Bombshell Graham Platner Report Has Big Problems

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Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur & Ana Kasparian and author Matt Stoller point out facts most media are leaving out, including the fact that Israel partisans are major donors to the Maine Democratic party.

Reposted from The Young Turks July 7, 2026 – See Transcript below

The Young Turks is the flagship show of the TYT Network. It is the longest running daily show in internet history and is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary as a digital native show. Cenk Uygur was recognized by Mediaite on their list of Most Influential in News Media 2023. Host Ana Kasparian was named to the 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 Media List and The Daily Dot’s 20 Women of YouTube list.

This is a political attack, by Matt Stoller

Reposted from Matt Stoller’s X account:

Since lots of gossips are now gunning for me, I’m redoing this thread. It’s clear something messed up happened in Platner’s relationships, and he hasn’t hidden that. But there’s a big difference between ‘normal people in bad relationships who hate each other’ and ‘crime.’

So let’s be adults. This is a political attack.

Top Maine Democratic Party donors in recent years are Reid Hoffman, Haim Saban, and David Ellison. David Ellison! As in the Trump ally who fired Stephen Colbert and is taking over TikTok, CBS News, and CNN. These names should mean something. Saban may be the single most important AIPAC donor in the Democratic Party.

Another big donor to the Maine Democratic Party is the founder of Zynga, Marc Pincus, who said in 2024 that “an attack on Amazon is an attack on America.” It goes beyond big tech and Wall Street. Crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s partner Nishad Singh at FTX gave $100k to the Maine Democratic Party in 2022.

The insiders running the party are the people funded through these streams of revenue, they are the ones dealing with the donors and currying favor with them. And while I will not speak out of school, the Maine Democratic establishment simply cannot be trusted and that is well-known.

Platner may be a fatally weakened candidate, that is for others to decide. It’s a wave year in a blue state, but I get that Susan Collins is a strong incumbent. Winning this Senate seat matters, so I get why people might see value in ditching him. I generally think that polls and electoral guesses are mechanisms to get ordinary voters to focus on anything but policy. It’s a disciplining mechanism, since no one can tell the future. But it’s not crazy to see Platner as a poor candidate.

Let’s be clear, the goal of pushing Platner aside is to destroy the agenda on which he was elected, which is about taming oligarchy and reorienting us from endless war. That is why the Maine Democrats aren’t saying ‘let’s respect Platner voters and transition to someone else,’ they are taking a sanctimonious ‘he gets NO say in ANYTHING.’ Those are not the actions of people who want to win a Senate seat, those are the actions of nasty insiders claiming factional power for themselves.

If Platner steps down, he will be characterized as a deviant, and that’s just how it’ll be forever. True or not. And everyone will be tarred as supportive of immoral behavior. It doesn’t matter if you are a liberal, centrist, young, old, whatever. People are saying the Bulwark, a centrist outlet started by ex-Republicans who were skeptical of Platner, are tarred by this. Punchbowl is reporting that Senate progressives will never have credibility going forward. The ploy here is obvious.

That is, even though the actual immoral behavior at issue here is the genocide in Gaza, the corruption of DOGE and Musk, and the neoliberal turn in American politics for 40 years that has destroyed our faith in society and each other.

Platner has been consistent about his platform, and there’s no reason to assume that will change. 70% of Maine Democrats picked him as their candidate, and he has the right to represent their views. So he should stay in the race or, if he feels he cannot win, leave on terms that will ensure his platform, and not that of Maine Dem Party oligarch donors, is the one on the ballot in November. The Maine Dem establishment cannot be trusted.

And frankly, this kind of ugly scenario is how power works. They make ordinary people pick among ugly scenarios, and then they make it seem like the obvious path is the one that accords more power and wealth to oligarchs. And if you don’t choose that one, you’re a bad person who deserves approbation and scorn. That’s why I had to delete the original thread and rewrite it, because endless numbers of reporter gossips – who don’t report on government policy – are using this extremely obvious ratfucking to try and destroy people like me telling you the truth.

Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) is a public intellectual and author. He is the Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and is the co-host of the podcast Organized Money. Stoller is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, and worked in the House of Representatives on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. He has lectured on competition policy and media at Columbia University, Harvard Law, Duke Law, Bertelsmann Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, West Point and the National Communications Commission of Taiwan. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler.

Transcript from Young Turks video above:

Mika Brzezinski: There’s not a police report, correct? Correct me if I’m wrong, and there’s not a legal case playing out here for due process to see itself through. So my question to you, given the very high standards Politico has before they write something like this and publish it, what aspects of this story brought it to the level of publishable?

