Gutfeld Nails Exactly Why Democrats Turned Graham Platner Into a Folk Hero

Gutfeld Nails Exactly Why Democrats Turned Graham Platner Into a Folk Hero

Matt Margolis  

Screenshot via Fox News

Poor Graham Platner, right?

No, not really. He deserves everything that he’s getting right now. No one should be grieving about him or for him. Frankly, the best thing for him now would be to return to his old life in obscurity. Something tells me that he won’t, though. He’s tasted fame and notoriety. He may not get to build a tower shaped in honor of himself that looks like a post-apocalyptic trash can, as Barack Obama has, but he’ll find a way to remain a thorn in the side of the Democrat Party.

But perhaps the biggest question about Platner comes from Greg Gutfeld, who asked Friday night on The Five how someone who was an unknown not so long ago suddenly became the most important person in the party for a while.

"It's incredible how somebody so obscure can all of a sudden become the most important variable for one major political party," Gutfeld said. "It just tells you that these things happen in places that you ignore, spaces that are unoccupied, and you're too busy doing something else."

He added, "But it blows my mind that this guy was an obscurity and now he's everywhere.”

The New York Times ran a piece describing women mourning Platner's political implosion, a framing Gutfeld found absurd given how the same media treated other left-wing candidates who fell short. "They never coddled a voting bloc like this," he said. "I mean, we painted them as rubes falling for a charlatan."

He pointed to Bernie Sanders as the clearest example of the double standard. "Even with Bernie Sanders, they didn't show any sympathy for the voters," Gutfeld said. "They cheated when they tossed him aside in two elections."

That comparison led Gutfeld to a broader point about how Democrats and their allies in the press treat claims of a rigged process. "This is why it kills me," he said. "When they laugh at Republicans or conservatives who think 2020 was rigged against Trump, it's like, ‘You guys rigged two elections against your own guy. Why wouldn't we think that you did it to Sanders?”

Gutfeld then turned to the substance of Platner's far-left platform, arguing that the folksy image built around him was designed to distract from it rather than from his personal baggage. "They kept saying this guy was relatable, a normal guy, but I think this was all camouflage, not for his sexual escapades, but for his policies," he said.

He rattled off the specifics reporters glossed over. "By focusing on the mustache and the truck driving, you didn't talk about free Medicaid, trans, defunding police, BLM, Antifa," Gutfeld said. "There's nothing folksy about his beliefs; it's pure chaos."

ICYMI: The Platner Campaign Is Telling Some Real Whoppers Now

"He has all the stuff of that campus town coffee shop where the coffee mugs don't match," he said. "And all the flyers on the wall are for No Kings rallies and bail funds and rent strikes." He added that Platner is "a walking billboard for decolonization and free Palestine rallies," and insisted "that is not a normal guy just because he wears a sweatshirt."

Gutfeld's sharpest point came when he contrasted Platner with Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican far removed from MAGA politics. "They keep portraying this guy as far worse, evil than voting for Susan Collins," he said. "That was their apocalypse, an elderly, benign liberal Republican who's about as MAGA as Sally Field."

Gutfeld closed by pointing out just how far the goalposts had moved. "And yet that choice, oh, not her, drove women in Maine to grieve, grieve over a guy with a Nazi tattoo who may or may not have raped a few women," he said. "They grieve over him."

That pretty much says it all.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/07/11/gutfeld-nails-exactly-why-democrats-turned-graham-platner-into-a-folk-hero-n4954906?utm_source=pjmediavip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm

The Return of Socialism and the GOP's Golden Opportunity

The Return of Socialism and the GOP's Golden Opportunity

Josh Hammer 

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

The Democrat Party has come a long way since Bill Clinton was president — and not in a good way.

In 1993, the first year of the Clinton presidency, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced legislation to end automatic birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens; today, Democrats routinely call to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and advocate for illegal alien suffrage. Clinton famously called for abortion to be "safe and legal but rare"; today, Democrats prefer to "shout your abortion" as a perverse badge of honor. On marriage, Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act to define the union under federal law as one man and one woman; today, Democrats struggle to even tell us what a woman is, and polyamory now lurks as the next frontier in social experimentation.

