The Problem With Platner
In fetishizing ‘outsiders,’ Democrats are getting used to excusing bad behavior. We’ve seen this movie before.
Donald Trump wants to know: When are you people going to shut up with your “opinions” about the “quality” of his Iran deal and just let him cook?
“Don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping,’ at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever,” the president fumed on Truth Social shortly after 1 a.m. this morning. “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out in the end - It always does!” Happy Monday.
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Is This Platner Scandal Different?
by Andrew Egger
Graham Platner, oysterman, veteran, and presumptive Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, has for months faced a steady drip of embarrassing stories about his personal life: from the Nazi-logo tattoo he got while a young meathead Marine to his post-service history of basically unhinged anonymous social-media posts.
Until recently, these stories didn’t seem to be landing with Maine voters, who had adopted a frame of Platner that accounted for those rougher edges. For them, Platner’s whole story was that he got older, wiser, and more politically engaged after struggling mightily with post-war disillusionment. The young dumb soldier simply wasn’t the same person as the one they now supported politically.
But now comes a Platner scandal that threatens to upset that accommodation. This weekend, multiple outlets reported on Platner’s recent turn as an extramarital sexter. When Platner launched his bid for Senate last year, his wife Amy Gertner, whom he married in 2023, told a top campaign aide about a possible skeleton in his closet: She had found explicit texts with a number of other women on his phone in early 2025.
Platner has pushed back on the story—attacking “gossip” from “establishment media outlets” and trying to spin the real villain as the ex-staffer who leaked it. But he hasn’t denied the texts. In fact, he and Gertner have both acknowledged them, saying they worked through the issue in marriage counseling.
That may be enough to survive politically. But I, for one, am not so sure. This story is different from the others: Platner running around on his wife while in his late 30s can’t be written off as a youthful idiocy he later grew out of. And the attempt to redirect the story is silly: Infidelity is bad, speaks poorly of your judgment and character, and is the sort of thing that has caused problems for politicians who get caught doing it from time immemorial. Susan Collins was born, it seems, under a lucky star.
For a certain type of anti-anti-Trump conservative commentator, Platner has long been a favorite conversation piece. Chronically grumpy over all the nonsense Trump makes them swallow, they’ve leapt at the opportunity to use Platner to press the same critiques they regularly receive against their Democratic critics: Look who’s eager to overlook character defects in their candidate NOW!
But to me, the closest cross-party parallel for Platner isn’t Trump. It’s some of the Republican candidates that cropped up in the years preceding Trump’s rise, when anti-establishment sentiment in the Republican base had already hit a fever pitch but before Trump came along as its perfect vessel.
During the Obama years, Republicans were in many ways psychologically where Democrats are now: Licking their wounds after incredibly painful electoral losses, seething with rage at what they saw as out-of-touch party leaders, ready to fall in love with pretty much anyone who was willing to reflect that rage back at them.1
The problem—for Republicans then and for Democrats now—is that the machinery of the major parties was and is still best in class at ferreting out people’s old baggage and filtering out candidates who had too much of it to win. A world where iconoclastic outsiders routinely beat up on establishment-approved types is a world where unvetted candidates with big personal skeletons in the closet see those skeletons revealed during the general election rather than being quietly revealed before the primary.
Which means it’s also a world where voters are routinely incentivized to overlook and rationalize these scandals once they are revealed. Because if you’re a Democrat, it’s certainly not unreasonable to look at a guy like Platner and say: Okay, so he’s a cheater—now explain to me exactly why I should think that means Republicans should control the Senate?
I don’t have a convenient moral to the story here. It’s not like the answer is just for the parties to keep running the same old colorless senior-citizen career politicians. Voters don’t like them, and they shouldn’t. If Maine Gov. Janet Mills hadn’t been such an uninspiring establishment Senate candidate, Platner would never have found a populist wave to catch in the first place.
But I do worry that the path we’re on is one that makes it easier and easier for Democrats to follow Republicans into just abandoning character-related assessments of their candidates altogether. We’re currently in the midst of a long, painful education in how badly that can go on the GOP side of the aisle. Once you decide moral fiber in your leaders is a luxury your party can no longer afford, it’s amazing how quickly things can get out of hand.