Reporter: We looked at messages that she had sent to others in the months after this happened through social media.

MB:You were able to see those DMs?

R: She tried to recover those DMs. We were not able to review those DMs, but she described them to us.

Cenk Uygur: What in the world is happening? Mika Brzezinski, grilling the Politico reporter that reported. The allegation against Grant Plattner, a shocking source of skepticism from there. She actually did a brilliant job, we’ll show you more about that in a second. And she was tougher on the political reporting, the establishment reporting that a lot of progressive activists have been.

Ana Kasparian: 100%.

C: So uh is Grant Plattner gonna drop out? We’ve certainly got details for you on that. If he does, who might be the person in line? And was he targeted? So a lot to discuss here, Ana’s got the facts.

A: So before we give you the details, I just wanna say – Graham Plattner’s candidacy was treated very differently from the typical centrist slash establishment types in the Democratic Party. As you just saw, Mika Brzezinski seems very skeptical of the latest reporting, which we’re gonna get back to in just a second. James Carville, who is, I mean, part and parcel of the Democratic establishment, defended Graham Plattner prior to the latest allegations. So the establishment wasn’t just flat out rejecting him.

So I want you to keep that in mind as I give you the details of what’s going on here. Now the latest allegations have to do with a 41 year old Maine resident who used to date Graham Plattner on again off again for about two years. Her name is Jenny Rascott and she claims that in late 2021, he allegedly entered her home when the door was unlocked. He was deeply intoxicated by her telling. and forced himself on her while she told him to stop repeatedly. So her allegation, let’s be very clear, is that Graham Plattner entered her home when he wasn’t invited and forcibly raped her.

Ah She says to Politico, quote, I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me. I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, this is no longer my choice. Now she previously described reckless and unsettling behavior by Plattner in a New York Times article, but she didn’t go into the details. She refused to elaborate and she said she didn’t want to do it specifically because she didn’t want to be known as a rape victim, okay? But she decided to do it a week before an incredibly important electoral deadline in this Senate race in Maine.

Now Plattner flat out denies the allegations but It clearly looks like he is going to eventually drop out of this race because every person who endorsed him has now turned on him. Further, uh this is a statement from Graham Plattner’s campaign. They say these allegations are very serious and Graham vigorously denies them. They are also coached and coordinated by out of state establishment operatives.

For a year, opponents of this campaign have thrown everything they can at Graham. Calling him a Nazi, a war criminal, and a communist, none of it has been true, and this is no different. It is not a coincidence, they say, that this story comes a week before the ballot deadline, just as the previous false allegations came a week before the primary. Graham began his campaign to fight for a Maine where everyone is treated with dignity and where Mainers are put first. And no amount of desperate smears will stop this movement from seeing that vision through.

Now, I wanna just quickly get into what type of evidence Politico relied on in order to publish this story because these are serious allegations. So, uh Razekat told Politico that she had exchanged text messages with Plattner that night telling him not to come over before he did come over, right? Now, uh she said that she wasn’t in the mood for company. Later that evening, she said that she realized when she heard a sound at the stairs or on the stairs that he had let himself in, she left the door unlocked, which allowed for him to let himself in.

Plattner came up the stairs, she said, to where she was on a couch. He got on top of her and kept grabbing her, she said, while she repeatedly told him to stop and that she wasn’t interested. She said she smelled alcohol in his breath and believed he was almost blackout drunk because Plattner ignored her protests and continued to grab her after knocking over an antique sewing kit spilling small needles everywhere. Now she was uh apparently unable to produce the text messages or the direct messages that she allegedly sent uh to Plattner, which Mika Brzezinski drilled the political reporter on.So let’s take a quick look at that.

MB: This literally, Graham Plotner to raping this victim.

R: Yeah, she reached out to him the day after via Instagram and essentially told him that she didn’t want to hear from again. She told him that morning as well. And we looked at messages that she had sent to others in the months after this happened. Throughsocial

MB: You were able to see those DMs?

R: She tried to recover those DMs. We were not able to review those DMs, but she described them to us. Also, long before he was a public, uh before he was a political candidate, we saw uh her essentially explain to others that he was, quote, her words, consensually careless, end quote. And-

MB: Right, were you able to see the interactions between Graham Plattner and this alleged victim? Did you actually physically see them? Did she produce them for you?

R: She attempted to uncover them. But was unable to.

