Despite empty seats in some areas on White House lawn, UFC bouts show Trump's knack for appealing to America's lowest common denominator still pays off

Donald Trump has the best seats in the house (NBC)

Sunday night's Freedom 250 fight card on the South Lawn of the White House showed that Donald Trump still can count on his moneyed allies to pitch in cash for purposes of creating a spectacle. But vacant seats  -- prevalent both in sections reserved for celebrities and in sections set aside for everyday Americans --were a sign that Trump's drawing power isn't what it used to be. That is the chief take-home message from an event that might have been more at home in a sports venue like New York's Madison Square Garden rather than having the iconic home of American political power serving as a backdrop. It also might have helped if Americans had not been facing price shocks at gasoline pumps and in grocery stores, forcing Trump's approval ratings to record lows, according to a report at Variety. Under the headline "With UFC Freedom 250 at the White House, Trump has reached peak 'Idiocracy'," Marlow Stern writes:

At no point has the Trump presidency more closely resembled a scene out of “Idiocracy,” Mike Judge’s 2006 satire about a Philistine society that abhors intellectualism, than on Sunday night, as the White House played host to UFC Freedom 250 — a series of MMA brawls on the South Lawn ostensibly meant to commemorate the 250^th birthday of America, but really to honor the 80^th birthday of President Donald J. Trump, a man whose thirst for adulation and public spectacle will never be quenched.

The garish ceremony was broadcast live on Paramount+, a streaming platform owned by David Ellison, a Trump loyalist who’s been reshaping CBS News to be more MAGA-friendly. Just days before the event, Trump’s Justice Department formally approved Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Trump, for his part, reportedly purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in TKO Holding Group, the UFC’s parent company, just a couple of weeks after the UFC Freedom 250 lineup dropped.

The opening moments of the event were fitting for an administration that seems to be driven more by bombast and theatrics than any genuine interest in policy. Stern writes:

After an opening sequence where memorable UFC fights were projected onto the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and various monuments around Washington, D.C — including Conor McGregor, a man found liable for rape, raising his gloves in triumph against the Washington Monument — we were treated to… a half-hour rain delay. At around 8:30 p.m. EST, things finally kicked off with Trump and UFC President Dana White slowly ambling out of the White House and toward The Claw, an 80-foot-tall tarantula-like canopy hovering over the octagon on the South Lawn. During this seemingly interminable walk, ads for Trump-related products like Trump Coins, Truth Social and World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto coin gambit, served as event sponsors.

“I have seen some surreal things in my life,” offered UFC commentator Joe Rogan. “This is the most surreal.”

I’m not sure if it was more surreal than seeing a violent mob of thousands of Trump supporters lay siege to the Capitol, with some smearing their own feces on its walls, on Jan. 6, but it was more bizarre than the last time Trump transformed the White House into a giant ad in order to return the favor to one of his prominent supporters.

The historic event was broadcast exclusively on Paramount+. Streaming viewership numbers have not been officially published, but total global viewership may be released by Paramount Skydance or the UFC in the coming days, according to a report at The New York Times.  Those numbers might prove to be substantial, but the empty seats that could be readily seen around "the Octagon" and elsewhere on the White House grounds indicate the number of fans who chose to watch the event in person was so-so, at best. From the Variety report:

The UFC is said to have footed the entire $60-million bill for UFC Freedom 250, with White viewing it mainly as a promotional play. Of the estimated 4,300 seats, TMZ reported that 1,000 tickets were given to Trump, 200 were controlled by White, and 200 were for TKO Group Holdings CEO Ari Emanuel, while the rest were given to members of the military. Another 85,000 tickets were doled out to fans who could watch the event on giant screens from The Ellipse. Various reports, however, claimed that sponsorship packages, including ringside seats, were selling for between $1 million to $1.5 million.

A number of those seats surrounding the Octagon appeared to be empty by fight time, while The Ellipse looked far from capacity. The biggest non-Trump celebrity in attendance was probably Mark Zuckerberg, whose company Meta showered the telecast with ads. With President Trump’s approval rating at historic lows, it seems the showman doesn’t have the pull he once did. It also was odd how Trump milked the military for his 80^th birthday event, with cameras often cutting to shots of service members in the crowd, and historical scenes of American heroism on the battlefield aired between fights. This is a man who, according to his own lawyer, invented an injury to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War, and who reportedly called fallen American soldiers “losers” and “suckers” for getting killed.

