Hey everyone. Welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today: Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine is out. He suspended his campaign last night after a woman accused him of sexual assault. Handed a political gift, Donald Trump did not go after the Democrats. He went after the woman who accused Platner. And at this point, I guess we shouldn’t even be surprised.
We’ll also talk about the new Air Force One, a Pentagon that’s running out of money, the new “Freedom Fuel” gas stations, and Trump cutting off disaster funding for states that didn’t vote for him.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Platner Drops Out and Trump Sides Against His Accuser
Last night, Graham Platner suspended his Senate campaign. He was the Democrat running to unseat Susan Collins, in a race that could decide control of the Senate.
Obviously, we all saw this coming. We talked earlier this week about the serious allegations that came out from an ex-girlfriend of his. The Democratic Party quickly pulled support from Platner and it was only a matter of time until he stepped aside. In his announcement video, he denied the allegations multiple times and said there were higher forces contributing to his need to withdraw.
But let’s be honest about what this means. Democrats just lost their nominee in a key race, and they have less than three weeks to get a new name on the ballot. An extremely vulnerable moment for the Democrats, and a moment you would expect to see Republicans jump all over.
But when Trump was asked about the situation on Air Force One, he didn’t take the opportunity to beat up the Democrats. Here’s Trump:
Think about that. Handed a layup, the President’s first instinct was to cast doubt on the woman. But this isn’t really a surprise, because he does this every single time.
On the same day, by the way, a federal judge ordered Donald Trump to finally pay E. Jean Carroll five million dollars, plus another eight hundred thousand in interest. As you all know, a jury found he sexually abused her in a department store dressing room, then defamed her by calling her a liar. So he stood on that plane casting doubt on one woman’s story, hours after a court made him pay for doing it to another.
When Trump says a lot of people use big falsehoods, he isn’t really talking about Graham Platner’s accuser. He’s thinking about his own. He simply cannot allow the idea that a woman’s accusation might be true, because his entire life and career depend on you believing that it never is.
2. Trump Left His $400 Million Gift Plane Behind and Lied About Why
Yesterday, Trump left the NATO summit in Turkey. He had arrived on his brand new shiny Air Force One, the 747 that Qatar gifted him, retrofitted at a cost of around four hundred million dollars. He’s been excitedly showing off the plane for weeks.
Despite that, he flew home on the old one. The baby blue jet that’s carried presidents for thirty five years. His explanation? Oh you know, the new plane had to go to England so troops there could tour it. He said he wanted to take the old one for old time’s sake.
Guess what? Nobody believes that. The New York Times reported that it was the Secret Service that urged the switch. Two U.S. officials told ABC News the decision came down to differences in the two planes’ security capabilities.
Turkey shares a border with Iran. We had just bombed Iran. And Iran has drones and missiles that can fly that far.
On that flight, reporters were told to close their window shades. Flight trackers show the plane’s transponder went dark after takeoff, a measure normally reserved for flying in and out of war zones.
Listen to what Leon Panetta, CIA Director and Secretary of Defense under Obama, thinks is going on:
Now, I actually don’t blame him for taking the safer plane. If the Secret Service tells you the other one can’t stop a missile, you listen. Any president should. What I blame him for is standing there and lying about it. We all know Trump didn’t want to take the old plane. The moment things got dangerous, he walked past his shiny new toy and got on the thirty-five-year-old plane because it was the safest option.
But he can’t tell us the truth. Because the truth is that his prized gift from Qatar is just a flying palace. Admitting that means admitting what this was from the start. Not an aircraft for the country. A present for him.
And that present came from a foreign government, and American taxpayers are footing the bill to retrofit it. When I was in Congress, if a Democratic president had accepted a luxury jet from a foreign royal family, my Republican colleagues would have opened three investigations. Fox News would be screaming! And honestly? They would have been right to.
3. The Pentagon Is Running Out of Money for Trump's Iran War
NBC News is reporting that the Pentagon is running out of cash. That’s the Defense Department, funded this year at nearly a trillion dollars.
Defense officials have asked Congress for more than sixty seven billion dollars in emergency money. Congress has not given it to them yet. And according to sources, part of the reason is that lawmakers are exhausted by this back and forth on Iran. They’re not getting any straight answers right now.