MB:Willie?

AK: Okay, so let me give you some more detail into the Politico reporting and then I’ll go to you Cenk. Uh they write that Rascott had said that she waited several weeks until she got her period to ensure she wasn’t pregnant, then sent Plattner a private message on Instagram saying that the encounter was not consensual and she did not want to hear from him ever again. She said she later deleted all texts and social media correspondence with Plattner as she tried to move on from the assault and said. She has not been able to recover Instagram messages she sent him about the incident. Now, what is the evidence then?

Well, the strongest evidence that Politico was able to provide to justify their reporting where they’re essentially accusing him of rape uh is the following. So there was an exchange between Rascott and an acquaintance on Facebook. And I’m gonna read you the relevant portions of their exchange. So the acquaintance says, what’s his deal? Should I not fix up my friend assuming he’s single? Rascott responds with, he can be charming and funny, and he’s a decently intelligent person. He’s not all bad, but I ended up in a bad situation with him, and I will just very politely call him consensually careless at times.

Uh okay, the acquaintance says, um she responds when drunk plus PTSD. Acquaintance says, I knew about the PTSD and then she says he also lies. And then the acquaintance says forces uh himself on people, I guess that’s what she’s trying to say. And then Rassicott later says, uh one thing that grossed me out after him and I had dated was that I saw his profile on OkCupid. And that site asks a lot of questions. And one of the questions was, if your partner told you they had over 100 sexual partners, what would your response be? And his response was, that’s not that many. So that super grossed me out thinking he’s probably slept with a ton of people, doesn’t listen to you when drunk.

Okay, that is the most significant evidence. And personally, as a woman, if someone raped me, I wouldn’t call them consensually challenged. But maybe that’s just the way she communicates, I don’t know. Further, there was a therapist that she spoke to recently about this alleged rape from all the way back in 2021. So she didn’t tell her therapist about it at the time. She didn’t file a police report. She apparently told an ex-boyfriend who she started dating in 2022 about the incident, although she was very vague about it.

The man who was granted anonymity out of concern for his personal privacy told Politico that she had told him bits and pieces about a bad experience with Plattner before confiding the full details of what happened in 2023. That’s the other piece of evidence that maybe you can point to. But I don’t know, everyone has withdrawn their endorsement of Plattner. And I think the allegations are suspicious, I’m just gonna say it. Platner’s tattoo and his explanation of how he handled the tattoo after realizing it was a Nazi tattoo was way more problematic than

these claims. That’s my thought.

C:Okay, there are two different issues here. Uh was he targeted? What does it mean to be targeted? And then did he actually do this specific allegation? So you’ve got to separate those two things out and they’re both relevant. So first of all, the media never talks about this thing that everyone in politics knows about. Because it would make them kind of complicit in some of the games that are played. It’s called Oppo Research, opposition research.

So there are different groups that do opposition research and then they hand it over to the media. So the groups that are doing clearly have an agenda and this is now bipartisan. It’s not like Democrats don’t do opposition research. Progressives do it but super weak in my opinion almost never do they actually put any of behind it and besides which. When establishment figures give up or research to the mainstream media, love it, the media loves it and immediately prints it and that’s relevant to this case. If progressives give it to them, they don’t print it and they look at over a billion times and say it didn’t meet their standards.

That’s why Mika presents these questions there were really interesting. She’s like, this meant your standards? Your evidentiary standards?So let’s start with now when you. move over, we’ll get come back to who might have targeted him. But was he targeted? There’s no question. I mean, you’d have to be brain dead. You’d have to be Mitch McConnell not to see that he was targeted. It was one thing after another, his tattoos, his Reddit posts, his every girlfriend is contacted by the New York Times, why? And then one woman comes out who’s basically does op-o research for the Republicans, and she says he did something for me.

A: And who defended Brett Kavanaugh when Christine Blasey Ford came forward with I think far more credible allegations against Kavanaugh because there were several people she spoke to at the time of the alleged rape attempt by Kavanaugh.

C: So this is the media’s seventh attempt or something to end Graham Plattner’s campaign. If you think these are just, well, he’s so problematic, they’re just organically popping up. That’s not true at all. That is definitively not correct. There are groups who try to take out candidates. It is relatively normal. Although it’s never talked about in the press, cuz remember the press doesn’t do their own job, these groups do. And then the question is, who does the press choose to target? Who do they choose to write the stories about? Who do they choose to not write the stories about? But we’re come back to the essence of this case in a second,Ana.