Perhaps more than anything, the event seemed designed as an opportunity to heap praise on Trump and put him at center stage. Dana White seemed plenty willing to do his part, Stern writes:

Trump, White and the UFC have a bit of history. White served as a Trump surrogate during his three presidential campaigns, and gave some insight into their allyship at the 2016 Republican National Convention. “Arenas around the world refused to host our events,” White told the crowd. “Nobody took us seriously. Nobody. Except Donald Trump… I will always be so grateful to him for standing with us in those early days, so tonight I stand with Donald Trump.”

Yes, White has repeatedly painted Trump as the UFC’s savior, a counterpoint to detractors like the late John McCain, who famously branded it “human cockfighting.” That version of events has been called into question by UFC insiders, according to a recent investigation in Vanity Fair, who claim that this mythmaking surrounding Trump and UFC began around 2016. Ant Evans, the former head of UFC PR agreed, writing on Twitter, “Former head of UFC PR here. Trump’s name didn’t appear in a single press release, one-sheet briefing, talking point, UFC-produced document, book, or piece of content before 2016. The only time I recall his name being mentioned within my own earshot was execs laughing about his involvement with the money-pit that was Affliction MMA. This narrative is simply false.”

Another outrageous narrative came courtesy of Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, while promoting his boss’s birthday event, compared Dana White’s founding of the UFC to America putting a man on the moon. 

As for the actual fights, they almost became an afterthought as the night wore on -- even though they produced plenty of action, and a fair amount of blood, and the event attracted some of the bigger names in mixed martial arts. Stern writes:

The fights themselves, of which there were seven, were secondary to venerating Trump. Michael Chandler got whooped again (surprise!) by Mauricio Ruffy, who proposed to his gal after (Chandler has now lost six of his last seven fights). Sean O’Malley knocked out Aiemann Zahabi with a straight-left and overhand-right, likely granting him a title shot, before saluting the troops; Cyril Gane made mincemeat of Alex “Chama” Pereira, who was a step slower since moving up to heavyweight; and Justin Gaethje pounded Ilia Topuria’s face in to hand him his first loss and capture the lightweight title. The unreasonably-long event ended well after 1 a.m. EST..

But it was Josh Hokit’s absurd antics that perfectly encapsulated UFC Freedom 250: After earning jeers for fake-vomiting at his weigh-in, the heavyweight bruiser beat the living daylights out of an out-of-shape Derrick Lewis, then gifted Trump a medallion and announced, “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?” to cheers from the crowd -- and an apparent smirk from Trump.

More than anything, though, UFC Freedom 250 was a vulgar display of power by President Trump, who views America as one giant sandbox filled with toys for him to play with. Though his Freedom 250 Concert imploded, you can expect plenty more embarrassing stunts to come.

As fans of mixed martial arts focus on action inside the UFC "Octagon," others might keep an eye on financial arrangements tied to a peculiarly Trumpian event

Diego Lopes celebrates his UFC victory on the White House lawn (Getty)

Aficionados of mixed martial arts likely were enraptured with the bouts themselves at last night's Trump-inspired UFC event on the White House lawn. But Americans in general might be wise to focus on financial arrangements surrounding the fight card. That's from a report at MS NOW under the headline "How Trump and his allies could profit from the UFC fights at the White House." Laura Barron-Lopez writes:

Mixed martial arts fighters parading through the chamber of the Lincoln Memorial before descending its steps for a face-off and press conference. Weigh-ins on the Ellipse. A star-spangled 90-foot “Claw” towering over the White House South Lawn. An octagon-shaped ring turned prime ad space — sponsors including Bud Light, Crypto.com and Polymarket paid substantial sums to have their names displayed — with the “People’s House” as the backdrop. Thousands of seats surround the ring where fighters will square off on Sunday for “UFC Freedom 250,” which CEO Dana White has predicted will draw “Super Bowl-type numbers.”

Trump purchased tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in UFC’s parent company while promoting the event, according to a May financial disclosure. He held a $1 million-per-plate fundraiser for his top super PAC the night before the cage match. And Trump “officially designed” a line of “Trump x UFC Freedom 250” medallions, which are selling for $250 to $12,000.

Those are just three of the ways the president stands to benefit from Sunday’s UFC event at the White House, which marks the president’s 80th birthday. 