But of all the issues where the Democrat Party has moved sharply to the left since the Clinton era, perhaps none is more notable than economic policy. During his 1996 State of the Union address, Clinton famously declared that "the era of big government is over." And he acted on that impulse too: Clinton signed the most transformative welfare reform law in a generation, deregulated Wall Street, slashed taxes on capital gains, and ended his presidency by presiding over consecutive balanced federal budgets. Clinton was greatly assisted by the dot-com boom and a fiscally conservative Congress, but facts are still facts.

When it comes to economic policy, today's Democrat Party looks absolutely nothing like its more moderate 1990s-era forebear.

What began as an incipient Barack Obama-era trend toward big government has now, during the post-Joe Biden era, emerged as a strong majority sentiment. A Gallup poll last September found that 42 percent of Democrats have a positive view of capitalism, while a whopping 66 percent hold a positive view of socialism. Leading kingmakers in today's Democratic Party are (literal) Soviet Union-honeymooning communists, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), or leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). And the singular party top dog right now is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is fond of quoting Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto," speaks of the "warmth of collectivism," and is now implementing city-owned grocery stores across the Big Apple.

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That is some serious intellectual whiplash.

Hold aside that communism is the single deadliest ideology in the history of mankind — responsible, historians estimate, for nearly 100 million deaths. Hold aside, as well, that socialism and communism have resulted in horrific resource scarcity and immeasurable immiseration everywhere they have been attempted. At the most basic level, socialism is simply contrary to human nature. Men have a natural right to the fruits of their labor, provided those fruits do not undermine the common good. And it is natural, contrary to the basic tenets of socialism, to value the flourishing of one's family and tribe over that of the polity — let alone the whole world. As Dennis Prager has often noted, socialism violates two of the 10 Commandments: do not steal, and do not covet.

Republicans are presently confused about what exactly they should run on, as they begin to make their case to the American people before this fall's midterm elections. Inflation, while dramatically reduced from its catastrophic Biden-era peak, is still stubbornly higher than it ought to be. The Trump administration is, at least for now, unwilling to finish the campaign it launched against Iran. Republicans have a great story to tell on the issue of crime, but they seem uninterested in telling it. The administration has had tremendous success in stanching illegal immigration, but the GOP's consultant class frets that a focus on immigration would hemorrhage the gains the party has made with Latino voters.

The solution, and the best path the GOP has to defy historical trends and retain both houses of Congress next January, comes in the form of a concerted socialism-centric campaign.

In previous cycles, Republicans might have credibly been accused of fearmongering in running against a "socialist" bogeyman. That is simply not the case anymore — not in a world where third-worldist DSA radicals like Darializa Avila Chevalier and Melat Kiros are knocking off longstanding incumbents in Democratic congressional primaries, and where a vociferous foe of capitalism is the mayor of the nation's commercial center. The threat is here, and the threat is real. Perhaps even more to the point: Latino voters who fled failed socialist hellholes in places like Havana and Caracas don't want that. Middle-class suburban moms concerned about dim job prospects for their children don't want that. And according to Gallup, independents don't want that either.

In an April speech in Austin, Texas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that progressivism and American constitutionalism are fundamentally incompatible. He's right. It's also true that socialism — real, genuine socialism — is incompatible with the American way of life as it's been experienced for two and a half centuries. That's a fact — and it's a powerful argument to make in this milestone 250th American birthday year, in particular. Republicans should make that argument passionately and with alacrity.

https://townhall.com/columnists/joshhammer/2026/07/10/the-return-of-socialism-and-the-gops-golden-opportunity-n2679152?utm_source=thdailypmvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-hVMyapMGud&utm_term=&_nlid=hVMyapMGud&_nhids=ncqWjHGaSxj1ls

Live Large: Trump Sets Appliances Free From Old Leftist 'Efficiency' Rules

Live Large: Trump Sets Appliances Free From Old Leftist 'Efficiency' Rules

By Ward Clark  

    

AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File

A century ago, things in American households were very different. Refrigeration wasn't available for most households; the best most folks could manage was a literal icebox, for which one had ice delivered periodically. Air conditioning was an expensive novelty for successful businesses. The internet of that time was called "radio," and those were large, furniture-grade sets that took a while to get the tubes warmed up before one could have a listen. Dishwashers? Electric or natural gas stoves? Not really a thing. I remember my mother describing life on a small farm during the Depression, when she was a girl; the heat in summer, the winter cold in the unheated bedrooms that the warmth from the wood stove didn't quite reach. My grandma cooked over the same wood stove that provided heat.

