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Jul 11, 2026
The Opinions
‘Platner Is Vile.’ McConnell Is Missing. Welcome to American Politics.
What America’s embarrassments have in common.
July 11, 2026
By Michelle CottleDavid French and David Wallace-Wells
Produced by Derek Arthur
Michelle Cottle: I’m Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion, and this week I am here with the oh-so-illustrious columnist David French and — just to keep me on my toes — our other favorite David, David Wallace-Wells, is back. Davids, how goes it?
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Wallace-Wells: How about “humiliation”? I’m thinking of, you know, the embarrassing spectacle of America’s 250th. I’m thinking about the U.S. soccer team embarrassing itself on the field against Belgium. I’m thinking about the online left somewhat embarrassing itself with Graham Platner. I’m also thinking about President Trump’s desperate need to avoid humiliation in this conflict with Iran.
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French: Well, yeah. So, we had more information about Graham Platner that is changing the American political landscape, and casts the Senate into even more doubt as to how this is going to all unfold. And also, The Wall Street Journal had some very interesting series of articles about the way in which the rest of the world is handling Trump. And it really exposed the extent to which the rest of the world is making this determination that they cannot count on the United States anymore, and laid bare that they just don’t trust us.
They just don’t trust us, maybe for reasons that we might talk about here in a few minutes.
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Cottle: OK, I like that. This is a very intriguing entree into our discussion. I’m going to latch onto the exposure and humiliation of Graham Platner. I myself cannot stop rage-texting my friends and colleagues about this — I’d like to apologize to David French, who’s already had an earful about this — and the epic disgrace that was the Democrats’ now ex-Senate nominee in Maine. We also do need to talk about the mysterious disappearance of Senator Mitch McConnell, who has been hospitalized now for nearly a month, with no clear explanation of what’s going on, which is stirring up all kinds of crazy rumors on the right — and resurrects the question of how much Americans are entitled to know about the private lives and health of our elected officials.
But first, I think we’ve got to go global. We’ve got to look the Iran cease-fire that basically never was. So, at the NATO summit this week, Trump suggested that the cease-fire with Iran is over. Turns out that that loose agreement, announced last month, left a little too many sticky issues on the table, and so here we are. As of our taping this Thursday morning, there have been tit-for-tat strikes, along with Trumpian threats to, of course, take it farther.
So, how are you guys feeling about this situation? Any chance the administration’s going to sort this out and reach a deal before the mid-August deadline, set by the memorandum of understanding? David French, you go first.
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Editor: On and on this pretentious chatter tries the patience of the reader! The ‘as if’ here or the ‘mighe be’, reminds me of Black & White Television of another time place, before the advent of Color Television?
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