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At the NATO summit on Wednesday, Donald Trump lashed out wildly at, well, everyone in sight. He threatened more war with Iran. He angrily vowed to cut off all trade with Spain. He hinted again at stealing Greenland. There were many other pratfalls. Amid all this, a Danish journalist had an extraordinary confrontation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, asking him point-blank: What does sitting next to Trump and praising him while he viciously attacks allies, threatens to take whole countries by conquest, and unleashes wildly destructive trade wars do to your “self-respect”? In an understated way, it was a crushing takedown of Trump, treating him as a ludicrous, sidelined figure while essentially saying: All that matters is how the rest of us react to this lunatic. We talked to foreign policy expert Elizabeth Saunders. She explains how deep and lasting Trump’s damage to the alliance will be, how our NATO allies are quietly managing Trump with flattery until he’s gone, and how they’re even trying to “de-Americanize”—that is, move on into the future without us. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

Democratic powerbrokers are now positioned to use the Maine Senate candidate’s withdrawal to overturn voters’ policy demands.

The Maine Democrat denied new allegations of sexual assault but conceding that he couldn’t keep running after his party abandoned him.

Maine’s embattled Democratic Senate nominee, Graham Platner, dropped out of the race on Wednesday after a former partner accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2021.“We believe for the movement to continue, it can’t be me and for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” Platner said in a video posted to social media.My name might be on the ballot right now, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine. pic.twitter.com/RKVyLU76tm— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 9, 2026Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old Maine resident who dated Platner on and off for two years, told Politico on Monday that the former Marine drunkenly entered her home uninvited five years ago and forced himself on her even as she asked him to stop. Platner initially denied Racicot’s allegations, and he maintained his innocence in his announcement. He called the accusations “all false” and blamed a “corporate media system and the political establishment [that] got to act as judge, jury, and executioner.”Maine’s Democratic Party now has until July 27 to pick a candidate to appear on the ballot in November’s general election.Calls for Platner’s exit had been brewing since Racicot’s announcement. Platner’s insurgent progressive populist campaign had come close to derailing on multiple occasions. Last October, Platner had to apologize for commenting on Reddit that people concerned about sexual assault had to “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” Around the same time, there was the controversy around his Nazi Totenkopf tattoo, which Platner said he and other Marines had done on leave in Croatia in 2007. And less than two months ago, there was the warning his current wife gave to his Senate campaign about how he had sent sexually explicit texts to several women while they were married. Now, finally, Platner is recusing himself from this political moment. Hopefully, we’re all better off for it.