Maine Votes as Graham Platner’s Past Poses New Conundrums

And it would be really nice to be able to share a recipe, earn article, or compete with him in wordle or connections. Thank you.

“Dana, we heard you. It's why we created the New York Times Family subscription.”

One subscription up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out more at nytimes.com/family. From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowa. This is the Daily. On Tuesday, Maynard's whole vote in a primary for a high-stakes Senate seat that Democrats

think they can win back from Republicans for the first time in decades.

They're pinning their hopes on progressive Democrat Graham Platner, a charismatic oyster farmer, and a combat veteran with a populist message. The Platner's face is string of accusations surrounding his personal behavior, including new reporting in the Times that broke last week. Today, my colleagues Lisa Lair and Katie Glick explain what this race means for Maine and

for the prospects of the Democratic Party. It's Tuesday, June 9th. Hi Lisa. Hi, Katie. Hi. So we have you here because you two broke this story late last

“week, and I think it's fair to say that it generated a huge reaction.”

I think that's fair to say. It's been quite the wild couple of days. I think the story has really divided voters and strategists and the chattering political class not only in Maine, but just all over the country. Just to lay it out, this was a story about the experiences of past girlfriends, of Graham Platner, allegations of heavy drinking, physical intimidation. These were not allegations

of anything criminal, no allegations of domestic abuse, but some pretty rough stuff. And we're going to get deeper into that reporting, but before we do that, just explain for me the stakes of what we're talking about here, the stakes of this race.

I think that in part, it reflects just how critical this race is.

Maine is all but essential to the Democrats' path to retaking the Senate, but even before

“there was any serious talk of who the Democratic nominee could or should be, Maine loomed”

so large in the minds of Democrats because they thought last time that Susan Collins was on the ballot, that she was finally going to lose, then instead, she wins, and so going in to 2026, people were extremely motivated to finally mount a campaign that could actually defeat Senator Collins. And I also think this race, it's a place where they have really tested this thesis, which

many Democrats believe that the party needs new energy, new leadership, more authentic messengers, and they are testing that through this case, they Graham Platner, who is likely to be their Democratic nominee in this race. So a lot writing on this, both in terms of the numbers, as you guys have said, and in terms of these broader ideas of what the Democratic Party's identity is.

Let's just talk about how we got here, set up this contest for us. So at the very beginning of this contest, there was really a widespread expectation that the Democratic nominee would be Janet Mills, who is the 78-year-old two-term governor of Maine. She was the candidate that was the pick of Chuck Schumer, who really is in charge of Democrats'

ambitions for the Senate. She had the political staff. She was just a well-known Democratic leader in this state. And then over last summer, some progressive operatives and activists decided that they were really unhappy with Mills as the pick.

And so they went up to Maine and started looking for someone else who could challenge Janet Mills in the Democratic primary, and they found Graham Platner, who at the time was running a small oyster farm in coastal Maine. He had moved back up in 2016 after saying some time in Washington serving in the military.

He had never run for any elected office, but they decided that this was the guy who could

challenge Janet Mills and should he win the nomination eventually, Susan Collins.

I get that he reads as homegrown, you know, he's a little rough around the edges and

a kind of every man way, but what about him specifically felt like the right choice for these progressives? How did they actually land on this guy? They had seen a video that he had done as part of like an aquaculture association, sort of related to the oysters, an aquaculture association.

“Yes, that's what the oyster did for Maine, yes, Maine got it.”

And, you know, he had been involved with some very local political fights over aquaculture in the Bay where he has his oyster farm, and they saw that he could sort of speak compellingly. And what he had to say was essentially an economic populist message, talking about taking on corruption, taking on billionaires, and that sort of caught their attention. And there was also this idea of from the progressive Democratic side of making this

a test case for the party establishment of this was a place where they thought that they could sort of send a message about the kind of leaders they thought the party should have. Okay. So, these progressives find platinum, they choose him, they see him as the foil for Janet Mills. And what happens?

How does it go? In Maine, there was a new Democrat trying to harvest a political career, so to speak. He starts taking off. Let's talk about Flatter, who's completely unknown and untested. But he has just kind of exploded on the scene.

He has a lot of natural political talent. My name is Graham Platter, and I am running for United States Senate. He's sitting for every interview. My guest today is a veteran oyster farmer and Maine Senate candidate, Graham Platter, Graham Goodsia, thank you very much.

