YouSaid · the spoken record

Graham Platner

lines on the record: 84
first: 2026-03-01
most recent: 2026-03-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We should not invade Denmark. No war with Greenland, on top of all the other ones. That one might be the most. If we can get that. We shouldn't definitely not do that one.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We actually, I mean, I talk about this. We joke about it that even if it costs the same, we still would have done the Norwegian version. Because it's just so much more pleasant. And you go to like Norwegian hospitals where literally no one is sitting there worried about how much this costs.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was one quarter the cost of just the baseline of doing it here in the United States? It's insane, and you get treated like a human being. Like the clinic is small, everybody's really nice to you. They don't look at you as like just something to pull more money out of. They like treat you like a human being, which as you're going through infertility, very helpful because it's an emotional experience. And, you know, we developed like a really nice relationship with those folks. And so, yeah, it was a very, I mean, we're still in it. We're still kind of going through the process, but it's been...”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We started to look into it. We saw how expensive it was, but we really weren't sure what else to do. And then a friend of Amy's had either a relative or someone who had gone to Norway. They're like, you know, in Norway, it's really cheap. And everybody's really nice. And it's a wonderful personal experience. And so Amy reached out to a clinic in Norway like on a Monday. And we had like an hour-long intake exam with the surgeon on Thursday. And the moment I knew we were going to go is at the end of an hour-long intake exam, I was like, okay, how much do we owe you guys? And they were like, why would you give us money? Like nothing has happened. And I'm like, yeah, we're definitely going Norway. I mean, this is amazing. And it was amazing. It was a, and in the end, even with the travel. Staying in an Airbnb for two weeks, the plane tickets.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Her insurance didn't cover it. The VA stuff didn't cover it. And so we started to look into doing it in the United States. And the cost is astronomical. And in New England, there's only one clinic. So their only clinic is in Portland, Maine, which is three hours away from where we live. So we'd have to be traveling anyways.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why Norway? Yeah, so we've been, Amy and I have been dealing with infertility for about two and a half years now and went through all the previous steps, eventually got to the point where like, all right, IVF is the last thing. And because of, I mean, the VA doesn't cover it. If it's not like clearly my problem, and Amy's not a vet, so it doesn't cover her kind of weird, which needs to be changed, by the way, because to have children, you do need both people, but whatever, that's a whole other thing. I'm going to work on that when I get to the Senate.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we need people in places of political power who are really willing to call it exactly for what it is and to stand up against it. I mean, this can't happen.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We need more people in positions of power, frankly, who either understand it because they've experienced it. Who are just kind of ideologically opposed and don't want us to do this kind of stuff? And it's not just about the moral component. It's about the fact that this stuff, it doesn't make us safer. It doesn't make the world safer. It tends to quote. A famous Marine who came long before me War is a racket. And there are people that make an immense amount of money off of it. And when you go look at a lot of the wars we fought, frankly, certainly in my lifetime, at the end of the day, that's usually what happens. And I do not see a war with Iran falling into a different category. In fact, it seems to be almost like, I mean, I said this about Venezuela as well. It's like Iraq but dumber”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is hard for me to see any intervention post World War II that in the long run really worked out well. Korea, maybe you can make the argument. Everything else though, and it is a I'm not a pacifist, but at this point, I've become essentially anti-war when it comes to the nation writ large and how we use our power internationally. Because every time we do this, when you go back and look at it in hindsight, it's pretty much always a bad idea. But more importantly for me, there's a human cost to this stuff. You felt like I know what it looks like when American made high explosive interacts with children. Like I've touched it. It's a horrifying thing. I know what it feels like to have friends die and to have a lot of other friends of mine and myself included have to deal with the trauma of that for years afterwards.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, this is, dude, this is, I mean, this is, and by the way, you want to talk about one of those reasons why working people or regular people don't, it's also because of this stuff, because there is this connection, like we just should be the anti-war party. I mean, the fact that there is an element of the right that this kind of isolationist version of it that actually gets to almost take on the mantle of being that only works When we have elements of the Democratic Party that are like willing to go along with this stuff, we shouldn't be fighting wars. I'm sorry, we should not be sending young American men and women off to kill a bunch of people in foreign countries. I mean, for essentially any reason,”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's so, I mean, it's insulting to have these folks who are just like, like, oh, we're going to figure