Why Iran Buys Chinese
by Mark Hertling
NBC News reported this weekend that the American F-15E Strike Eagle shot down over Iran on April 3 may have been hit by a Chinese-made shoulder-fired missile, known by its NATO nickname the “Flying Crossbow.” If that reporting is confirmed, it would mean that Chinese military technology played a direct role in the first shoot-down of an American combat airplane in decades. That is certainly newsworthy, but the missile itself is not the story. The story is how it got there.
The Flying Crossbow did not suddenly appear in Iranian hands. China’s military relationship with Iran dates to the earliest days of the Iran–Iraq War, when Beijing became one of Tehran’s most important sources of arms when many other nations were reluctant to sell to the newly installed revolutionary regime. Throughout the 1980s, China provided Iran with aircraft, armor, and missiles, eventually selling more than $2 billion worth of weapons while helping establish a long-term defense relationship that survived long after the war ended. In the decades that followed, that relationship expanded beyond simple arms sales to include missile technology, anti-ship cruise missiles, radar systems, drone components, electronics, manufacturing assistance, and increasingly sophisticated military cooperation. Recent intelligence reporting suggests China may have provided Iran with advanced radar capabilities.
These weapons transfers are only part of the equation. Modern military systems require training, on-site maintenance and logistics support, and even doctrine development. China and Iran have conducted military exercises because effective air-defense systems depend on operators who understand radar integration, target acquisition, command-and-control procedures, and electronic warfare techniques. Missiles become dangerous not simply because they are delivered, but because someone teaches others how to employ them effectively.
My father was a grocery salesman, representing companies that distributed quality food products. But I remember he always insisted that the product itself was only part of the sale. “People want to buy our product,” he would say. “But what seals the deal is the personality of the salesman.”
His point was simple. Customers tend to buy from people they trust. Anyone who has a favorite car dealer, real estate agent, hotel chain, or local business understands this instinctively. The relationship often matters as much as, or sometimes more, than the product.
The same principle applies in international arms sales. Countries do not simply buy weapons; they buy relationships. Every fighter aircraft, missile battery, radar system, and training program represents a long-term commitment between nations. The hardware matters, but the trust behind the hardware matters more.
For decades, nations purchased American equipment not only because it was often the best in the world, but because it came with a trusted relationship with the United States. Arms sales created partnerships, interoperability, intelligence sharing, training opportunities, and strategic alignment that frequently lasted for generations. The sales contributed to building strong alliances.
Today, many allies are beginning to question that reliability. European governments have watched repeated interruptions and political disputes over support to Ukraine while confronting the most serious security threat on the continent since the Cold War. Taiwan continues to express concern about delayed weapons deliveries, while Japan recently learned that delivery schedules for key capabilities, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, may be affected by American inventory shortages and competing priorities. Other allies have quietly raised similar concerns.
Whether those delays are justified is beside the point. It’s the perception that matters.
China understands this. Beijing does not need to outspend the United States to gain influence. It simply needs to appear more dependable. While Washington debates commitments and sends mixed signals, China continues offering weapons, technology, infrastructure investment, and security partnerships around the world. In many places, it is capitalizing on doubts about American reliability.
The Chinese-made “Flying Crossbow” that may have downed an American aircraft is certainly something that should concern us. The Chinese missile is the product, but the relationship that put it there is what really matters. The Chinese–Iranian relationship is not new, and it would be ill-advised to think China is not part of the global arms market. But the questions we should be asking are: Who else is buying Chinese weapons, and why?
My father understood that lesson decades ago in the grocery business. Nations are learning it today in the international security business.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Pentagon Is Too Fixated on China… Good strategy involves handling multiple problems at once, observes MARK HERTLING.
The Never-ending Iran Negotiations… On Shield of the Republic, ELIOT COHEN joins ERIC EDELMAN from the shores of Lake Champlain to break down the latest administration jackassery before pivoting to the ongoing negotiations with Iran.
Will Trumpism Die With Trump? On How to Fix it, JOHN AVLON welcomes his wife MARGARET HOOVER—host of Firing Line and great-granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover—to discuss what Paxton’s annihilation of Cornyn reveals about today’s GOP, Trump’s Iran gamble, the case for ranked-choice voting, and what this political era has done to two journalists who started on opposite sides of the aisle.
Trump’s Staggering Corruption Is Finally Catching Up to Him… On The Mona Charen Show, JONATHAN CHAIT joins MONA CHAREN to discuss the incredible scope and scale of Trump’s corruption—from the $4 billion the Trump family has added to its net worth since January 2025 to the $1.776 billion “weaponization” slush fund. Voters, it turns out, don’t like it!
