Graham Platner Turns Himself Into The Victim

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Michael Smerconish** (1:00)
Ditch the clowns on the left and the jokers on the right, and join Michael Smerconish right here in the middle.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:07)
This is The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:11)
Do you see, do we have the entire Graham Platner, not just the sound bite that I asked you for earlier, but do you have the ability, it's like 11 minutes long. I don't think I'm playing 11 minutes, but do you have the whole thing?

**TC Cannon** (1:25)
Are we playing the whole thing? I got the whole thing.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:27)
Okay, so I don't know if I'm gonna play the whole thing. I'm gonna play it until I'm bored, but I've been dying.

**TC Cannon** (1:34)
You're not gonna get bored listening to this.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:36)
So I've been dying to talk about this because it's about 11 minutes long the Graham Platner withdrawal video. And I find it to be remarkable less for what it says than for what he refuses to say or what he refuses to address. I watched the whole thing earlier this morning. And of course, you know the background. He's facing a Politico report in which a former girlfriend alleged that he raped her in 2021
And he never in this video engages in the substance of the accusation. He opens up by declaring, you'll hear it, because I'm definitely going to at least play the beginning, that it's all and it didn't happen. This is not real.
And then he pivots away entirely. In other words, there's zero accountability, self-accountability. There's no, what would I say, reckoning, no reflection, no attempt to reconstruct events or to explain them. Instead, it's this blanket denial and an indictment of they and them and the system and everybody but himself. And the thing is, as I was watching it and I'm thinking, I'm thinking, this is BS. I'm also thinking, this is effective. Like, I can picture some Mainers with tears in their eyes as they're watching this.
You know, notwithstanding that for a candidate who built his brand on being a regular person, you know, authentically speaking to voters, I saw the absence of any genuine accountability in what you're about to hear. Instead, he constructs this narrative in which he and, I don't know if it's his wife or his partner, Amy, but they're just ordinary people. And he actually says it, we're just ordinary people. What would you do as an ordinary person if, these are based on my notes, but I think I got it right, larger forces working against us, you know, the villains in all of this, the villains in all of this, not the guy who got the tattoo, not the Reddit posts about, you know, women who drink and then claim they were assaulted later, not the rape allegation, et cetera, et cetera, no, no, no. The villains are the corporate media system and the quote unquote political establishment, which he says acted as the judge, jury and executioner. He fixates on the timing of this. Like, oh, it's all being driven because the deadline is July 13 These reports have been out there. I mean, the K-file investigation of the tattoo was like four months ago.
And I think that the most telling, well, I'll save this part. I want to tell you what I think is the most telling part of the entire explanation as to why he's quitting. But let's play it until we're bored.

**Graham Platner** (4:45)
It's Graham Platner here. I think as many of you know, over the past couple of days, I have faced some very serious allegations, and I just want to make it clear. This is all false.
The things that have been claimed did not happen. It's not real.

**Michael Smerconish** (5:01)
Okay, I am going to want to stop often. So let me just lend to you this analysis. He's walking a very fine line in this. All false, did not happen, not real. He's definitely not going to speak specifically about he's not going to name her, and he's not going to speak specifically about it because he doesn't want to subject himself any further.