Trump was expected to have one of the best seats in the house, right next to the ring -- better known as the "Octagon" in UFC parlance -- so he surely will enjoy the spectacle. But few people are apt to be surprised by news that a Trump-fueled event is expected to mix profit with pleasure. Barron-Lopez reports:

“This is a real distillation of this administration, which is to take public property and use it for private benefit,” said Brendan Ballou, a former Justice Department prosecutor who represented the plaintiffs who lost a court battle to stop the fight. “The danger in having corruption normalized is it will fundamentally tell the very rich and powerful that they are beyond reach of the law — and that message will extend beyond this administration.”

“The federal government is not making any money on this event. UFC is funding and paying for this entire event,” one official said, adding that no taxpayer dollars would be used “outside of what would be applied towards employees’ normal duties and responsibilities.” 

The second part of that quote, starting with the word "outside," is a classic "hedge statement." It also should be noted that the quoted official apparently asked to remain anonymous. Perhaps that's because sweaty athletes aren't the only ones who might be emitting a foul odor at this event. From the MS NOW report:

Whatever the financial arrangements, historians say there’s no real precedent for any of it. 

“I can’t think of any previous president doing anything like it,” said Marc Selverstone, a historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Of course, presidents have long hosted sporting engagements at the White House, from tennis to golf to bowling to even T-ball for kids. But I can’t think of anything that’s been so commercialized as the UFC event, nor anything as publicly martial or gladiatorial.” 

“Past presidents typically took extreme care to keep their private finances and business interests separate from the presidency,” said Nicole Anslover, a historian at Florida Atlantic University. “President Trump is breaking that precedent.”

The fight card, like a number of other White House projects, was staged in the great outdoors, but that does not mean such events are surrounded by transparency, Barron-Lopez writes:

The UFC fight isn’t the only construction project remaking the White House grounds this year — and it isn’t the only one where the administration has tried to control what the public sees. 

On Thursday, officials opened the UFC arena on the South Lawn for a press preview, allowing reporters to take photos and video. But they were barred from photographing or filming the demolished East Wing and the ongoing construction of Trump’s massive new ballroom nearby. One Secret Service officer even ordered a reporter to delete an iPhone photo he had taken of the construction site.

The Claw itself is also a break from precedent, Anslover said. Trump’s predecessors altered the White House grounds to accommodate personal sports and hobbies — Harry Truman added a bowling alley, privately funded by friends from Missouri, and Barack Obama had part of a tennis court converted to double as a basketball court; Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter had an ice rink installed  for White House Christmas receptions in 1980— but those were for private use, not “a massive structure to be used for public profit-making events,” Anslover told MS NOW.

Neither the White House nor the UFC seemed anxious to answer simple questions about the event, Barron-Lopez notes:

The White House would not answer basic questions about how much access UFC fighters will have to the White House grounds, including whether they will emerge from the Oval Office — as TIME magazine has reported — or the Executive Mansion’s Red and Green rooms for their walkouts to the caged octagon. 

The White House referred MS NOW to the UFC; the UFC did not respond to a request for comment. A White House official told MS NOW that fighters will have dressing rooms in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and make their way from that building on what’s known as the “tradesman route,” historically used by contractors and service workers. They’ll enter the venue through the Palm Room doors, the official said, which open to the Rose Garden.

As for who will tend to the fighters, the White House said the UFC is using its own medical corps to manage the contestants’ medical needs, while the White House Medical Unit will be responsible for all patrons on the Ellipse and South Lawn.

NY Times report on White House efforts to cover up ties to Jeffrey Epstein portrays Todd Blanche as a Trump butt sniffer with no regard for the rule of law

Todd Blanche: The ultimate Trump loyalist (Politico)

The New York Times' explosive account of White House insiders frenzied efforts to keep Donald Trump's connections to dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein under wraps might have cost one of those insiders a job he apparently craves. That's from a report at Raw Story under the headline "Todd Blanche may have torpedoed his own AG nomination with Epstein stunt: analysis." Nicole Charky-Chami writes:

A damning New York Times report released on Wednesday raised new concerns about Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and his involvement with the Epstein files.

Blanche has come under fire over his role in "attempting to kill off the Epstein firestorm," just days after President Donald Trump formally nominated his former personal lawyer for permanent attorney general, The Daily Beast reports. Now, doubts are being raised over whether he could be the top leader of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing — and whether he could maintain his independence.

"Opponents argue he is not fit for the job, pointing to his handling of the Epstein files, which identified numerous victims but kept the names of potential co-conspirators hidden, as well as other controversies, such as Trump’s $1.8 billion 'anti-weaponization' slush fund and the backroom deal giving the president immunity from continuing IRS audits," The Beast reported.