Our guest this Sunday is Graham Platner, who's running for Senate in Maine. Let's talk to Graham Platner.

“Hours and hours and hours of podcasting of interviews relatable, relatable, right?”

He's doing these town halls. Until the Democratic Party, at the federal level, is no longer beholden to the same corporate interests that the Republican Party is. We're going to find ourselves back in this position over and over and over again. And he begins to sort of build a following.

We are hanging on by a threat, and we either organize and build power in fight or we lose, and we can't lose. So he also benefits from two major liabilities for Governor Mills.

The first is there is a real strain of anti-establishment, fervor, running through, at least

some corners of the Democratic base right now. People are upset with Democratic leadership in Washington, and the other thing is her age. Platner is 41, Mills is 78, coming off of the experience of the 2024 election. A lot of Democrats are demanding a new generation of leadership, and the thing that we would

hear from voters over and over is that no matter how much they respect it, Governor Mills, 78 is too old.

“So he takes off for all the reasons you're saying, Katie, and then what happens?”

So the flip side of finding new outsider political candidates is sometimes they have not gone through the kind of vetting that veteran establishment politicians have done. And revelations about a trove of comments he made on Reddit, some of them quite inflammatory, come out revelations that he had a tattoo on his chest that was widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, come out, and it sends his campaign into what looks like a free fall.

He has staffers leaving the campaign, there's talk of NDAs being required for the people who stay and a lot of people assume that these controversies are going to do them. Lisa, can you say more about both of these things, both the tattoo and these Reddit comments? What are we actually talking about here?

So the tattoo was a skull in crossbones that Graham Platner had done on his chest back in 2007 when he was in the Marines, and it turned out that this was not just any skull in crossbones, that this was in fact a Nazi symbol, a totencom. He actually revealed to himself, his campaign had gotten worried that the tattoo was going to be put out there by the media.

So he went on Potsay of America, a liberal podcast, and basically what he says is, "I got

this tattoo when I was in the Marines, I didn't know what it was until this campaign." And what he calls DC Insiders, an opposition researcher, has brought it to my campaign's attention, and I regret having it, and he eventually, he gets it covered up. And the phrase he used is, "I'm not a secret Nazi," he says he's lived his life, like what he says a normal person, he's taken his shirt off at the beach, and at the gym, and

Got it.

And the Reddit posts, so the Reddit posts are a trove of about 2,000 posts, comments, really,

that he made on Reddit, from about 2009 to 2021, when he says he stopped posting, it's clear that he deleted some of the posts before he entered the campaign, but as with all things on the internet, deleted things can often come back and be re-found. And they're just a trove of commentary. Some of his comments are quite controversial, I mean, a few comments about women, sort

of poopoing women who get raped and sort of questioning why they are getting so drunk that they end up raped, he used slurs about gay people, about mentally disabled people. And how does Platner explain these messages? He said that many of the most inflammatory comments he wrote at a very dark time in his life. Platner is a combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he says that they

do not reflect the man he is today, and urges mayors not to judge him for, as he paraphrasing

“hearing the worst thing he said on the internet, particularly bad day 14 years ago.”

Part of his response is to say, "Look, I serve this country, I came out deeply damaged. That's what you're seeing in these posts, and I regret them." So how did that land? I think Democratic strategists immediately see this as a major liability, not only for his candidacy in the primary, but also in the general, given that Republicans have already said

they're going to spend tens of millions of dollars on ads, no matter who is the nominee. So the Mills campaign sees an opportunity in all of this, and they start running ads, featuring women, particularly featuring his comments about rape, to try to swing main voters towards their side and build her support. But, you know, it doesn't really matter if Democrats in Washington and Mills' strategist

see this as liability, what matters, of course, is what main voters think. Right. So we went up to main to hear about that, and there were really a range of reactions. Some people are really worried about his comments about women in the tattoo, and they're worried that something else could maybe come out about him that could be damaging.

“I think perhaps one of the most striking moments we observed was a woman who stood up at”

a town hall, and asked Point Blank, "What else do voters need to know about you?" I hear your heart saying you've changed, you're a different person now, but they're going to try to find whatever they can. And specifically, is there an account of a woman who's going to come out and say you have no mystery to her?

Is there anything from your past that they can dig up on a woman that maybe, no, didn't mean no at the time? No. His response was equally striking.

I've never had some kind of weird relationships with people.