out a war in a week. Like, we're just, oh, oh man, this Epstein stuff's getting out of control. Iran, we're going to invade Iran now. We, the Venezuela thing, like, we did that. Now, we're still screwing around down there. We need to start another one. Let's just go to war with Iran. And I mean, that's what they're doing. All this is, is posturing. As somebody who fought a war too. It's disgusting. And it also is, I think for me, I mean, one of the reasons I want to go to the Senate specifically is we need a Senate who's really going to take their power back when it comes to warmaking. I mean, the constitution is pretty clear”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did want I hate everything I mean, one, I think it's disgusting that we've got people in the White House who are literally sitting around thinking about how do we sell a war. I mean, we went through the run up to the war in Iraq. At least then the Bush administration had the decency to really try to trick us. At least they like they really went out of their way. They made Colin Powell sully his entire reputation at the UN. They like really, they put the work in”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It keeps going, they're raising prices And I'll just be entirely up front. As long as there is a substantial profit motive with a substantial middleman. We're just going to, unless we address that part of the problem. Subsidies won't be enough because somebody's going to figure out how to pull more money out of the thing. Costs will go up. So I think it's. I do not pretend that it will not be a transition period. I mean, it would be one of the largest projects we've really ever undertaken as a nation to transition from the healthcare system we have to a single payer universal healthcare system. But we also have to do it because what we're doing now is insanely expensive. And it's terrible. And in many places in rural America, it's totally unsustainable. It's absolutely falling apart.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody else has a better version of this, and it's cheaper, and the care in many ways is better for most people. A lot of folks are always, well, in America, you know, like the rich come here to get great procedures. I'm like, that does no good for somebody with no money or who can't afford, who can't even afford ACA coverage now because premiums have gone up by like triple fold. Yep. And I mean, these are people I know. These are my neighbors. A relative of mine had to drop her health insurance because her premium doubled because of the loss of the ACA's extensions”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Program that really is just a single payer universal healthcare system that is based around basic things. Like you can still get insurance for higher level procedures that it doesn't cover. But it does cover all the stuff like if you get sick or if you get injured and you just don't have to like think about it. And I got to say having traveled a lot and been to a lot of other countries, I just have this element of me where I'm like, dude, everybody else does it differently. They all figured it out. And yeah, of course it's never perfect. These systems will always have, I mean, we're talking about large bureaucratic systems. They're going to have some problems. They have a lot more problems when you get neoliberal policies in place that start taking money away from them.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Four-year transition period. Four year transition period. And also, I mean, to be fair, I've read Bernie's full bill, and it's essentially universal healthcare with the name Medicare for all. Like, as you really kind of get through it, I mean, it covers dental, it covers vision. Medicare doesn't cover those things. It's an expanded.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we all sit around being like, they were like, Why did nobody like that we did this? I'm like, dude, nobody knew, and when you did explain that it was always in this kind of very complicated legal language, nobody engages with that. It comes to healthcare I mean, I'll be honest, I think we have to do a lot of big things. We're going to need federal money to reopen hospitals. I think we need to start thinking about mental health care as being as much a part of healthcare as everything else and incorporating that into a larger system. I mean, in rural Maine, healthcare is collapsing now, not next year, not down the road.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We electrified all of rural America. It was done with an array of options, whether it was public ownership or public-private partnerships and sometimes just straight up private companies. But we used to use our imaginations to fix problems. And I think our biggest problem recently has been we have a political class that has sort of forgotten how to dream big. Everything's a tax credit. Everything's a block grant. Everything's like something weird and we try to explain it to people like you lose them in like five seconds because everyone's like, I don't even, what is this weird wonky language you're using? Which, I mean, it's one of my biggest, biggest criticisms of the Biden administration. They did a lot of amazing things and then just never told anybody about them.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only way it ever works is when you have people in positions of power who have the political will to try to drive it forward. I mean, this is what the new deal was. The New Deal was FDR having built a broad coalition, having political power, and then really just ramming things through, making them happen. Some of them failed. And then they changed. They allowed to be imaginative. They experimented. Things worked. Things didn't work. I mean, the NRA worked for a little while and then it kind of didn't. And so they got rid of it. And there is a...”