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Graham Platner: “We have a political system that is entirely inaccessible to…”

Featuring: Graham Platner, Populist, Progressive | Former Candidate, U.S. Senate Maine

Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd

Published April 30, 2026 | Video Starts at 01:00

The reason I'm doing it is I think that we need to fundamentally do politics differently in this country than the way we've done it for quite some time now. We have a political system that is entirely inaccessible to the average American. It is a political system that is not representative of the average person and therefore doesn't represent the average person. It is a politics that has been turned into a theater for elites. (01:00–01:06)

CLAIM

Asserts that the political system is not accessible to average Americans.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Graham Platner

“In 1990, there were fewer than 80 billionaires in the United States. Today, there are over 900.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 13:06-13:15
“Frances Perkins was the first woman cabinet member in American history.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 18:13-18:18
“This nation electrified all of rural America in the 1930s in less than a decade.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 20:15-20:22
“In 1944, FDR unveiled a second bill of rights, the Economic Bill of Rights.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 48:49-48:56
“We are now coming into over a month of a war that nobody seems to want.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 01:54-02:00
“This is a war that has been started because Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 02:50-02:54
“This war has been started because Benjamin Netanyahu has been begging for it for things 30 years.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 03:02-03:07
“This war is happening because it's good for the Saudi government and it's good for Raytheon executives.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 03:14-03:21
“Every time a Tomahawk missile blows up a girls school, somebody makes an extra dollar.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 03:21-03:27
“We have a political system in which if you have money, if you have power, you can see your needs represented in policy.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 05:09-05:19
“If you work two or three jobs, if you struggle to make rent, you will never see what you need in the policy that comes out of this kind of…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 05:20-05:30
“People my age and younger in the state [of Maine] can barely afford to buy a house.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 12:21-12:26
“Today, my house has tripled in value, but my paycheck hasn't.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 12:29-12:34
“The goods and services we need to live our lives go up in prices, and our wages remain stagnant.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 13:42-13:49
“We have watched the largest transfer of wealth from the working class to the ruling class in the history of this country.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 14:05-14:13
“They changed the tax code. They gutted the social safety nets that we built in the 1930s and 40s.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 15:45-15:54
“The system that we live in, it isn't broken. It is functioning exactly as it was intended to.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 16:01-16:09
“Social Security wasn't a block grant. It wasn't a tax credit.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 18:46-18:52
“It was those programs that brought about in the 50s and 60s, a society that...had the smallest margin of wealth inequality we have ever had…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 19:25-19:39
“We need to make all of that go away and we can with a universal health care system.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 27:14-27:21
“We need a tax code that's going to tax wages at a lower rate than we tax wealth because right now we do the opposite.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 27:30-27:40
“We need to remove the cap on Social Security contributions so we can fund Social Security forever and all time and expand benefits so…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 27:44-27:56
“We need to put a ban on senators and congresspeople trading stocks and bonds because that's just corruption.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 28:10-28:17
“We need a Senate and a Congress that is going to reassert its authority around war making.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 28:24-28:30
“We need a new War Powers act that claws back all the power that Congress has abdicated for decades to the Executive.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 28:58-29:07
“We have to get off fossil fuels, and we have to do it in a way that is not just going to prioritize corporate profits.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 29:15-29:24
“We need industrial planning around our energy grid in this country.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 29:24-29:30
“When we build it, it needs to be built with union labor.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 29:30-29:34
“Everybody knows that this system is built to screw working people.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 30:22-30:27
“It's billionaires, it's corporations, it's Wall Street, it's private equity, it's Silicon Valley as it manipulates our feelings and…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 30:45-31:02
“We need to beat back the powers that have exploited and oppressed us all for generations.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 33:29-33:36
“One junior senator from Maine is not going to be enough to change the tax code.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 34:03-34:08
“It's why this country waged war on organized labor for the last 50 years.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 34:34-34:40
“We need to get rid of the structural impediments that allowed [Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema] to do that in the first place. One of those…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 37:20-37:30
“The filibuster has been used for a very long time as a weapon against policy that is good for the working class of this country.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 37:32-37:43
“Returning to the speaking filibuster is, I think, going to be a necessity.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 38:57-39:01
“If we didn't have the filibuster, then the Republicans might have passed the SAVE Act.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 39:06-39:10
“We shouldn't vote to fund insanity like ICE or like these wars overseas.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 40:16-40:21
“We need to cut funding for this stuff.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 40:21-40:24
“We need to spend the next two years shutting down the White House because we subpoena every single person in it, every single day.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 40:49-40:57
“We drag ICE agents in front of a Senate committee and make them take their masks off.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 41:04-41:10
“We used the power of the Supreme Court, we used the power of the Senate to impose on the Supreme Court.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 41:28-41:34
“Things like universal health care, things like overturning Citizens United, if we continue to treat this Supreme Court like a functional…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 41:37-41:50
“This administration breaks the law every single day. It defies the Constitution every single day.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 42:54-43:01
“Mitch McConnell is a very effective senator. He got a Supreme Court justice when he was in the minority.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 43:40-43:59
“If we, the Senate, if it chose to, can exercise ethics oversight of the Supreme Court.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 44:58-45:10
“We could hold Supreme Court justices to the same ethics standards that we hold all other federal judges.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 45:12-45:19
“There is a compelling case for the impeachment and removal of at least two [Supreme Court justices].”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 45:27-45:32
“The Constitution is a living document. It was meant to be a living document.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 47:30-47:34
“The first bill that I intend to work on in the Senate is a Senate companion bill to the one Jared Goldin put in in the House that got killed…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 50:50-51:10
“We don't take corporate PAC money. I don't take money from special interest groups like fossil fuel companies or like apac.”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 53:21-53:30
“We take money from individual donors and packs that are affiliated with labor unions and other ideologically similar groups who are only…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 53:29-53:43
“By the time this thing is done, we're going to need to have built something bigger than anyone has ever seen in the history of the state of…”
Graham Platner Speaks to PACKED Augusta Crowd | Uploaded April 30, 2026 | 54:41-54:49