Since then, things have exploded in the appliance arena, making life easier and more convenient all the time. A hundred years ago, if I had killed a caribou or moose, I would have had to salt down the meat, or jerk it, or make sausage or pemmican. Now? Into the coffin-sized freezer in our garage.

The climate scolds, though, would walk us backwards. The federal government, some time back, slapped "efficiency" regulations on major appliances, making them slower, less effective, and less convenient. Now, though, the Trump administration has yanked those regs, in effect, Making Appliances Great Again.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright today announced the Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to permanently end home appliance and equipment mandates that raise costs and disrupt consumer choice. The proposal will update the Department’s Process Rule used to establish energy conservation standards for household appliances and equipment, including air conditioning units, gas stoves, washing and drying machines, water heaters, refrigerators, and other products Americans rely on every day. In accordance with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order, “Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation,” the proposal will preserve consumer choice and lower costs. 

“In America, you should be able to choose a dryer that dries clothes on the first try rather than one that takes multiple cycles—unfortunately, past administrations thought otherwise,” Secretary Wright said. “For too long, the American people paid the price for mandates that restricted consumer choice and drove up costs. President Trump promised to end this nonsense and that is exactly what we are doing. This proposed rule will preserve the American people’s ability to choose home appliances and equipment that actually work — at prices they can afford. It’s called common sense.” 

The climate scolds are already up in arms about this. A recent piece in the Washington Post derided the move, calling it "President Trump's attack on efficiency standards." Road apples! The Trump administration, with this move, is returning a degree of choice to the American people, one that paternalistic, finger-wagging Democrats tried to take away. Nobody, in the administration or out of it, is restricting Americans from buying these supposedly efficient appliances if they choose; the only difference is that nobody is preventing us from buying, say, a dishwasher that you don't have to run through three cycles to get the dishes clean.

(In our house, we have a very efficient and effective dishwasher. Me.)

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Read More: Affordability: Now Another Nail in the Coffin of 'Green Energy'

UK Climate Rules Ban AC, As Temperatures Soar to 104 Degrees F

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The Empowerment Alliance's Gary Abernathy, always a good read, has this to say about the move:

What many on the left fail to understand is that most Americans are fully aware that a high-performing appliance will likely cost more money. But that’s our choice. “It also saves people money” is not a decision we want anyone else to make for us – just as we don’t want mandates forced upon us in the name of doing us a favor.

Most Americans are not wasteful. We know we should turn off lights when they’re not needed. We should adjust the thermostat accordingly when no one is going to be home. We should not water the lawn or wash the car when there’s a drought.

What we rightfully resent is obvious hypocrisy. It was laughable when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently urged residents to keep their thermostats no lower than 78 degrees – just a couple of days before the much-ballyhooed wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden where, as many pointed out online, the bride and groom, along with their guests, were undoubtedly going to stay comfortably cool.

Most Americans, at least, the ones that don't vote for commies like Zohran Mamdani, aren't stupid. We turn off the lights when we leave a room. We keep our thermostats set at a reasonable level. We make sure the dishwasher has a full load before we run it. Why? Because most of us aren't in the habit of wasting money, and as a monthly reminder, we have our utility bills. Electricity and natural gas cost money, and we know it.

But these should be our decisions. They shouldn't be forced on us by some finger-wagging bureaucrat.

Mr. Abernathy also writes:

As People reported, Mamdani claimed that “the city is also taking steps to reduce energy demand by maintaining a 78-degree temperature in government buildings, dimming or turning off lights during peak electricity demand, asking private partners to do the same and powering down non- essential equipment.”

But – no surprise – the New York Post soon found that City Hall and other municipal buildings were below the 78-degree mark – with one room coming in at a downright chilly 54 degrees. 

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich nailed it when he responded that Mamdani’s post reflected “the reality of big government socialism’s inability to solve problems,” as the Hill reported.  

“Telling New Yorkers to set their air conditioning at 78 degrees is an open admission of the failure of the left to provide enough inexpensive electricity that people can be comfortable even in hot weather,” Gingrich said.

