Democrats are finally pulling the plug on Graham Platner, the failson whose juvenile addiction to schizophrenic online message boards, rad Nazi tattoo, anti-Israel rhetoric, mean drunkenness, infidelity and alleged abuse of women they believed would appeal to the white working-class men they loathe. But they’re only doing so after Politico revealed Monday that “A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections.” That’s called rape, by the way.
Platner’s accuser, Jenny Racicot, provided the outlet with text messages, emails and other documentation of her torment over the incident, which Politico described thus: “he [Platner] entered her [Racicot’s] rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.” Importantly for Democrats and their media allies, “Racicot said she was torn over coming forward in part because she agrees with Platner politically.” Platner says any accusations of nonconsensual behavior are “categorically untrue” – but is currently considering the future of his campaign.
The purported details, grisly as they are, should hardly shock those in the know. Platner’s unhinged behavior and poor character has been a matter of public record for the better part of a year. Still, Maine Democrats, with the blessing of party leaders, turned out in droves last month to nominate him.
Well, with the blessing of both party leaders and under the cover provided by the press.
The worst and most insidious actor in this entire demoralizing episode, aside from the candidate himself, turned out to be the New York Times, which published a story about Platner’s treatment of various exes that can now be accurately characterized as a sophisticated “catch-and-kill” operation.
Under the subheading, “The Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine could be charming, women said in interviews, but some found his actions intimidating and disturbing,” and a photo caption crediting Platner for speaking “openly about his past struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and drinking,” reporters Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer centered their story around Lyndsey Fifield, an ex-girlfriend and former GOP operative who recalled him being “rough with her,” even twisting her arm behind her back, shoving her into a bedroom and trapping her inside in one particularly disturbing instance.
“The Times could not independently corroborate Ms. Fifield’s account of the altercations,” wrote Glueck and Lerer. According to Fifield, that’s because they never tried.
“The line most shared from the piece was the claim that the Times ‘could not corroborate’ my story despite talking to two of my friends,” observed Fifield on Tuesday. “I gave them the contact information for five friends. They called the two who I clarified would not know about the abuse but would be able to affirm our relationship timeline, events, et cetera. They simply did not call the other three.”
The kicker? Racicot told Politico “she was contacted by the New York Times in the spring and shared off the record that Platner had assaulted her.”
Fifield put it best: “Jenny and I – having never met or spoken – both shared with these reporters terrifyingly similar details of intimate partner violence, coercive control and cycles of abuse/love bombing. The third unnamed woman in the story did as well.”
“Could not corroborate,” or would not?
If you think it couldn’t get worse for the Gray Lady, think again. The Times’s Jodi Kantor – a #MeToo-era celebrity – was also dispatched to differentiate Fifield’s account from “classic #MeToo accusations” during a disastrous CNN appearance last month.
“They’re not about a boss and a young female employee being subjected to sexual advances. They were mostly made in the context of consensual relationships,” insisted Kantor at the time. “There are these, like, very sensational texts about sex. There are allegations from former girlfriends that are not, the way my colleagues reported them, were not like classic abuse allegations. They were mostly like, ‘Being his boyfriend [sic] gave me a view into him, and I did not like what I saw.’”
Oh, is that all? If a man twisted the arm of Kantor’s daughter, niece, mother or sister behind their back, shoved them and confined them against their will, she would stop at “not liking what she saw?”
A public apology ought to have been issued by now. And heads should already be rolling.
Others were less sly about how they went about insulating Platner from the consequences of the disgraceful life he’s led. Before the Times story dropped, but well after we learned about the long-lived Nazi tattoo, misogyny and more, dolts like the Bulwark’s Jonathan Last were hyping Platner as a prospective president, and TIME magazine was slapping him on their cover in an effort to convey a potent message: this man is a star. And what’s more? He’s our star. So lay off.
More of the same followed the Times story, which had the intended effect of sanitizing the truth about Platner. James Carville declared that the “fucked-up” Platner could be a “hundred times more fucked up than he is” and still have his endorsement over Susan Collins. On CNN, both Cari Champion and Bakari Sellers played the “But Trump” card. On MS NOW, Jen Psaki and Jim Messina raved over Platner’s victory speech on primary day, with the former literally blushing over his delivery and the latter deeming it a “masterclass.”
All of it was designed to create an unsound permission structure for supporting this ogre’s candidacy – one that has now collapsed under the sheer weight of his baggage. Buried beneath the rubble are the reputations of its architects.
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