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That program exists. The VA only has problems when Republicans cut its budget. When we fund it and we resource it, it does a spectacular job. In Maine, the VA is awesome. And it's awesome because we have a small population and the resources and employees, the ratio for the population it's serving, it's a good ratio. So it works. I've lived in other parts of the country where the VA system is really hard to deal with because they don't get the funding. And therefore the outcome, it's almost as though you get what you pay for, whoever would have guessed When I think about Moments in American history where we had to address systemic problems, big ones. There are always going to be times of experimentation and frankly growing pains.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, we would take healthcare off the plate of small business owners, which it's a nightmare. You know, if you're like a lot of small business, medium-sized business owners, they want to provide health care to their employees. But, I mean, I've spoken to folks in Maine who are like, if you have a company, 50 employees and up, one of those employees job is to just deal with the health insurance stuff. Pay in the premiums, dealing with the companies. It's a frig. You take that off their plates. Well, now they can just focus on what their business is, not also having to be this intermediary around healthcare. Know that we can do it because the VA doesn't.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not only do I think that providing that is going to unleash a lot of productivity in the real world, because this is important. We have a system and we have a lot of metrics that we use to judge our productivity that frankly mostly seems to be fantastical in the financialized system. But in the real world, where people actually build things and exchange them with each other for money, that in that world the I honestly do think that giving people just this simple foundational support is going to unleash a lot more productivity. People have the freedom to start small businesses. or to engage in art, to engage in things that I think actually elevate all of us as a society.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something that today is a successful small business that employs people in eastern Maine. Never would have existed without my healthcare. That basic element of foundational support just around healthcare is what allowed me to become a successful small business owner.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Especially small rural states, we don't have the money. I mean, it's in many ways we're talking about building a national risk pool and the more people you have in a risk pool, the more effective your insurance is, which really is what we're talking about here. Just use my own experience. So I essentially get universal healthcare. I'm a disabled combat vet. And because of that, I simply get free point of service care. It allowed me to start a small business. It allowed me to take some time to figure out what kind of life I wanted to live after my combat service. Without it, I would not have ever been able to be an oyster farmer because I would have had to work another job to have health care. It gave me a real material freedom that allowed me to”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That realization will kick in. And we won't get everybody, but I think we will start getting folks back. But we need to be there with open arms and we need to be there with policies that are very understandable. I mean, I think that's a big one.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're all kind of down here. And when we talk about policies, about clawing a lot of that wealth back, we're not talking about going after small business owners. We're not talking about going after big business owners. We're talking about going after the people who used their wealth and power to change policies in the political system to then consolidate more wealth and power. They cheated. And we need to use political power to claw that stuff back. So I think that by becoming the party of representing working folks, we really would be becoming the party of like really representing the vast majority of Americans. And as people begin to realize that this right-wing populism, it's not making things cheaper And it's not reopening hospitals, and it's not making your health insurance company any less awful to deal with.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is everybody. I mean, I'll just like, I've had a bunch of folks be like, well, what about the middle class? I'm like, yeah, man, in this America, the middle class is the working class. Quite frankly, somebody that started a business and has just worked their asses off every day ever since and might now have a bunch of money but still works. They're way closer to someone working three jobs in poverty than they are to a billionaire.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Didn't happen Donald Trump And then he won again. And we lost a lot of seats around the country. So clearly that math did not pan out. I truly think that the only way forward for us as a party is to really become a real party of working people again. And, you know, when you do that, it doesn't mean you're like also not, I mean, look, when I talk about working people, I literally mean anybody that just makes money from wages.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For every like for every working class person we lose out in the countryside, we're going to gain two voters in the suburbs.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It might be, but we're not winning with that I mean, there's that great Chuck Schumer line where, you know, and everyone.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do not back away from things. I think all the wins we've made for justice and equality, we take no steps back from any of this stuff.