A: I just have so many thoughts about this, so bear with me as I go through them all, okay? I loathe horse race politics specifically because of this reason, because it places us in this unbearable position of having to adjudicate something that should have been adjudicated in a court of law if this actually took place. If someone entered my home and forcibly raped me, I would not allow the individual who forcibly raped me, that’s violent, right? To remain in my home and sleep it off, but that is what she did. She alleges that he was so drunk that she didn’t want to tell him to leave because he might harm someone on the road.He’s just forcibly raped you, right? Call the cops or more importantly, get the hell out of the house. But she did neither one of those things. Neither one of those things.

C: Yeah, so look, again, I hate the situation we’re in where we have to try to adjudicate this with not enough evidence. Could it be that she’s telling the truth? Of course it could be. Now, guys, if it’s true, if it’s true, then it’s a huge problem, right? But we don’t know for sure that it’s true. But in a situation like this, even if you say you’re not sure that it’s true, that’s it, people come and take your head off. Because they say once we made an allegation, it’s over. You’re not allowed to object to the allegation. But wait a minute, the thing that caught my attention here, and again, Mika Brzezinski also saying this doesn’t look right at all. This is not enough to publish a piece, gives you a sense of we’re not making this up guys.

And we’re not doing it because we’re biased. Look at the fact pattern here. So uh the thing that caught my eye, Ana, was on the therapist. Because-

A:Yes, the therapist didn’t want to talk to the press, by the way.

C:Yeah, the political kept saying, well, she says she talked to the therapist, and the therapist does not acknowledge it, but says that they do have a relationship.

A: Now, wait, wait, wait, No, no, let’s be totally accurate, okay? The therapist acknowledged that she spoke to her recently about what allegedly happened. but didnot want to issue a statement to Politico.

C: Yeah, so the therapist is not confirming it. Right. I mean, there’s a very easy way to confirm it, say, hey, I don’t wanna talk about it, but yes, I confirmed that she said that, right? And maybe give some context, give a statement and then get, look, the therapist is in a tough spot too. Doesn’t mean that she thinks it’s skeptical and we have no idea. But that’s the thing, in order to print a story, you’re supposed to have two excellent sources. Right? So here, the only thing that’s a little bit persuasive is those text messages that Anna read to you guys. And so then you guys make up your own mind on whether you think calling someone consensually careless is the same as saying he raped me. So and by the way, in all of these stories, it’s barely ever mentioned that they were in a relationship at the time.

A: She spent more time elaborating how disgusted she was that he might have slept with a lot of women than he did, than she did about the alleged rape. she’s talking to an acquaintance who’s asking her about Graham Plattner because she’s thinking about fixing a friend up with him. Yeah, so every person that they go to, the current boyfriend, uh the therapist, the other folks, people that normally in a story like this go, yes, at the time she told me this and this is a text message we have, etc. None of that is here other than the two texts that Anna read you. One of them is barely relevant, the other one is the one that has the careless comment, right? So if you think that’s definitive, I’m 100% positive, no problem. Because we all make a different choice on how we view it.

So look, for me, this is not about whether Graham Plattner did it or not. At this point, that question is almost irrelevant because-

A: It’s over, I mean, it’s over for-

C: Yeah. Everybody pulled their endorsement. Now it’s considered toxic. You can’t support him, blah, blah. We’re not trying to fight that battle, guys. We’re trying to tell you how politics works and what to be on the lookout for. And how does this process work? Because were there all these different opposition research groups targeting Susan Collins and calling all of her ex-boyfriends and looking through her text messages asking about theirs? None, zero. Is there any about like establishment candidates, Democrat or Republican? Almost never. It has to fall right into your lap, right? And again, it’s awful research usually by other Democrats, right? But do they get targeted?

No, the establishment never gets targeted, never. But when you have an outsider, Bernie Sanders, Graham Plattner, but a lot of right-wing outsiders too. They rev up the machine, let’s go, destroy, destroy, destroy. What’s interesting about something that Anna mentioned is that in this case, not all the establishment Democrats are united.

A: No, they’re not.

C: Sonny Hosen also defended Graham Plattner today.

A: Today?

C: Today, on The View.

A: That’s so shocking. Yeah, so I mean, look, the reason why I bring up the establishment figures who are defending him is because this isn’t a typical progressive candidate that has the establishment digging in to see what kind of op-o research they can find to destroy him. I’m sure there are some. But I didn’t feel the same treatment toward Platner that I noticed with other progressive candidates in earlier races or even during this election cycle. So look, I think that after he won the primary, all he needed to do was see who was outraged by his win. It wasn’t members of the Democratic establishment, it tended to be people who didn’t like his stance on foreign policy. We’ll just leave it at that. So I don’t know who dug up the op-o research.