Opponents are correct that Blanche is not fit for the job. Also, it should be obvious to anyone who has paid close attention to Blanche's actions as acting AG that the answers to Charky-Chami's queries are "No, he cannot be an objective leader of the DOJ" and "No, he has no intention of maintaining any sort of independence."

Blanche has proven to be the ultimate political animal in the Trump universe; he is an uber loyalist, who if confirmed, will focus on only one task -- to make sure the president's directives are carried out ASAP. By bringing an indictment against former FBI director James Comey for photographing seashells on a North Carolina beach, Blanche has shown there is no depth to which he won't stoop in order to punish the people Trump perceives as enemies. Quaint concepts like due process, the rule of law, and prosecutorial independence will not factor into any equation Blanche employs for the AG job. The only equation Blanche will need is this: Puckering lips + Trump's butt = MAGAfied glory.

Let's consider the oath a Senate-confirmed AG swears before taking office:

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Can Todd Blanche be expected to take these words seriously? Can Trump be expected to follow the Constitutional command that he "take care that the Laws be faithfully executed"? The answer to both questions is no. 

We addressed obligations facing an AG and a president in a post dated Feb. 17, 2025, less than one month after Trump took office for his second term. Here is one relevant section from that post:

Donald Trump and his allies are plotting to prosecute President Joe Biden if Trump wins the November election, according to a report from Axios. After months of Congressional inquiries, no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden has surfaced, so it is unclear what would form the basis of a Trump-fueled prosecution. But this much appears to be clear: Trump apparently wants to prosecute Biden because he believes Biden had him prosecuted -- even though Trump has offered no evidence to support that claim. One prominent legal analyst has stated that Biden did not have Trump prosecuted and could not have done so. Those matters come down to grand jurors.

Also, the Axios report suggests Trump has no problem violating roughly 40 years of U.S. policy that holds the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is to operate independently of the White House -- that presidents are not prosecutors, and they are to be excluded from decisions to charge or not charge suspected wrongdoers. . . . 

Here is another relevant section from that post, and it should be familiar to both Trump and Blanche. We've seen no evidence that either of them takes it seriously:

Trump can't resist exerting demands on the DOJ, mainly because he is desperate to extract revenge on his perceived political opponents. But that runs contrary to longstanding U.S. policy, as spelled out in the DOJ's Justice Manual. This is from Section 1-8.600 - Communication with the White House:

In order to promote and protect the norms of Departmental independence and integrity in making decisions regarding criminal and civil law enforcement, while at the same time preserving the President’s ability to perform his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” the Justice Department will not advise the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal or civil law enforcement investigations or cases unless doing so is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.

Charky-Chami notes that The Times article portrays Blanche in a highly unfavorable light. Assuming large numbers of Americans consume and digest that message, the newspaper will have done a significant public service. From the Raw Story report:

The bombshell reporting from Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan is part of an upcoming book and includes multiple revelations about what happened within the Trump administration and includes Blanche's involvement as the then-deputy attorney general under former Attorney General Pam Bondi.

"Blanche and other Trump aides—including Vice President JD Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Communications Director Steven Cheung and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt—held a panicked meeting in the Situation Room in July last year, desperate to quell the MAGA civil war that had erupted over the administration’s failure to release the Epstein files," according to The Beast.

In the meeting, Blanche reportedly offered two potential options.

"The first was to petition Federal District Courts in Florida and New York to unseal grand jury testimonies related to Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous sex trafficking crimes, as these were unlikely to contain any new information, and therefore, releasing them was unlikely to damage Trump," The Beast reported.

Blanche probably knew that getting a federal judge to unseal grand jury material would be a tough move, The Beast reported.

"The second option was to have a Justice Department official interview Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, and release the transcript," according to The Beast.

Blanche apparently volunteered to sit down with Maxwell. He has described her attorney, David Oscar Markus, as "a friend." 

The White House and the Epstein files: New York Times rocks D.C. with an inside account of frenzied efforts to keep Trump's ties to pedophile under wraps

(The New York Times)

The talk of the political and journalism worlds is yesterday's release of a New York Times story about the Trump administration's panicked reaction to threats posed by the Epstein files. The headline alone provides a compelling summation of the article's content and import: "Inside the White House freakout over the Epstein files; The president's top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself."

The Times story is by White House reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, who are authors of the forthcoming Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Yesterday's article was drawn from reporting for that book, which is scheduled for release on June 23, 2026.