I have a lot of ex-girlfriends, they're all still my friends. He promised the audience there was nothing else that would come out, but it was also really clear that his message was hitting something really deep, that these Democratic primary voters wanted. Graham Platner has given me hope.

He is a good old boy, he is a regular person, he is relatable.

“I think the authenticity of him is ability to speak to everyday issues that are facing”

manners. There are a lot of people who said that he was speaking for them for working class voters. The affordability crisis, he definitely spoke to that, and was something that I personally am struggling with. There were a lot of people who believed he was a new kind of messenger for a broken political

system. Large-sized communities, working class communities, I mean, we're definitely been left out of the conversations of politics for quite some time, right? That he could create sort of a new kind of politics. For me, a big part of it is like the apologeticness, just owning up to things that he's

done. You know, there's another people who feel a lot of empathy for his explanation that he made these mistakes at a very dark period of his life. We've homemade dumb decisions and dumb things that we wish we hadn't done, and trying to move forward from those kinds of things, that's really relatable for me.

So I think it becomes clear that this is a movement, and he has built something here in Maine.

It sounds like there were some doubts about Platner in the minds of some voters, but ultimately

the enthusiasm for him, the enthusiasm for his politics outweighs those misgivings. That's exactly right, and a really perfect illustration of this is the fact that the day after we talked to all of these voters at a town hall in Maine, same town hall where Platner is facing some of these really pointed questions. Governor Janet Mills ends up dropping out of the race after spending months trailing

She says it's because she runs out of money, and when you run out of money as a candidate,

“that's a pretty good sign that you have not effectively connected with the voters.”

meantime, Platner is continuing to do well in the polls. He's continuing to break in the fundraising, and with Mills shocked a decision to drop out, he effectively immediately becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee, and the general election is off to the racist. So like happens in any sort of marquee Senate race, along with the front-runner status, comes

the scrutiny. And this is when more allegations start to surface. This is when the rumors that were already surrounding him go into hyperdrive.

So the first big story that breaks, and it breaks by us in the New York Times, and also

in the Wall Street Journal, is that he had been exchanging explicit messages with multiple women as recently as May 2025, of course, his campaign launches in August 2025. And it is his wife who confirms the story to the national media, and the story is basically that, you know, within the first two weeks after he announced his campaign, she went to a campaign staffer and flag these messages, has a potential political liability.

She says that they are working through it, that they're in marriage counseling. They post a four-minute long, tearful video message from her, where she sort of explains the impact this coming out in the public has on their lives. But it also sets off this frenzy around what else there is in terms of grand planners, interactions with women.

And this brings us, I assume, to last Thursday, when your story broke. Yes.

On Thursday, we publish the story that has been months in the making that is rooted in

it more than two dozen interviews. And it's really based on allegations from three different women who dated Platner. They describe reckless and unsettling behavior, they describe heavy drinking and fidelity. And in at least one case, there is the description of physical intimidation.

“When you say physical intimidation, what do you actually mean by that?”

Well, women who now lives in Virginia, Lindsey Fyfield dated Platner from about 2013 to 2015. And she describes several instances of what she said was physical intimidation. There was one where she said, "Grand Platner, a yanked her out of a taxi by her wrist." She said that he would kind of grab her by the shoulders, hard enough to leave marks and kind of move her around from place to place.

And she said once when they had both been drinking and were having a fight over infidelity, the pinder arm behind her back and sort of pushed her into a room and held the door closed. And she says it hurt, you know, but it didn't break her arm. But it hurt.

But it is important to note that Lindsey Fyfield said the Platner never hit her.

He never punched her that this was physical, but it wasn't, it didn't cross that line. But beyond the issues of physical intimidation that Lindsey Fyfield was alleging, there were other concerns that she raised.

“She said that the way that Platner could talk about violence would leave her uneasy at”

times. She says he left an AR15 lying around his apartment on Capitol Hill. She also recalled that he would say pretty disturbing things. For example, she told us that he would say the following quote. If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them.

She said that he added that it would not be quote in a sexual way, not in a gay way, but that he would quote rape them to show them that I'm dominant. She said. And she also added that he knew the tattoo was a Nazi symbol. And he would joke about it being a Nazi symbol and called it affectionately mind-totent

comf. Wow. And this is notable because Platner, as you told us, has said throughout the campaign and recently to our colleague, Blue Lugarsia Navarro, that he didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo.