Rules for me, not for thee; add an overweening hypocrisy to the list, and there you have the American left, in a nicely comfortable, 68-degree nutshell. 

Look, here's the thing: We're Americans, dammit. We don't back off. We don't scale back. We don't hunker down. We walk tall. We ramp up. We don't walk small, we don't think small, and we sure as shootin' don't act small. We have some of the greatest energy resources on the planet: Oil, gas, coal, and soon, nuclear power. We don't have to put up with washers that don't clean or freezers that don't freeze. Let the Euro-weenies deal with these issues; we won't. 

The Trump administration was right to scotch these rules and return those choices to American consumers. And if Democrats and climate scolds (but I repeat myself) don't like it, then we can tell them where to head in.

https://redstate.com/wardclark/2026/07/09/live-large-trump-sets-appliances-free-from-old-leftist-efficiency-rules-n2204161?utm_source=rsafternoonbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Let's Trigger Lefties With Talk of a Third Term for President Trump

Let's Trigger Lefties With Talk of a Third Term for President Trump

Stephen Kruiser  

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Top O' the Briefing

Happy Friday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. The Sine Qua Non Sequitur is enjoying various olive loaf hors d’oeuvres at a Spanish-dubbed Hee Haw retrospective this weekend. 

Let's enjoy a little World Cup humor before we get to the other stuff. This was floating around social media and cracked me up: England and France are the only two Muslim countries left in the World Cup. 

We're going to take a quick look at a couple more reasons to enjoy this time we have with a real president in charge, then head off into that good weekend. 

I continue to marvel at not only how much President Donald Trump has on his plate, but also at the vigor with which he deals with it all. Yes, it's true that presidents tend to have a lot on their plates, but this president has extra helpings because of the nightmare that preceded him in the Oval Office. 

That he keeps the schedule that he does at the age of 80 should become the stuff of legend one day, on the off chance that historians decide to become honest again in the future. 

President Trump has had a busy week, what with the Independence Day celebrations, NATO, and Iran all on the agenda. There were a couple of other things that I really enjoyed, and that's what we'll focus on today. 

This is from Catherine:

President Donald Trump has declared he is requesting a rehearing for a crucial birthright citizenship case after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment and opened the floodgates for “birth tourists” and “anchor babies.”

The current warped view of birthright citizenship is that any child born on U.S. soil is a citizen even if his parents just walked or flew across the border, or even if the parents are affiliated with enemy governments or with international criminal organizations. After the Supreme Court majority ruled this was the right view of birthright citizenship at the end of June, ignoring historical evidence to the contrary and serious threats to our elections and national sovereignty, Trump first urged Congress to pass legislation to correct the decision. But he seems somewhat impatient with the length of time this will take and is seeking a quicker resolution.

Trump's relentless focus on cleaning up the host of horrible immigration policies that have plagued this nation for decades is what endears him to the people who were on board with him first. For those of us who live in border states, it's also some of his most important work. 

It's true that the Biden years made the border situation much worse, but politicians on both sides of the aisle have been doing whatever they could to make things awful for all of my political life. Sure, there were a few Republicans here and there who were hard-nosed about border security, but too many in the GOP would pussyfoot around the issue or, worse yet, throw in with the Democrats on various amnesty schemes. That's still happening. 

While many in the GOP are still unclear on just how important it is to radically overhaul our immigration policies, President Trump is telling the Supreme Court of the United States to check its work. It's not common, but that's actually a thing that presidents can do. A lesser leader would have simply thrown up his hands in resignation once the highest court in the land weighed in. 

Trump's not having any of their nonsense. This is a long shot, but it's a shot that had to be taken. 

My good friend and Townhall colleague Matt Vespa covered Trump’s latest baller move:

When Democrats and the liberal media finally realize this, you can bet they'll start spreading the ‘Trump is trying to steal the election’ narratives. Anything this man does is met with apocalyptic reactions from his detractors, which is both extremely annoying and somewhat entertaining. Tonight’s latest move: Trump has fired two Democrats from the federal Election Assistance Commission. 

There has already been some caterwauling from the left. Matt's got one of the reactions in his post. 

Election integrity is another important issue that the president is often forced to deal with on his own, where he can. Dare we once again bring up the importance of passing the SAVE America Act? Yes, we dare. And we can rest assured that President Trump isn't going to let it go.