Quick Hits
SOME MORE ELEVENTH-HOUR CHANGES: Sure doesn’t sound like that Iran peace deal is actually just around the corner. Here’s the New York Times:
President Trump has toughened the terms of a potential framework for a deal to end the war in Iran, and has sent those proposed changes back to the country for consideration, according to three officials. . .
Mr. Trump has been concerned about parts of the potential deal that would include unfreezing funds for the Iranians, two officials said. He has been harshly critical of President Barack Obama for doing the same in the more than decade-old agreement that was signed to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.
Mr. Trump has also been frustrated by how long it has taken for Iran to respond to U.S. proposals, one official said. The proposals have been hammered out with the involvement of intermediaries, including from Pakistan.
RUNNING OUT OF SCAPEGOATS: Pam Bondi reportedly threw acting Attorney General Todd Blanche under the bus at her long-awaited testimony on the Epstein files before the House Oversight Committee on Friday. “As the head of a large Department with broad responsibilities,” read her drafted opening statement, “I delegated oversight over [the document review] process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.” She also tried to redirect blame toward Kash Patel: Rep. Ro Khanna said that she claimed that the FBI scrubbed documents before they even reached her at DOJ. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter much whose signature is on what memo or who presided over which redactions. Neither Bondi nor Blanche nor Patel orchestrated the Epstein coverup. Trump did.
The president can’t make the Epstein story go away, so he’s trying to do the next-best thing: make the people he can blame for it go away. That is, after all, why Bondi is the former attorney general.
Trump’s campaign against Epstein scapegoats also extends to the four Republicans who signed the discharge petition for the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Two are out of a job—Marjorie Taylor Greene broke with Trump over the Epstein case and ultimately resigned from Congress, while Trump helped end Rep. Thomas Massie’s career by endorsing the primary challenger who knocked off the seven-term incumbent last month. The other two Epstein defectors might soon join them.
Also on Friday, Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette over Rep. Nancy Mace in South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. He also called for a primary challenger against Rep. Lauren Boebert.
If Trump’s aim is to purge the government of anyone who shows an iota of interest in pursuing the Epstein matter, it’s been a successful few weeks. No one can doubt that pursuing truth and justice in the Epstein case puts them in direct contest with the president of the United States.
But that won’t solve Trump’s problem. If anything, it makes it worse. The Epstein case became the one durable scandal of Trump’s second term—perhaps the one durable scandal of his whole political career—because the coverup has been so blatant, so furious, and so public. And Trump doesn’t show any signs of becoming subtler.
—Jordan Ferdman is a researcher at Longwell Partners.
FIGHTING THE MEMORY HOLE: Authoritarians tend to hate the public record—a cataloging of what actually happened, as opposed to what their self-serving line on what happened is. So it was no enormous surprise to learn last month that Trump’s Justice Department had been mass-deleting information from its website about the prosecutions of January 6th rioters, including news releases about verdicts, pleas, and sentences. Much of this information served to disprove the administration’s ludicrous assertion that the Trump administration had merely pardoned people who had been victimized by Biden-era government “weaponization.” Out it had to go.
At such times, the archival efforts of regular people outside the regime become even more important. So it was heartening to see friend of The Bulwark Tom Joscelyn, a top staffer on the January 6th committee and a principal drafter of its final report, write on social media yesterday he’d produced a backup:
It’s no big surprise that Trump’s DOJ is deleting all of the January 6th press releases from its website. Here’s the thing: I downloaded all of them in Feb. 2025 (that’s right, more than a year ago) suspecting that they’d do just that. And we’re working to post them all online, as are others.
Remembering is only one small part of the battle. But it’s a crucial one.
Cheap Shots
Just Google Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, or Richard Mourdock.
Well, Dems and their supporters seem to be jumping on the Collins bandwagon, by drawing a yellow highlighter over Platner’s essentially meaningless texts. So that’s the major “problem” with Platner, the failure to live up to another Dem “purity” test, and I am heartily sorry to see Bulwark jump on this bandwagon.
This is the Platner's business, not ours. If Mrs Platner loves her husband and he loves her that's it. Now let's beat Collins and take back the Senate. Disappointed to see The Bulwark clutching its pearls and tsk-tsking.