And our emergency oil supply, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, has fallen to about three hundred twenty million barrels. That is the lowest level since 1983, down more than twenty percent from where it stood before this war. The Energy Secretary has said refilling it could cost twenty billion dollars and take years.
So we are low on cash, low on oil, and it seems like the war is ramping back up. We are back to Trump changing his mind about where things stand every other day, so it’s honestly hard to tell.
Now imagine you’re a member of Congress being asked for sixty seven billion dollars. Monday, the war is over and it was a tremendous success. Wednesday, the ceasefire is dead and Iran is about to pay. What exactly are you funding? The Monday war or the Wednesday war? Nobody knows, because he doesn’t know.
Congress is not holding this money back out of spite. They are holding it back because nobody will tell them what this war is, what it costs, or how it ends. This is how the legislative branch is supposed to work. There are supposed to be checks and balances on what the executive branch wants. Things have to be approved, and there’s a process. You can’t just ask the country to bankroll a war you refuse to explain.
4. The White House Is Now in the Gas Station Business
This week they rolled out something called the Freedom Fuel Network. Here is the official announcement, posted by the White House itself:
$3.47 a gallon, for our 47th president. Of course he found a way to make it about himself. Just like he found a way, today, to get an entire airport named after him while still in office.
So the White House is branding gas stations and setting the price. But when the mayor of New York proposed a handful of city-run grocery stores, Republicans spent months screaming that it was communism. That New York City was turning into Venezuela. The Communists were taking over Manhattan. But the federal government slapping its logo on gas pumps and dictating what fuel costs? That’s “Freedom.”
But here’s the problem: $3.47 a gallon isn’t anywhere close to what Trump promised in his campaign:
And here’s the thing, Mr. President. $2.47 has your name on it too. You could have picked that one. But you can’t, can you? Because you started a war without a plan to end it, and now every American is paying for that war at the pump. And you’re feeling the pressure, so you made your own little gas station.
And by the way, the price of gas at the same gas station from the video was 2.99 in November 2024. When it was Trump and the Republican’s favorite talking point, and proof that the country was headed in the wrong direction. So who’s to blame now?
5. Trump Denies Disaster Aid to States That Didn't Vote for Him
After a brutal blizzard in February, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island asked FEMA for help. And they needed it. Parts of New York got close to three feet of snow in a single day. In Rhode Island, two people died, hundreds ended up in emergency rooms, and tens of thousands lost power.
All four cleared FEMA’s damage thresholds, and not by a little. Between the states, the storm caused about $227 million in damage. But last week, Trump denied them anyway.
Two days before those denials, the President approved disaster aid for six Republican led states, praising their politicians and candidates by name. For Wisconsin’s money, he thanked a Republican congressman he had endorsed for governor and never mentioned the Democratic governor who actually requested it.
Do you see the pattern? In this term, the President has approved just twenty three percent of disaster requests from states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators. From states with Republicans in those same jobs? Eighty nine percent.
Look, I represented a district in Illinois that got hit by floods and tornadoes pretty often. When you pick up the phone and call for help, you are not calling as a Republican or a Democrat. You are calling because your neighbors are hurting, and they need help. Sometimes they’ve lost everything they own in a matter of minutes. A disaster doesn’t care who you voted for, and the President shouldn’t either.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
President Trump told Volodymyr Zelensky at yesterday’s NATO summit that the United States will license Ukraine to build its own Patriot missiles, giving them access to the American-made air defense system. Trump said he preferred this move over sending offensive weapons, and told Zelensky it means Kyiv can stop complaining about supply. Zelensky has spent weeks pleading for interceptors, the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal that can shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, while recent Russian strikes on Kyiv killed at least 50 people. As Reuters reports that Putin is rejecting peace talks and is likely to escalate the war in the coming months, those missiles could make the difference for Ukraine’s defense.
President Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday that he will ask the Supreme Court to rehear its birthright citizenship case “IMMEDIATELY.” That move follows the Court’s ruling that babies born in the United States are automatically citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has not agreed to rehear an already-argued case since 1965, so Trump’s request is a long shot before it is even filed. Over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson is floating a vote on a bill to end “birth tourism,” arguing the 14th Amendment has been “devalued” and that Republicans are looking at every angle. But that bill stands no chance of clearing the Senate filibuster, which makes it largely symbolic.