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. And I think they have taken the bait. And I'll be entirely honest. I think some of them, some of them don't even take the bait. Some of them rise to it on purpose because they don't want to have the other conversation. I mean, there is an element, I see this all the time of, you know, more kind of establishment folks who are like, look, I don't want to talk about this, but they make me talk about it. And now I'm going to talk about how I don't want to talk about it for the next four hours, and I'll never talk about raising taxes on billionaires. And I think there's an element within the party that actually likes this stuff because it gives them this ability to pretend they hate this, but it sucks up all the oxygen. So then you never have to get around to the structural or systemic reforms that we have to make.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it doesn't change the fact that your rent continues to go up or that the wages that you've been earning continue to stagnate while the prices of goods and services continue to rise. All the culture war stuff does nothing for that, and we need to be very clear and cogent and blunt about how we're going to change it. And I think if we do that, I do think that there is an opening to do this.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's becoming a very clear awareness that they are in fact being taken for a ride by people with immense amounts of power and that those who are willing to stand up to that power, those are the people they're going to look to and support. And I think they're willing to sort of not care, actually, about a lot of the culture war stuff, which in my opinion, and I say this often, I think was all invented to keep us all from having the conversation about taxing billionaire wealth and breaking up corporate monopolies. I think that's why we have to argue about all these culture war issues, that in reality, I mean, it keeps us all divided, but it doesn't reopen the hospital.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they were all in labor unions. And then, I mean, it's not like in the 1990s, it's not like the Clinton administration really stood up for labor. The Democratic Party has a lot of a role to play in the diminishment of labor power, in the free trade projects like NAFTA that really did, in the end, screw a lot of working Americans. You know, I think that when you put into the greater context, I think that's what's happened. In this moment. Frankly, just because of the material reality that people are living in, it is becoming very clear to a lot of folks, whether they're conservative or liberal or whatever you want, or just in the middle and don't even care about politics.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who identifies Republicans, identifies conservatives, tell me straight up that they do not agree with some of the things I say, but that they think the fact that I'm fighting back against the establishment in the system, that that's more important, and that's why they're going to vote for me. And it's anecdotal, but it also pans out in the polling. I mean, we do really well with independence. For a long time, the whole... So, I think the landscape is somewhat changed. But, like, you know, with Sherrod Brown, Sherrod was a victim of the larger failure of the Democratic Party. He was not a victim of his own politics, I think. You know, Ohio went from being a blue stronghold of unions to becoming this red stronghold of disenfranchised, angry working-class people who 30 years ago were Democrats.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that it's when I think the landscape has changed now. I do fundamentally think that a lot of people, even who hold culturally conservative views, are realizing that they are in fact getting taken for a ride on the economic side. Think it's more clear now that it has been. Also, this is going to be a little, but the Epstein files also are showing people of all political stripes that there is in fact a class of people who lives above accountability and lives above and kind of sees the rest of us as like this sort of amorphous blob to either just extract wealth out of so they can go live depraved lifestyles. I think that's actually really helpful one because it's, you know, people are realizing that it's true. But in my experience in Maine thus far Have a lot of people come up to me at events and in public.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Blaming immigrants. We need to blame the oligarchy. We need to blame the corporate power that resulted in the deregulation of the banking system. I mean, that's a big one. We used to have laws in place. There's a reason 2008 happened in 2008 and not 1994. I mean, we changed rules. And frankly, a lot of Democrats supported that stuff. And until we become a party that doesn't do that, until we become the party that uses the tax code to go after the money that, in my opinion, has actually been stolen from working people in this country over the past four decades until we use, frankly, like the anti-monopoly laws we already have on the books. We just have to stop having Robert Bork's wild reading of what a monopoly is. Until we do that, I think people aren't going to trust us.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To regain the trust of the American people as Democrats is to be radically different. Than what we've had to really become, like, there should be no such thing as a Labor Democrat. That should just be being in the Democratic Party. We do need to cut ties with the, I would say, the larger The donor world that comes from the financial system, the donor world that comes from Silicon Valley, like that wants to use AI to either put us all out of work or I guess maybe kill us all as of a couple days ago. It's very insane We need to cut ties with that. And I think we need to do it in a very clear public manner. Until we do, I think a lot of folks are still going to see Democrats as beholden to the same corporate apparatus that the Republicans are. The problem is that the Republicans have the weapon of just blaming marginalized communities.