Here is one question The Times report brings immediately to mind: Why were White House staffers in a frantic state if, as Trump claimed in an article at MS NOW, he "had nothing to do" with Epstein, and wasn't "friendly with Jeffrey Epstein."

MS NOW's Steve Benen notes that Trump's claims about the limited nature of his relationship with Epstein were contrary to earlier statements from Trump that he found Epstein to be a "terrific guy" who is "a lot of fun to be with." They also are contrary to video clips that show the two men scoping out young women on a dance floor at Mar-a-Lago, with Trump saying something that caused Epstein to double over in laughter. Benen could only conclude that Trump's claims about a distant relationship with Epstein were "obviously untrue," adding they were "an odd and unnecessary misstep."

I could only reach a similar conclusion about the frenzied nature of White House meetings on the Epstein files. It seems clear that White House staffers knew Trump and Epstein had been close -- with Trump admitting at one point that he had known the financier for 15 years -- and staffers likely knew that such closeness to a convicted sex trafficker could pose an existential threat to the Trump presidency. 

Reporting on The Times' story and forthcoming book will not be going away anytime soon. In fact, several news outlets already have published summaries of what they consider the most fascinating, alarming, consequential or dishy portions of The Times' account. We will be examining those analyses in upcoming posts, but let's start with The Times own "highlight reel," which the paper published under the headline "Six Takeaways From the Story of How the Epstein Files Paralyzed the White House; Senior officials clashed in a series of meetings as they struggled to manage a crisis over the president's refusal to release the documents."

The highlights begin with an introduction from reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan:

Last summer, as pressure mounted on the Trump administration to release material it held on Jeffrey Epstein, the president’s top advisers gathered in a series of meetings, many of them in the White House Situation Room — typically used during national-security crises — as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself. The discussions included the vice president, JD Vance; the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House counsel, David Warrington; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; and the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, among others.

The reporting, which documents many previously undisclosed conversations and conflicts, is drawn from our forthcoming book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. We discovered how the Epstein files consumed and often paralyzed the highest levels of the Trump administration, far more than the public knew.

Here are six takeaways from the article in The Times Magazine:

(1) The government’s national-security bunker became an Epstein war room.

As the calls for disclosure grew louder, Trump’s inner circle spent more and more time in the Situation Room, which became inseparable from the crisis — a guarded space used not to weigh a foreign threat but to steer the president around a political problem concerning a notorious dead pedophile. The officials knew that prominent people, including Trump, were named in the records of F.B.I. agents’ interview notes with witnesses, some of whom were Epstein’s victims. While many of the claims made in the notes were not corroborated evidence, releasing them was, for most of the president’s advisers, a nonstarter.

(2) The president wanted the whole thing buried.

Trump made clear to his aides that he had no interest in releasing anything related to Epstein. He snapped at anyone who raised the issue, and his staff mostly learned to avoid the subject in front of him. They were left to worry and plan among themselves. The president’s refusal to acknowledge that a crisis existed, let alone that it was growing, complicated every path his team wanted to take.

As The Wall Street Journal prepared a damaging article about his relationship with Epstein, the president tried to kill it. He called News Corp.’s chief executive; its owner, Rupert Murdoch; and the paper’s editor in chief, Emma Tucker. The president, practically shouting as he threatened to sue, told Tucker, who is British, that she must “hate America.” When his efforts to stop the article failed and his advisers settled on a limited gesture of transparency, the president went along grudgingly.

(3) Vice President JD Vance wanted to release all the files — even the unsubstantiated material about Trump.

Within the White House itself, no one was more vocal about releasing the Epstein material than the vice president. “This is a huge problem,” Vance told colleagues in the Situation Room. Others thought he appeared panicked about how the issue was splintering the MAGA coalition. Wiles would later describe the vice president to associates as an Epstein conspiracy theorist.

Vance pressed repeatedly for the administration to release everything — even unsubstantiated material about Trump — arguing that Congress would force the issue eventually and that getting ahead of it would earn the White House credit for transparency.

He floated the idea of enlisting Tucker Carlson to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and co-conspirator, in prison, and fretted to colleagues about how the crisis was alienating the young, low-propensity voters who had backed the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024. But the vice president’s suggestions were far from popular with the core Trump team, and most of them went unheeded.

(4) Expletive-laden blowups fractured the top of the Justice Department.

The lingering distrust between Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, and the F.B.I.’s top two officials — Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, then his deputy — exploded over the Epstein controversy. 