Exactly. And what Lindsey says is not only did he know, but he and other members of his unit and the rings selected the tattoo because they were, as she says, quote, like a death unit, they were killers. And they saw a parallel between what they were doing and the Nazi SS unit.

And how did you evaluate these claims? I mean, she's telling you these really explosive things. How do you corroborate them? So we looked at texts over the years between Ms. Phi Field and Mr. Platner. We looked at G chat conversations at Facebook messages between Lindsey and a number of her

friends, both during and after the relationship. We saw some of her diary entries after the relationship had ended. And we talked to two of her friends who told us that indeed the pair had had an emotionally

At the same time, and we're clear about this in the story, you know, those friends

“could not offer a corroboration from the time regarding the physical altercations, the most”

controversial comments that Lindsey described. And she told us that she didn't expect them to be able to offer that real-time corroboration from that time because she said she didn't tell anyone at the time saying that she was embarrassed. But to be clear, we spoke with three women who dated Platner on and off over a period

of years as recently as 2021. They said spending time with him could be exhilarating, but they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking, of womanizing, one of the women, for instance, told us about an incident in 2021 in which Platner was very drunk. She told him not to come over.

He did anyway. She didn't want to get into the details of what happened that night.

“But she was bothered enough by it that she went on to cut off contact.”

She said soon after the episode, and she describes his behavior that night as a reckless and unsettling and says she goes on to cut off contact with him. So the other element that we had to contend with in this story is that Lindsey five field is a conservative. And she is someone who has a long history of working in Republican politics.

She worked for the Heritage Foundation, which is, of course, a conservative think tank. She worked for independent women, which is a conservative women's organization. And she worked briefly on Nikki Haley's primary campaign. These were not things that she had for much. She was very open about her political views and her political background and said that they

had no influence on the allegations that she was making against Platner. But, you know, as part of our corroboration process and certainly on behalf of times readers, we had to look into those claims and really investigate whether she did have any ties in the Collins campaign. And in the end, we could not find any evidence that she did.

And since the story ran Susan Collins herself came out and said she had never met Lindsey

five field or even heard her name. But, of course, just because she doesn't have a connection to Susan Collins's campaign doesn't mean that she doesn't have an agenda, right? How did you think about that?

“Well, I think that was an important question in the reporting.”

And so, we dealt with it in a number of ways. We asked her directly about it and she said very clearly that she would have brought the allegations even against her Republican. And the other thing we did is we felt it was really, really important to be transparent with times readers about what we knew and what we did not know about her political background.

And how did the Platner campaign react when you brought them this reporting? Before you publish, when you're letting them know, this is what our reporting has revealed. So we went to the campaign with the allegations and ran them through the story a number of times and they chose to respond in a few different ways.

First, they chose to specifically deny two things.

One, that Graham Platner knew what his tattoo symbolized and knew that it was a Nazi symbol at any point in time, but specifically when he got it, second, being any allegation of any kind of physical intimidation. And beyond those two specific denials, they offered two blanket statements. One was from Graham Platner himself, where he talked about being a less than perfect boyfriend

and said he took responsibility for that behavior, but anything beyond that was categorically false. They also offered a second statement that came from the campaign where they really attempted to undercut Lindsey Fivefields allegations by pointing out her conservative background and really painting her as a Republican political operative.

And they also connected us to five people, including three former girlfriends who could testify to Platner's character. And so we called all those people and they described a far more positive interaction with him and far more positive characterization of his sort of intimate relationships. And then we felt after pretty intensive editing is Sanders' process here at the times.

We were ready to publish after all those months of reporting. And so we published and then all hell broke loose. We'll be right back. I'm Jonathan Knight, and I'm the general manager of New York Times Games. If you play our games, you probably know there's something a bit different about them.

Just like there are writers behind the articles you read in the times, there are creators behind our daily puzzles.

When a Lou creates each connections board, including all those categories that try to stump

you. Cherokee comes through every last letter, word, and pan-gram and spelling bee so that loyal players of all-scale levels enjoy it. Our puzzles are human-made every day with the standards you'd expect from the New York Times.

And this matters because when you choose to spend time with our games, it should be time well spent, solving puzzles that are challenging, surprising, and joyful. Puzzles handcrafted for you. We think that's something worth investing in and something worth paying for. Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games at NYTimes.com/JoinGames.

OK Lisa, talk us through the hell-breaking loose.

So almost immediately, it was absolute mayhem on all the places that political, bad flies, commentators, strategists, gather online.