All I know is, There’s a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to this issue, when we literally have a sitting president who played a massive role in the cover up of the Epstein files. Who has been found civilly liable for sexual abuse in the E. Jean Carroll’s case. Who has been credibly accused of all sorts of things including sexual assault and rape by dozens of women. I mean, it’s just, So are we going to allow this kind of stuff or not?

Because it seems like when it comes to certain political figures, it’s totally okay. Even if in a court of law, civilly they are found liable of sexual abuse. Even though they are found liable, okay, engaging in a cover up of one of the biggest sex trafficking scandals involving minors that we know of in American history. So I just, don’t know, this whole thing is trash and look. I hate being put in this position because I’ve been skeptical of Plattner since the tattoo thing.

And you know that because we had it out on the show on that issue. How do you realize you have a Nazi tattoo and wait until you’re running for a congressional or for a Senate seat to remove it? I just don’t get it. I don’t understand that. So Plattner wasn’t my favorite. I’m not going out of my way to defend him because he’s someone that I desperately want to win. The reason why I’m doing this right now is because I’m looking at the facts we have in front of us right now and I’m sorry. I just don’t think the evidence rises to the occasion of Politico publishing this as if he’s already proven guilty as a rapist.

C: And Jake Tapper was ready with a segment on this as soon as the story broke. So that means that they had some advance notice that it was gonna break and you go to Jake Tapper and put it out there. Okay, so guys. Look, we definitely don’t know exactly who did it. So now we have to look at the puzzle and the context clues, etc. So I said right after it happened, what will happen is now establishment media will

find a new target. And they’ll start to attack him over and over and over and over again. And it’ll probably be someone who’s opposed to Israel and corporate packs and the establishment overall.

And guess who’s up today? Actually, there’s two people. One is Abdul El-Said. They have now tried a great number of. attacks against him. uh before, Hassan Piker was on a campaign with him, that’s it, that’s disqualified. That didn’t work, actually increases numbers. Today they’re going with, this Israel stuff isn’t working. oh He once was in favor of defund the police. Okay, so that’s a new line of attack against Graham Plattner. So far, zero lines of attack against Hailey Stevens, his opponent. She is an enormous supporter of Israel, has taken an enormous amount of money from the AIPAC.

No investigations, no attacks, no targeting, nothing, right? Never in the news in a negative way. Abdul won after another. Tonight, another one. Oliver Larkin, candidate we featured here just last week. He’s running against Jared Muskowitz down in Florida, an establishment Democrat, very pro-Israel, okay? Oliver Larkin is not, he wants to cut funding to Israel. Now, Kazan Piker talked to Oliver Larkin, and Oliver Larkin is not pro, it’s a problem, attack, attack, attack. So who do I think it is? Well, normally I would say it’s probably someone related to the establishment Democrats like Schumer, but the establishment Democrats are split. So that leaves the one PAC that is what, the largest contributor to members of Congress in the last election cycle, AIPAC, the Israeli lobby.

If you think they wanted Graham Plattner in this Senate causing trouble for them saying that we should pull funding of Israel. And you think that they might spend $18 million against Jamal Bowman and at least $16 million against Tom Massey, but they wouldn’t do oppo research.

A: (Sarcastic)Never.

C: No, that’s a line too far. Everybody does oppo research. You think AIPAC doesn’t do it? So my guess is based on these context, but it’s just a guess. I don’t know. But I do know it was- definitely targeting. So is that it was people that are part of the Israeli lobby that marked him for destruction. And that is why mainstream media is like uh uncorroborated. The last New York Times piece, we talked to every single girlfriend, didn’t get a single thing other than a GOP operative. We’ll print it. We don’t care about two sources. Our rules go out the window when we’re ordered to attack.

And now political, our normal uh rules, as Mika just showed you, out the window. Cuz we’ve been ordered to attack. So we have to attack and destroy Graham Plattner. So now, and by the way, their last piece of that trick is twofold. After they destroy their target, they then say, who supported him earlier? Yeah, you’re all guilty. Now you smear Bernie Sanders and you smear Ro Khanna, you smear our revolution, you smear, smear, smear, Please, for anyone who’s engaging in that, choke on it. And I mean it from the bottom of my heart, choke on it all night long.

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