The day the Justice Department released a memo intended to put the Epstein matter to rest, Bongino marched into a daily meeting and erupted at Bondi. He and Patel told White House officials that Bondi should resign; at a later meeting, the two said they suspected that she had leaked damaging stories about them. When Wiles accused Bongino of a leak of his own, he stormed out of the Situation Room complex. Bongino privately warned associates that the Epstein crisis would become “President Trump’s Iran-contra.”

(5) Advisers found themselves having a surreal debate over an unverified allegation about Mr. Trump.

At an August meeting in the Situation Room, one of the president’s senior aides raised an uncorroborated and secondhand claim that had been made nearly a decade earlier, about Trump aggressively flicking and sucking a young woman’s nipples until they “looked incredibly painful.”

The claim about Trump had surfaced in 2024 in unsealed court filings from a civil suit unrelated to him, and when the matter was raised by another official, Vance argued for including this and many other accusations on the Justice Department’s website, saying that it would show maximum transparency and that Trump wouldn’t mind, given that he had been accused of worse. Wiles shut that down, saying the president would not, in fact, be fine with releasing it. One official later said it was “surreal” to be debating the nipple accusation in the White House Situation Room.

(6) More than a year later, the files were still damaging the president.

In late March 2026 — a full year into the White House efforts to manage the fiasco — a confidential memo from Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, summarized responses from focus groups conducted with voters earlier that month, in which the Epstein files ranked as the sixth most important political issue -- ahead of crime, the military and being pro-working class. The memo flagged the Epstein issue as "a real negative for some of these voters."

Maine Dems launch Graham Platner to a resounding primary victory, focusing on working-class issues while suggesting the GOP can't claim moral high ground while backing a convicted felon in Donald Trump

Graham Platner supporters celebrate his big primary victory (Bangor Daily News)

Democratic-Party insiders reportedly are fretting about the baggage Graham Platner has accumulated during the course of his run for a U.S. Senate seat from Maine. But if everyday Mainers are concerned, they did not show it yesterday as they went to the polls and gave Platner a runaway victory, setting up a much-anticipated November showdown with Republican incumbent Susan Collins -- in a matchup that could decide which party controls the Senate. 

As we reported yesterday, Maine Dems seem to consider Platner, a U.S. Marine veteran and oyster farmer, to be one of their own -- a plain-spoken "every man" who seems willing to take on the moneyed interests who have come to dominate the postmodern Republican Party. "He's just Maine," one observer said. "He sounds like Maine."

That noise we heard yesterday coming out of New England was the sound of Platner overwhelming his opponents. The Associated Press (AP) called the race at 8:23 p.m., with about 78 percent of ballots  counted and Platner holding 71.9 percent of the vote. Former Governor Janet Mills finished a distant second with 19.6 percent, followed by David Costello with 8.1 percent.

Both Mills and Costello have considerably more experience in electoral politics than Platner. But that did not seem to bother voters in Maine, where turnout was so strong that several towns started to run out of ballots and needed to have extras printed and delivered.

At least for one day, revelations about Platner's Nazi tattoo and his dubious conduct toward women appeared to be in the rearview mirror. Mainers now seem mainly interested in seeing Platner deliver on his message of supporting the interests of working families while putting oligarchs like Elon Musk in their place. It was Musk, of course, who used his billions to essentially buy a second term in the White House for Donald Trump. He even paid voters in Pennsylvania, and a state judge let him get away with it. Here is how one Mainer sees the Platner agenda:

Erin Oberson, a co-president of the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses United, which has endorsed Platner, says he is “a candidate who will represent the working class”—a determined advocate for Medicare for All and saving rural hospitals, for strong unions and pay equity, for taxing the rich and standing up to oligarchy."

In a joint report with Yahoo! published late last night, AP reported that Platner plans to focus on pocketbook issues, while also seeking redemption for mistakes he has made in his personal life:

Speaking to supporters in the small town where he was born, Platner, an oyster farmer and combat veteran, stressed a message of redemption as he promised to oust Collins. Democrats see the race as a prime opportunity to flip a GOP-held seat and a must-win as the party tries to claim control of the Senate in November.

Platner's expected win in the primary came after days of questions about his past personal conduct, particularly his relationships with women, that threatened to undermine enthusiasm on the left over his candidacy.

"If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change," Platner said during his acceptance speech in Blue Hill, a rural town where he was born, as the crowd cheered on. "And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it."