“So, X, X, social media, Facebook, all those kinds of places, and look, you have to remember”

everyone across the country is invested in this race because both sides want to win, control the Senate. But they also see, at least among Democrats, as this really big struggle over what the path forward is for this party that is so deeply in the wilderness right now. So people really went crazy across the political spectrum.

And on the right and on the left, they had a lot of views about this story. People on the right said the story downplayed real allegations that we had intentionally

chosen not to report things that we had that were more serious than the various allegations

including our story. And what was particularly interesting about that was the people making those claims included Lindsey Fifelle to herself who said there were much more serious things out there than we had reported. So, the critics on the right and this source, Lindsey Fifelle, are saying you didn't

“go far enough, you intentionally protected Platter?”

Yes, they're saying that this story, which revealed really serious allegations about Graham Platter's conduct in the past, was actually a gift to his campaign, be it functioned to very more serious allegations that they believe are out there. And look, that's just categorically false. But at times is not in the business of holding back for any candidate or agenda, we published

everything credible that we had. And what about Democrats, like, what was the turner of their response? For more moderate Democratic officials, this is exactly what they have been worried about. I look forward to the day where I am not answering every single week a question about bad behavior by another dude.

I just saw Senator Alyssa Slawkin from Michigan expressing an exasperation about being asked about it. Yet another Platner controversy being a dirt bag is not authentic. Being a dirt bag is being a dirt bag. Be saw Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, go much further in condemning this.

And more broadly, there's this fear that what should be an eminently winnable seed this year, any year that is looking to be quite challenging for Republicans, is in fact going to end a bad fire in front of Democrats. And on the progressive left, there was a very different reaction. They rallied behind Grand Platners.

“So I think when you look at politics in general, they're on those saints in the United”

States Senate. People can argue about this aspect of grab or another, but to my mind right now, we need allies in the United States Senate who have the guts to take on the big money. Senator Bernie Sanders restated his support for Platner and said he was still standing by him.

I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that Grand Platner is the next Senator from the State of Maine. A number of sort of progressive strategists and professionals activists online really attempted to downplay the allegations and Platner himself kind of takes the same tact and an interview with Chris Hayes on MSNow, where he denies the physical allegations and really pushes

this idea that Lindsey Fifelle is a right-wing operative. And those kinds of claims about her political background being the driver of her desire to make these allegations are really echoed across the whole ecosystem of the progressive left. Got it.

Some worry, it sounds like, from moderate democratic officials who see this as a flashing red warning sign and progressives on the other hand saying, this doesn't matter, this is not going to be a problem in a way kind of more of the same. Talk about voters and how they reacted to this. Well, our colleague, Daily Producer Katelyn O'Keefe, spent the weekend calling Maine voters

And do you know who you're going to vote for on Tuesday, primary day?

Absolutely supporting a grand fire. I'm going to vote for grand platelet. I just can't bring myself to support Platner. So there's a couple different groups of people. At the end of the day, you kind of just have to figure out if you believe in someone's character

or not. And I haven't believed in anyone's character, other than grand platelet for a very long time. Some of them are just all in on grand platelet. I am not marrying the man. I am not dating the man.

I am not expecting him to be flawless.

They think he's flawed, but who isn't flawed? I don't see any evidence that supports the fact that he's an abusive person or did anything ridiculously out of line. And some of those people also question whether to believe Lindsey Fyfeld's because of her conservative background.

Since the primary accuser has worked to the heritage foundation, I mean, seriously. On the other hand, there's a set of people who are really against grand platelet.

“I don't think he has to demeanor that we need in a US Senator, but I think he's a clown.”

They were wary of him before, and this is just confirmed there concerns. Just because that woman happens to work for the Republicans, the one who has to shoot the accuser doesn't mean she's not telling the truth. He clearly dated her, and I thought we were supposed to listen to women. And they're saying, aren't we supposed to believe women?

If we have grasped women, they're saying believe women, except for the ones that were on the opposite political spectrum of that was long and gross. And some of these people were lifelong Democrats, our lifelong Democrats, and now they're really thinking about whether to support cons in the general election.

I never thought that I would be fact checking Susan Collins record to see if there's anything

we'll be removal in it. And here I am being like, "Oh, like how bad is she?" Like, "Oh, it just doesn't make me gross even thinking about potentially." I'm not a fan of Susan Collins by any stretch, but I know that she won't embarrass the state, and I'm really afraid that he will.

