Republicans issue BIZARRE response to Graham Platner allegations

**Brian Tyler Cohen** (0:01)
Republicans show zero self-awareness as the Graham Platner situation continues to devolve. And I interviewed Jim Acosta about the fallout from Trump interfering in the World Cup. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.
There is a story that's not being told amid the Graham Platner situation. So some quick overview on all of this. Graham Platner is now facing new, credible, and deeply serious sexual assault allegations. Within hours of this allegation surfacing, all of the people who had supported him, Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, eventually even Bernie Sanders, pulled their endorsements. Platner's campaign isn't just on life support, it's basically dead at this point. But what I find interesting is this response from the right. This is Kevin McCarthy, former Republican Speaker of the House and current member of Congress on the right, Brandon Gill.

**Kevin McCarthy** (0:48)
The one thing I know about Republicans, when we had a very bad candidate and found out, we didn't vote for that person. We walked away.

**Brandon Gill** (0:54)
For better or for worse.

**Kevin McCarthy** (0:56)
When Matt Gaetz came forward, we got rid of him.

**Brandon Gill** (0:59)
Well, the key is they're standing by him until they don't believe that they can any longer. In other words, Democrats, to your point, had no problem with the Nazi tattoo that was on his chest. By the way, I don't have any friends who have Nazi tattoos on their chest, and I don't think that most Americans either. You have to go looking for somebody who has a Nazi tattoo on their chest. They didn't have a problem with that. They didn't have any problem with multiple credible allegations of abuse from multiple women until very recently, until we find out that the latest woman who has made credible allegations is left-wing politically. They had no problem before. They have had no problem with the really unsavory, just frankly disgusting things that he's written on all kinds of different social media platforms, the messaging apps that he had been on that predators tend to frequent. They had no problem with any of that. What they have a problem with now is they've gotten to the point where they don't believe that he's a viable candidate anymore, so they want to jump in and replace him. That's a problem. We need decent people running for office, not people that are so transparently scumbags.

**Brian Tyler Cohen** (2:03)
Let me just say, if these guys had any less self-awareness, they would not be able to see their own reflections in a mirror. Kevin McCarthy is out here telling us that Republicans walk away from bad candidates. Brandon Gill is lecturing the country about needing decent people in office.
These two are using a moment where Democrats are unanimously calling for their own nominee to step down as an opportunity to score points on the left for having a bad candidate. Meanwhile, you've got the current president of the United States, the guy who these two answer to, the guy whose endorsement they would crawl over broken glass for, has been found liable in civil court for sexual abuse and credibly accused of sexual harassment or assault more than two dozen times. And yet, strangely, no sanctimonious calls for Trump to step down. Weird, huh?
And it doesn't even stop at Trump. Like, it's happening in this exact election cycle, in the same races that these two are supposedly so torn up about ethics in. You've got Ken Paxton, the sitting Texas attorney general who just won the Republican Senate nomination to replace John Cornyn. This is a guy who is impeached by his own Republican-controlled Texas House on charges including bribery and corruption. He spent years accused of misusing his office to help a donor named Nate Paul in exchange for home renovations and help covering up an affair. His own wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce citing biblical grounds, accusing him of adultery after he'd already publicly confessed to one affair to his own staff back in 2018
And now just weeks ago, new footage surfaced appearing to show Paxton overseas with a woman who is not his wife. And how did Republican primary voters respond to all of that? They handed him the nomination. Trump endorsed him. Kevin McCarthy did not walk away from Ken Paxton. Brandon Gill didn't go on television demanding that Paxton withdraw in the name of decency in public office. In other words, these are two completely separate tiers of morality. Republicans can disparage the moral failings of a party based on a candidate who the whole party is abandoning, all while fully embracing the same moral failings on their own side, and not see anything wrong with that. You will not find any, we need decent people running for office, none of that energy when it's one of their guys. You won't find a single Republican leader calling on Paxton to drop out of the race the same way every prominent Democrat did within hours for Paxton. Doesn't exist. And that tells you everything you need to know about what's actually happening here. Because this was never about decency. It was never about protecting women or holding candidates to a certain standard. This is sheer opportunism. Finding a moment where Democrats are doing the hard, painful, correct thing and trying to flip it into a talking point, while your own party's own predators get elevated to the highest levels of government.