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then they get broken. I mean, the Trump administration breaks the law every day. And then a lot of people just stand around like, well, what do we do? Like, what's the mechanism to actually enforce this stuff? And again, like I'm not, I don't think that the criticism is always correct, but the criticism is absolutely there and it's driven like the kind of narrative. And that's why I think that the only way”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who actually broke the law? Of course. But then the question is, but also we need to change the fucking laws. Well, that's the other thing. That's the other, we need people in the Senate and the House who want to pass these laws and also, frankly, put enforcement mechanisms in place. That's one of our biggest problems right now. We've got lots of laws.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of change the political will of the Democratic Party. To go a little bit further To actually go after, I mean, people should have gone to prison. I mean, Iceland put people in prison. And I understand that, yeah, I mean, but Trump administration is happy to abuse the Justice Department. Yeah. And send them after folks. They send them after like Comey because he hurt Trump's feelings. I honestly don't think the American people would be angry if the Justice Department went after folks that destroyed their retirement savings or kicked their neighbors out of their homes. And that's the problem, I think. Even before that,”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fail and we don't care, and then we'll just blame the immigrants. That's right Totally, but I also think that that's why I'll just be entirely upfront. I mean, I think that's why we need to”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, I absolutely, the financial crisis Bailing out the banks, bailing out the big industries, letting people walk away with jump away with golden parachutes. While those banks still turned around and foreclosed on people's homes, while the average working person saw their, frankly, their retirement savings just disappear. And then we watched the political apparatus back up the people that broke the thing in the first place. I think that was huge. That broke a lot of trust. And then further on,”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going after the oligarchy, that is how we kind of rebuild trust with working people. And I mean, I say this is not like a radical idea. I mean, honestly, it seems pretty obvious. But the Democratic Party, at least elements of it, certainly in DC, have really walked away from that. And I think working people walked away from them because of it.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you tell people that something they know in their bones is real, they're willing to kind of go along with a lot more, I think, afterwards. And one of the biggest problems we as Democrats have had is that we didn't have a counter to that. We told folks that we had to protect the status quo. We told folks that, no, the economic system's actually doing great. Did you guys not see that Wall Street's doing fine? GDP looks great. Unemployment is record low. Yeah, but everybody works three jobs and they hate them. So it doesn't matter if unemployment's low. Working people are working themselves to the bone. I think that that's why I'm utterly convinced that economic populism.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they hate billionaires. They think corporate tech folks are like manipulating all of us. They think that corporate-owned agriculture and food systems are exploiting all of us and essentially poisoning us. They think that hedge funds and private equity are like destroying working people's lives. I agree with all of this. One of the reasons they voted for Trump is because Trump came along and he told them the one thing that they knew was true was true, which is that they live in a system that is not built for them and somebody somewhere is robbing them blind. And once he said that, they were willing to kind of forgive all the other stuff because that's the core thing that people understand, that we live in a political and economic system that does not have their best interests at heart.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, everybody works really hard. Eastern Maine is. Economically depressed We have commercial fishing. It is a lot of construction, mostly because we have some pretty substantial summer communities nearby, which brings money in. And then across the bay from us, we have Acadia National Park. So, there's a lot of folks that work in industries that are related to tourism. So it's a very working class area, which I frankly is, I think why it is this kind of weird back and forth between like Trumpism and not Trumpism. Because, I mean, Trump, I have a lot of friends who voted for Donald Trump three times.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, have people mobilize. And if we have to resist fascism in the streets with a mass movement, which is really the only way you can. And we're trying to build the apparatus to do both. And when we're done, we want it to stay. I don't want any of this to die because one single Senate seat, it's not going to get its universal health care. So we're going to need to have the power of people still on our side in order to like get the winds we're going to need down the road.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How to be organizers and activists in their community. And I think that's how you build the apparatus to knock on enough doors, talk to enough people, and build enough trust where, I mean, I'm convinced we're not just going to beat Susan Collins in November. I think we're going to trounce Susan Collins. And if... The worst thing happens, and we have an election that is contested or called into question, well, we still have an apparatus to turn people out.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source