As voters look toward November's general election, Maine finds itself in a unique position, AP reports:

Maine is the only state with a competitive Senate race where voters supported Democrat Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in 2024. Collins is the only Republican senator from New England.

Platner, a progressive who had early support from Sen. Bernie Sanders, has said he plans to focus on economic issues such as housing and healthcare. He'll be facing one of the most powerful legislators in the Senate, and one of its few remaining moderate Republicans.

"Any of those who feel let down, or disappointed, or disillusioned, it is my job to earn your trust, faith and support, and I will spend every day of this campaign, and if I have the privilege, every day in the United States Senate doing exactly that," Platner said.

Maine, and the country, need a change in the United States Senate, Platner said. He called Collins "spineless":

"Susan Collins has never met a war she didn't like, she's been supporting endless wars since I was a teenager, and I know, I had to fight in two of them," Platner, a Marine and U.S. Army veteran, said. "[Collins and her friends] profited, and my friends died."

He also criticized Collins for voting alongside Trump, stressing she was a key vote in support of putting conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court.

"She has become just as spineless and corrupt as the establishment she now serves," Platner said, noting that Collins once promised to only serve two terms.

First elected in 1996, Collins has said her experience and key position as chair of the powerful appropriations committee are two reasons to send her back to the Senate.

"While others talk about revolution and division, Susan Collins is delivering for Maine communities by funding rural hospitals, supporting our shipbuilders and fishermen, improving infrastructure, expanding broadband, and strengthening public safety," said Collins' spokesperson, Shawn Roderick. "Maine people are practical. They care about whether their communities are stronger and their families are better off. That's exactly what Susan Collins is focused on every single day." 

As for Platner, AP reports that he wants to help ensure the middle class gets a fair shake:

Platner, 41, has focused his campaign on fighting the high costs he says hold down the middle class and said he got in the race to focus on income inequality. He had early support from progressive champions helping to boost his candidacy.

Are Maine Democrats willing to put issues of morality on the back burner for now in order to seek a more fair, balanced, and just society? One voter suggested her answer is yes, especially in the age of Trump:

Voter Annette Babcock, from Sullivan, said she's met Pastner a few times and likes that he's not an established politician. His recent controversies didn't dissuade her from supporting him. 

"The Republicans don't have much moral high ground to stand on . . . when Trump is a convicted felon," she said.

'He's just Maine He sounds like Maine': National Democrats might fret over Graham Platner's extensive baggage, but Maine Dems plan to stand by their man

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While national Democrats worry about the unsettling revelations surrounding U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, Maine Democrats are expected to head for the polls in today's primary and stand by their man. That's the take-home message from John Nichols of The Nation, who spent last week traveling the state and interviewing its inhabitants about their hopes and expectations as the country's most watched June primary drew near.

When Mainers talk about Platner, Nichols found, it's not so much about policies or issues, messages or style. Instead, it's mostly about who the candidate is and where he is from. As one resident said, "He's just Maine. He sounds like Maine." To some outsiders, that might seem like an insular way to view a race that figures to have national implications. But Platner, who grew up in Sullivan -- a town of 1,219 residents (as of the 2020 census) on Maine's Upper Schoodic Peninsula -- is a Mainer through and through. One senses that the residents who spoke with Nichols see Platner as a local boy who they want to help make good. 

Nichols' dispatch was published yesterday under the headline "Graham Platner is about to find out whether Mainers really have his back; Voters, not DC insiders, will determine whether the Senate candidate is credible and viable." Nichols opens with the thoughts of a woman named Corinn Keblinsky, who was attending a Platner campaign event in Bar Harbor, Maine:

Corinn Keblinsky surveyed the crowd of Graham Platner backers that had packed this town’s historic Criterion Theatre on the Friday night before Maine Democratic primary voters will send the first tangible signal regarding the fate of Platner’s US Senate candidacy.

Keblinsky, an accountant from Standish, Maine, said she was more interested in the verdict that will be rendered Tuesday by the people seated around her—and by voters across the state—than in the pronouncements from pundits and politicians in Washington.

Like everyone who pays attention to politics in Maine, Keblinsky was well aware of an increasingly frenzied national debate about Platner, the 41-year-old Marine veteran and oyster farmer turned US Senate candidate whose controversial past has dominated cable news shows and newspaper front pages in recent days. And she was frustrated by the national coverage. “It’s out of control,” she said. “They’re all talking about Maine, but they don’t know Maine.”