Regarding the headline, I do love stoking third-term hysteria among the lefties. We know we're joking, but they don't. 

Anything I can do to keep the ulcers humming along over there. Have a great weekend, everyone.

https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2026/07/10/the-morning-briefing-lets-trigger-lefties-with-talk-of-a-third-term-for-president-trump-n4954858/?utm_campaign=nl_pm&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pjmediambvip

Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros Says This Is Needed to 'Tackle White Supremacy'

Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros Says This Is Needed to 'Tackle White Supremacy'

Amy Curtis  

     

AP Photo/Rebecca Slezak

The Democratic Party has pushed for slavery reparations for years. They demand that people who never owned slaves give millions of dollars to people who never were slaves, and they call it fairness and equity. What it really is is a massive wealth transfer from a group they hate — white Americans — to the minority groups they like.

In San Francisco, $5 million per person in cash reparations isn't enough. Leftists issued a laundry list of other demands including debt forgiveness, 250 years of tax abatement, income subsidies, Black banks, a Black land and building acquisition trust, city-paid Black condo fees, and Black-run community centers.

Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros, who is running for Congress in Colorado, said we need reparations to 'tackle white supremacy' and 'quantify racism.'

"One of the things that brought me into starting my PhD program was finally coming to the realization that we were never going to be able to tackle white supremacy in the way that we need to without reparations," Kiros said. "There is no way to truly heal and to progress and move on from acts of such cruel systemic violence against an entire group of people without at the very least acknowledgment of it in a meaningful way."

That's (D)ifferent.

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White supremacy isn't a thing.

We'd love to see Kiros answer that question.

This is it. It's all about punishing the groups socialists don't like and taking wealth from us.

Yes. And we need to keep this in mind.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/amy-curtis/2026/07/09/melat-kiros-reparations-needed-to-combat-white-supremacy-n2679028?utm_source=thdailypmvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-8bGQuSkFCF&utm_term=&_nlid=8bGQuSkFCF&_nhids=ncKyxhnYhy7els

Scott Jennings Reveals the Real Reason Democrats Turned on Graham Platner

Scott Jennings Reveals the Real Reason Democrats Turned on Graham Platner

Dmitri Bolt  

     

Credit: Salem Media

Scott Jennings blasted Democrats on Thursday for continuing to back Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner despite a cascade of controversies that, he argued, should have rendered him politically nonviable. 

Jennings pointed to what he described as a pattern of defense from Democrats, even as allegations mounted, including initial scrutiny over a Nazi tattoo, reported pro-Hamas sympathies, and revelations about his personal conduct. A New York Times report detailed claims of a violent past, domestic abuse, alcohol issues, and disturbing behavior, yet support largely held. According to Jennings, the turning point came only after Platner’s polling collapsed earlier this week, following a new accusation from an ex-girlfriend alleging rape. 

"Democrats like Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and on and on and on and on kept saying that, oh, he's gotten over the rough patch in his life. You know, he's apologized. Ro Khanna, he's on a redemption. He'll bring redemption to our nation. So they were willing to overlook or believe all of his explanations up until now," Jennings said. "The only thing that changed is that he's no longer politically viable."

"His poll numbers went down to the point where it wasn't politically palatable to say that this redemption tour was going to be good for America anymore," he continued. "I think you're right. He's never actually taken accountability for any of these things. The Democrats knew. Ninety-eight percent of the things we knew about Graham Plattner, we knew before the Democrats voted in the primary in Maine, and they still voted for him."

Rumors had already been swirling earlier in the week that Platner would exit the Maine Senate race after several campaign events were abruptly canceled without explanation. Those reports were confirmed yesterday when he officially withdrew, leaving the Maine Democratic Party with just weeks until July 27 to select a replacement nominee. 

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The sudden vacancy now puts the Maine Democratic Party in a bind, with just weeks to choose a replacement candidate. The question is whether party leaders will simply appoint one, handing conservatives an easy line of attack as they argue the move undercuts the very democratic principles Democrats say they champion.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/dmitri-bolt/2026/07/09/scott-jennings-on-the-real-reason-dems-turned-on-graham-platner-n2679119?utm_source=thdailypmvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-YRZXdE9B4r&utm_term=&_nlid=YRZXdE9B4r&_nhids=ncKyxhnYhy7els