in a
cutesy little way. The exchange occurred in twenty twelve at
tune In, which is a popular dive bar on Capitol Hill,
where Platner later worked as a bartender, which I feel
like one bartender in Congress is enough at this point. No, Okay,
So he was a frequent patron, though before he became
a bartender, he was going to George Washington University on
the GI bill. According to the former acquaintance, he would
often take his shirt off drinking with friends late at
night at the bar, and on at least one occasion,
had stated that he knew what the tattoo represented, but
he gave varying accounts of the image during this time,
saying at one point he was aware of what it was,
and then at another time claimed that he had not
known what it was when he got the tattoo. The
mixed accounts indicate that Plattner has at least long been
aware of the symbols connection to Nazism, even as he
said in the podcast interview the Podbros that he was
not familiar with any such association when he chose to
get the tattoo. He said he was very inebriated when
he got it. He says, I can honestly say that
if I was trying to hide it, I've not been
doing a very good job for the past eighteen years.
It was not until I started hearing from reporters around
and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a
Nazi symbol. There it is again, it resembled. I absolutely
would not have gone through life having this on my
chest if I know that, and to insinuate that I
did is disgusting. But again, Genevieve MacDonald, former political director
for Graham Platner. She said in a Facebook post that
he has an anti Semitic tattoo on his chest. He's
not an idiot. He's a military history buff. Maybe he
didn't know it when he got it, but he got
it years ago, and he should have had it covered
up because he knows damn well what it means. Platner,
a political newcomer who is facing Governor Janet Mills and
other candidates in the Democrat primary, launched his campaign in August,
and he has been really leaning into the opposition to Israel.
I know who would have thought that, man, But yeah,
it's true. He's been very, very critical of Israel, very
opposed to the fascist and even picked up an endorsement
from Bernie Sanders. Oh I mentioned the socialist Rifle Association. Yeah,
he apparently did instructions for instruction sessions, training sessions for
the Socialist Rifle Association, taught them paramilitary tactics. That's according
to oh his own social media posts.
Speaker 1: Why would you not have blitzed this stuff out? Sorry,
I shouldn't have used that term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, Platner made dozens of posts under the Socialist
Rifle Association subreddit, also under another subreddit called Tactical Gear,
and he was doing these in June of twenty twenty,
which would be during the summer of fiery but mostly
peaceful riots. That's who he was training and when he
was all right, if you're listening to this show, you
know I try to keep up with all sorts of
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probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources.
Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
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Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News, as they make the media landscape
more transparent. But wait, there's more. Graham Platner, according to
to The Advocate, which is an LGBTQ plus two IA publication,
this time he's under scrutiny for anti LGBTQ plus comments.
He confirmed that he authored a series of Reddit comments
that include homophobic slurs, anti LGBTQ plus jokes, and sexually
explicit stories denigrating gay men. The existence of the comments,
posted under the handle p Hustle that's what he went by, P.
Speaker 1: Dash Hustle.
Speaker 2: Between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty one, has not been
previously reported. The Advocate obtained the posts independently this week.
The revelations come on the same day that Platnir was
scheduled to hold a town hall in Ogunquit, a seaside
resort long known as one of New England's most prominent
LGBTQ plus destinations. He said, quote, I have no reason
to deny that the posts are mine. Well, actually, you
do have some reasons to deny the posts or yours,
but you would be lying so like that's not advisable.
But if you had to think of a reason to
deny it, like what, I think the big one would be,
you're running for US Senate right as a Democrat, and
so you Yeah, anyway, he says, I made a lot
of comments over the years and talked a lot of
poop on the internet. I have no reason to doubt
that at some point I used language that I would
not be using today.
Speaker 1: Because I'm running for Senate. He said.
Speaker 2: It's indefensible the unearthed posts. I'm not going to tell
you what he said, but yeah, cho as a pattern
of homophobic language and rhetoric that mocked or demeaned LGBTQ
plus people. In some cases, Platner appeared to use slurs
casually in discs Russians that were completely unrelated to sexuality.
In others, he explicitly framed gay people as the punchline.
He told The Advocate that he no longer uses these
slurs or dismissive language that appeared frequently in his posts.
These were words that I used for a long time
in ways that I did not take seriously because of
personal relationships that I have developed over the years. Since
twenty twenty one, he says, I don't use these words now,
and I find them to be quite offensive. I stopped
using that specific kind of language a while ago, yeah,
like less than four years ago, and today I find
that stuff abhorrent and I am sorry I ever used it. Yes, So,
before the tattoo controversy, Platner had already apologized for earlier
Reddit posts about that included misogynistic as well as racially
charged remarks. He described those as coming from a dark
period after his military service. That defense of his is
a bit complicated by the fact that these newly discovered
comments were written many years later, so he said the
controversies reflect his past, not his present. He says, I
think we need a politics that is reflective of the
fact that people can change and they can evolve. I'm
very proud of who I am now. I'm very proud
of what I've become. I only got here because of
the struggles along the journey, and I would just like
the people to judge me off of who I have
become throughout all of this, not who I was at
a darker point in my life. Which if this look,
if this appeal sounds familiar, it's because this is what
Democrats were saying about Mark Robinson in North Carolina. It
was the same thing they were saying, like they were like,
oh okay, no, like that was a different period of
his life. Let's not turn all of this stuff into
attack ads.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 2: I think there's a place for looking back to a point.
But if we're going to just litigate every comment somebody
makes on the internet, we'll never have a politics that functions.
So see, people, we're just gonna have to put up
with the homophobic slurs from Democrats. I think the important
part is is there.
Speaker 1: A believable story of change?
Speaker 2: That's what he said. That's the important part. Is there
a believable story of change? So that's his damage control strategy, right,
That's what he's going to go with Now, I do
find it quite interesting that all of this stuff, all
this OPO research, which is like, let's be fair, didn't
only take a lot of research. Just go back through
his social media and once you knew his Reddit name.
Speaker 1: You just look at his posts and holy Toledo.
Speaker 2: So I do find it interesting that all of this
OPO research came out when Janet Mills entered the race
the governor of Maine, a Democrat in the primary. Now,
all this stuff comes out, right Now, he may still win,
I don't know, but it all came out after she
got into the race. This stuff did not come out before,
which tells me it probably would not have come out
at all because knocking off Susan Collins, who is about
as moderate squishy of a Republican as you can get,
right like, they probably would have sat on all of
that stuff about their own guy. All right, that'll do
it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
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