This was a common theme among Mainers I spoke with last week in Bar Harbor, Blue Hill, Bangor, and other communities around the state. While Platner is facing a firestorm from national commentators—some who see reports on Platner’s sexting, since covered-up Totenkopf tattoo, and “toxic” relationships as “disqualifying,” and others who simply worry that a weakened Platner might fail to dislodge Republican US Senator Susan Collins in November and upend Democratic prospects for retaking the Senate—the candidate maintains substantial support in the state, where his campaign literature declares: “Maine First. Maine Always.”

As a weekend headline from Maine’s largest newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, explained, “Maine Democrats largely stand by Graham Platner amid D.C. worries.” 

As the headline on The Nation story makes clear, Maine voters, not DC insiders, will decide Platner's fate.  And Mainers are taking Platner's candidacy seriously, looking beyond the baggage he carries to the statements he makes and the issues he has put front and center, as Nichols reports:

Why the dichotomy between the state and national discourse? Many voters said they have a sense of regional connection with Platner. “He’s just Maine. He sounds like Maine,” said Keith Tharp, a photographer from the town of Mount Desert. “When he’s talking, he comes across as a Mainer. So, we want to hear what he has to say.” What they’ve heard, argues Erin Oberson, a co-president of the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses United, which has endorsed Platner, is “a candidate who will represent the working class”—a determined advocate for Medicare for All and saving rural hospitals, for strong unions and pay equity, for taxing the rich and standing up to oligarchy.

That last point might be the most important one of all. One senses that Mainers are not big on oligarchs, and Platner makes sure they know he shares their concerns about the influence of the ultra wealthy in Washington, especially during Donald Trump's second term as president. After all, a strong argument can be made that a billionaire, Elon Musk, essentially bought the White House for Trump in the 2024 election. Nichols writes:

While so much coverage of the Senate race has focused on Platner’s stormy personal life, his struggles after returning from four combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on a string of divisive comments he left on online forums, much of the talk in Maine is about where he stands on the issues—and on a broader fight over economic inequality and whether working Mainers will be able to afford housing, healthcare, and heating oil in winter.

“We’ve been robbed of things in this world by the people who run it,” said gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson, a veteran union activist and legislator whom Platner has backed for governor. “This isn’t a campaign. This is a movement,” declares Jackson, who, like Platner, has been endorsed by US Senator Bernie Sanders and echoes the message of the two-time presidential contender, who remains popular in Maine.

“We’re not from the left. We’re not from the right,” declares Jackson. “We’re from the bottom, and we’re rising.”

The extent to which this rising will benefit Platner remains to be seen. But if there was one sentiment that came through loud and clear after a week of troubling reports on Platner’s past, it was that Mainers want to have their say.

The controversy surrounding Platner has, unquestionably, heightened interest in Tuesday’s primary.

Platner became the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on Republican US Senator Susan Collins in late April, when Maine Governor Janet Mills—a favorite of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic strategists in DC—suspended her bid for the party’s Senate nomination. Now Mills is saying, “People have the impression that I withdrew or dropped out, but I simply suspended active campaigning. I’m still on the ballot.” Mills yard signs have reappeared in some places, and newspaper columns have talked up the options of supporting her or another candidate, David Costello.

What this means is that, on Tuesday, Maine Democrats have a chance to provide tangible evidence of their sentiments regarding Platner. While he is still seen as a likely winner, a substantial primary vote for Mills and lesser-known contenders could be a blow to Platner’s long-term candidacy.

A strong showing in today's primary could put Platner in a solid position against Collins in November's general election. And that could heighten Democrats' chances of taking over the Senate from GOP rule. Nichols writes:

The first test of whether Maine voters share that view comes  Tuesday, in a high-turnout primary that will send a powerful signal about whether Mainers really do have Platner’s back. That’s not guaranteed. But, if they do, Platner will mount a fall campaign that seeks to shift the debate away from his past and toward a Maine-focused critique of Collins—as he did in his final pre-primary campaign appearances. Cheered on by Portland supporters Sunday night, Platner said of Collins, “She has always been there to cast votes for the stupid foreign wars [the government] starts and sends young men like [Platner] to fight in. She’s always there to support that. She’s always there to make sure that the defense companies that donate money to her—or that her lobbyist husband represents—that there’s always money for them. She is always there to make sure that when money gets appropriated at the federal level, [it] goes in the pockets of corporations long before it goes in the pockets of working Mainers. She’s always there for that stuff, but she’s never there for us.”