Galloway Urges Democrats to Drop Purity Tests

stop the – On his Pivot podcast, Scott Galloway said Graham Platner’s Maine Senate campaign should stop attacking the media after fresh allegations surfaced, and he urged Democrats to drop “purity tests” that he says cost the party quality candidates.

Scott Galloway didn’t mince words when the latest uproar around Graham Platner’s U.S. Senate campaign in Maine landed on his desk this week.

Platner’s campaign has been dogged by controversy after it emerged that he has a Nazi-linked tattoo on his chest and that he posted bigoted messages online following his service in the military.

The new flare-up, discussed on Pivot with co-host Kara Swisher, involves a former staffer revealing that Platner’s wife had flagged for his campaign several past sexting exchanges Platner had with various women.

Swisher framed the debate in terms of harm and context. saying. “I don’t get bothered by it as much. none of it.” She described Platner as someone who she said likely had a drinking problem as a Marine. “probably got that tattoo. ” and has “mental health challenges which he’s trying to overcome. ” along with marriage problems she said his wife is insisting they address through counseling. “I’m not so sure in the era of Trump this matters at all,” she added.

Galloway pushed back hard on how the campaign has been handling the story—less about the scandals themselves than about the response.

“Look, okay. Every election is a choice, not a marriage proposal. We’re not hiring a priest. we’re hiring a senator. ” he said. then rattled off the kinds of issues he argued voters should be talking about instead: women’s rights. responsible economic policy. different approaches to labor to raise wages of nurses and students. fiscal sanity. and “a check against the unfettered. unprecedented corruption.”.

“The obsession with personal purity has become a luxury belief,” Galloway continued. “And folks, if your house is on fire, you don’t ask whether the firefighter has problematic DMs.”

He reserved a sharper edge for Platner’s communications response. “Now, having said that, the comms person for the Platner campaign should be fired.”

Galloway argued the campaign made a mistake by attacking journalists rather than addressing the substance of the allegations. “You don’t go after media. You don’t say this is gossip. You don’t say these are texts.” He added: “He said it was journalistic malpractice. Guess what?. These texts are accurate. The reporting has been accurate.”.

Then he went further, turning the moment into a warning about the political costs of endless personal vetting.

“Good for you, Scott,” Swisher jumped in.

Galloway said the “response should be the following”: “I am an imperfect man. I have demonstrated terrible judgment on several occasions in my marriage, and I have a great marriage.”

He asked where campaigns would stop with what he described as automatic rejection criteria—“What about you?. What about you?. Are we going to continue to have one strike and you’re out?”—and said he does not personally relate to the imagery at the center of the earlier controversy. “I’m a Jew. I don’t love a Totenkopf tattoo.”.

Galloway also argued that a candidate’s efforts to address wrongdoing should be part of how voters evaluate them. “If he gets drunk one night and gets a stupid f*cking tattoo, the fact that he’s trying to protect our liberties the next day, it might be blown up by an IED. He gets a hall pass.”

He warned that escalating “purity tests” will shrink the field. “So, okay, folks, if you want to keep applying purity tests, we end up with an incompetent running against a 9/11 denier in Los Angeles. We’re not going to have any candidates running.”

From there, he boiled his point into two demands: “one, stop the purity tests, and two, the Platner campaign, it’s not the crisis that brings people down, it’s their inability to own it. I f*cked up.”

Swisher then steered the conversation to Platner’s wife’s statement on the scandal. comparing it to the Clinton sex scandals from the 90’s. She brought in the idea of “imperfect allies” within political movements—arguing that people pursuing similar goals can band together despite personal differences.

“So what do you think about that? Can people get to that idea of forgiving people for their imperfections or—” Swisher asked Galloway.

Galloway pivoted from politics to culture. linking what he said is a decline he connected to “birth rates” and “a lack of dancing. ” adding that “a dancing is a key component or a key mating ritual.” He also said “when you dance. typically it helps if you drink a little bit. ” and claimed “the anti-alcohol movement is hurting it more than anything.” He referenced “a wonderful TikTok on this by some young man” that he said he found compelling.

He tied the discussion back to risk and social behavior in the digital age. saying “People have a camera on them all the time. ” and that “nineteen-year-old men don’t want to dance because they’re worried about or they don’t want to take risks like dancing. like approaching a potential expressing romantic interest because they’re worried one false move and you’re out.”.

Near the end of the conversation, he returned to Platner’s response strategy.

“But look, I saw this, and I was like, okay, at what point, I’m hoping we’ve passed the purity test on the Democratic side,” Galloway said. Then he circled back to what he wanted Platner’s campaign to do, telling it to “call the Platner campaign and say, ‘Own it,’” and “Stop attacking.”

He again rejected the campaign’s attempts to dismiss the reporting. “Don’t say it’s gossip or it’s not accurate reporting. It’s been corroborated.”

His final message was blunt: “Just say, you know what? We get why people might stare at this. It feels like a traffic accident and it kind of is, but let’s focus on the real matters.”

The discussion ended with Galloway’s insistence that the campaign should stop waging war on the media and instead confront what voters are being told—and then move to the issues he believes actually decide elections.

The full clip is available from Pivot, the podcast where the remarks were made.

Scott Galloway Pivot podcast Kara Swisher Graham Platner Maine Senate campaign Nazi-linked tattoo bigoted messages sexting allegations media attacks purity tests Democratic politics