00:00The promise of a long holiday weekend on the horizon is usually a good thing, but if you're
00:05hitting the road for Memorial Day weekend, you might want to check your bank account first or
00:08look into carpooling perhaps. A website that tracks gas prices, GasBuddy.com is predicting
00:14the national average for a gallon of gas will be $4.48 this holiday weekend. Now that's slightly
00:20off recent highs, but it's a lot more than last Memorial Day's $3.14. And GasBuddy thinks the
00:26future looks bleak. By the dog days of summer, they forecast an average of $4.80 a gallon.
00:32And prices could creep closer to the all-time record of $5.03 a gallon set during the summer of
00:392022. Yay! The current price spike is, of course, a global reaction to the war in Iran and the
00:46continued shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz. GasBuddy cautioned that if the waterway doesn't reopen,
00:512026 prices could even surpass that 2022 record. Lucky us. Maine's Democratic Senate hopeful is
00:59Graham Plattner. This guy's closet is full of skeletons and they are walking out like they are
01:05on parade this campaign season. There's his Nazi tattoo and his prolifically cringy Reddit posts
01:13that are the gift that keeps on giving for his Republican opposition. Now the latest problematic
01:17post that has been unearthed is Plattner's reaction to a war video. It shows an American
01:23soldier in Afghanistan taking fire from the Taliban as a diversion in order to help his squadmates get
01:29to safety. The soldier who put himself in harm's way for the good of others was injured in the act
01:33and awarded a Purple Heart. But Plattner, commenting on the video, called the soldier a, and I quote,
01:39dumb mother effer who didn't deserve to live. With Maine's Senate seat a potential key pickup for
01:46Democrats, it is a wonder how the heck this guy got this far and what else might be uncovered between
01:53now and November. The Post's politics reporter Ryan King has been following Plattner's rise and
01:58potential fall and filled me in on how this is all shaping up.
02:00Greg Plattner obviously entered the Democrat primary as an outsider. He was this oyster farmer,
02:08former Marine, and really caught fire with the progressive base. But throughout the primary process,
02:15we saw that he had a bunch of controversies under his belt, particularly this Reddit account that he
02:23mass deleted his posts from. People have been able to archive what he had previously posted and uncover
02:32it. And there were some wild comments, things like him defending soldiers peeing on dead Taliban bodies,
02:40things like him making fun of an American soldier who went out in the open to try to distract the
02:48Taliban from his fellow troops to protect them. He was mocking that soldier for doing that.
02:58He's also suggested that rural voters are just racist. He's called himself a communist.
03:06There's so many different things. Obviously, that didn't tank him in the Democratic primary,
03:12but now he's got to face general election voters in Maine. And it's going to be really interesting.
03:17The Maine Senate seat is the one that Democrats had seen as their greatest pickup opportunity. It's
03:24really Maine and North Carolina. But Maine has proven to be difficult for them because
03:29Susan Collins has been really resilient there. So now Graham Plattner, this candidate that many
03:35Democrat operatives thought was pretty weak and had some vulnerabilities because of this history
03:41on his Reddit feed and because of controversy over the Nazi tattoo, which he claims he didn't realize
03:49was a Nazi tattoo. All that they feel is going to give them a lot of baggage in this really
03:54critical
03:54race that could determine the balance of power in the Senate.
03:59President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had what is being described as a dramatic
04:04call this week about Iran. Netanyahu is reportedly over it when it comes to trying to get things done
04:10with diplomacy and was pressing Trump to resume military strikes. While neither the White House
04:15nor Netanyahu's office shared details of what was discussed on the call, President Trump did say
04:19this. He's fine. He'll do whatever I want him to do. He's a very good man. He'll do whatever I
04:25want him to do. Trump is keeping what he wants Netanyahu to do close to the vest. At the urging
04:31of
04:31Gulf state leaders, Trump just days ago called off planned attacks on Iran that would have ended the
04:35six week ceasefire. But as the president said earlier this week, we may have to give him another
04:40big hit. I'm not sure yet. You'll know very soon. Meanwhile, the Post dug into reports from the New York
04:46Times that U.S. and Israeli officials explored a shocking plan to bring back far right hardline
04:52Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a transitional leader. Now, experts the Post spoke to say that there are
04:58a lot of holes in that story, despite Washington and Jerusalem refusing to deny the plan. The biggest red flag,
05:05given that Israeli leadership was reportedly in on the plan, Ahmadinejad was famously anti-Israeli,
05:10even saying while he was president, quote, Israel must be wiped out of the map of the world.
05:15It seems unlikely that any plan to reinstall him even as a puppet went anywhere.
05:21For more on these stories and everything else you could possibly want to know,
05:25check out the New York Post in print or online. And don't forget, like and subscribe to the New York
05:29Postcast wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. I promise you'll be glad you did.
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