And lastly, there's just a group of people who don't know what to do. They're really torn. I want to vote for someone who I can fully stand behind and in an ideal world that would be the candidate that we have. But if it's not Platner, then who is it?

Just pitching forward to that general election scenario, it does seem entirely possible

“that despite all of these accusations, Platner could still win, right?”

It seems clear, obviously, that this drip drip drip of revelations has had an impact on his campaign, but we don't know if this is actually disqualifying in the eyes of voters yet. No, and we're a long way to go from the general election. I know for people who've been following this race closely, it feels like we've been in it for a long time, but there are still many months to go before a general election.

And this is, of course, a year that by all indications and granted, it's still fairly early, is likely to favor Democrats. So it's definitely possible, Grand Platner's the next senator from Maine. OK, just talk about what lessons Democrats would take from either outcome here, from voters in a general election, rejecting Platner in part because of his flawed past or of him winning.

Does this race seem like a referendum on whether this kind of political scandal matters to Democratic voters in an era when Republicans seem to have abandoned morality tests for some of their most high-profile candidates? I might look at it slightly differently. The 2020 presidential election will start the moment the midterm elections are over.

And people are already using this race and other key races around the country to advance their theories of what it's going to take to win in 28.

“And I think no matter what happens, the result in Maine is going to fuel arguments about”

who the next presidential candidate should be. So if Platner wins, you are going to see a lot of the more progressive Democrats who have rallied to him, who have embraced his candidacy, say, this is the path forward. We need more candidates who are speaking out boldly on Medicare for all, on confronting the oligarchy, on taking a much harder line toward Israel, for example, and arguing that

finding candidates may be from outside the traditional system, that's the way to connect with disaffected voters and particular working-class voters. If he loses, other recriminations are going to be extraordinary, more moderate Democrats

someone has far too much personal baggage.

We need to go with someone who has been far more vetted and experienced. So no matter the outcome, this race and its outcome is going to be a microcosm of the Democratic

“fights to come over the real future of the party, which I think will not be decided”

until 28. Just saying Democrats may very well take the result in Maine as a verdict, not just on Platner, but on what they should do in 2028 in the national election. Right. Basically, what you're saying is that this Platner Collins race and what Democrats ultimately

draw from it, it's reflective of something that we as a country have been grappling with. This rethinking of what we want from our political leaders, President Trump, represented

this huge shift for the Republican Party, someone who's an outsider who'd never been elected

to anything, who can easily connect with regular people because he reflects raw anger that voters have. And now the Democrats are grappling with something very similar. It's a different flavor of that, but that is, at its core, the dilemma, what do we actually

“need our politicians, our leaders, our representatives, to be for us?”

I think that's right, I think the country is going through a period of rethinking what kind of experience they want their political leaders to have, and also what kind of things that we're traditionally seen as political baggage, they're willing to accept. And we're at a moment where the country and voters on both sides are re-evaluating how

they view both experience and baggage.

And I think this main race is testing in a really big, really high profile way, how much democratic primary voters are willing to prioritize someone that they feel authentically represents them. Over things they may not like about the person or even questions of their personal character. Well, Lisa, Katie, thank you both so much.

Thank you. Thanks for having us. We'll be right back.

“Here's what else you need to know today.”

A U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunship went down near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, and the two crew members were safely rescued, according to two people briefed on the incident. It wasn't immediately clear whether the Apache was shot down by Iranian fire, experienced mechanical failure, or ran into some other problem. The incident came after days of ups and downs in the fighting in the Middle East, as Israel

and Iran exchanged military strikes before stepping back. The Trump administration had not disclosed news of the downed helicopter by the time the New York Times reached out to the White House for comment on Monday night. Today's episode was produced by Caitlin O'Keef, Nina Feldman, Austa-Chotter Vady, and Chris Banderiv, with help from Alex Young.

It was edited by MJ Davis-Lin and Paige Coward, and contains music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, and Marion Luzano. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. I'm Gilbert Cruz, and this week on the Booker View podcast, it's our summer books

Roundup. I'm a little nervous to admit how much I like this book. This book is weird, surreal, hallucinatory. He's just a great writer, he can do anything. Incredible.

He's just a good storyteller. Do you even need to say it, I guess? This is a wild book. This is so surprising. Yeah.

I'm going to the next book. Listen to the book review wherever you get your podcasts. I'm so into this. Sounds very summary. Yeah.

Yeah.