From oyster farmer to progressive star to Democratic party pariah, Graham Platner has been on a bumpy ride. His campaign survived questionable Reddit posts, sexts outside his marriage and a Nazi tattoo, until this week's accusations of sexual assault hit the press. Symone and Eugene ask how all of these red flags could have been missed – or ignored – by the strategists behind his campaign. And they react to the photo of a Black woman on the D.C. Metro surrounded by the Patriot Front (or, “nasty little racists,” as Eugene calls them). “ These are fear tactics, people,” he adds. And to wrap up the show, Symone argues it’s a good thing Congressman Tom Kean was paid during the nearly four months he was being treated in a hospital for depression. But Kean and Senator Mitch McConnell (going on his fifth week of an unexplained absence) shouldn’t be out here voting against paid leave for other Americans.

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Despite feeling somewhat conflicted about the 4th of July and the semiquincentennial of the country this week, Eugene and Symone went looking for hope. They found it watching the crowds at Democratic politicians’ campaign stops. They heard it when reporters like MS NOW’s Maya Eaglin sent in tape from talking to people on the street. And they point to it in polling. Eighty-eight percent of the people Gallup spoke to in May said they can think of at least one reason to be optimistic about America right now. The most popular reason? People willing to stand up for what they believe is right. Our hosts find even more inspiration when they’re joined by legal scholar Melissa Murray, who’s written an annotated guide to the Constitution. Don’t be overawed by the Founding Fathers, she says. “They were just random guys who found themselves in a moment and thought their way out of it.” And though they were very, very flawed, we could look to them to help us make choices right now. “They were ordinary people living in extraordinary times, taking extraordinary risks, and, in the end, doing something that was extraordinary. We can all do that.”

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Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book about the first 14 months of Trump’s second term is out, and Symone and Eugene have questions. Is someone recording in the Situation Room? Why does Vice President Vance come out looking so good in all these stories? Speaking of which, why is he being graded on a curve? They also talk about Eugene’s interview with Senate candidate James Talarico, who is handling attacks on his masculinity pretty well – but seems to have not anticipated them, which was probably a mistake. And then our hosts take up a question from a longtime listener to Clock It: people with no criminal backgrounds are still getting detained by ICE; so why has the media stopped talking about it? Turns out there’s plenty of blame to go around on that one – from, yes, the media’s commercial imperatives, but also to the American people and Democratic leadership. This week, nobody’s safe. We clock it all.

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