First Draft: Did the New York Times Just Run an Anti-Platner Hit Job?
The 'paper of record' centered its big scoop, on the leftist Senate candidate's 'unsettling' behavior with former girlfriends, on the uncorroborated accusations of a pro-Israel Republican activist.
On this day in 1968, New York Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The murder, and that of Martin Luther King, Jr in the spring, precipitated a summer of violence.
Good morning, and Happy Friday. Martin here in DC, having somehow conquered the urge to go watch the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, thanks to Donald Trump now the Dr. Tobias Fünke of grand ceremonial architecture, slowly refill with water. As it was, Trump offered an apt Oval Office livestream alongside another appearance for his ridiculous card comparing the length of the pool to the heights of some very tall buildings. He also said he’s going to order up a “promenade” connecting the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac, and might name it after himself.
Much more seriously, today’s ‘First Draft’ looks at a tough moment for Graham Platner’s Senate campaign. The insurgent progressive has given Democrats hope of a win in Maine, but Thursday brought a New York Times piece about Platner’s alleged behavior towards women he dated. The piece raised questions not just about Platner but about his chief accuser, and about the Times’s journalistic standards – or lack thereof. We’ll get into it, as well as looking at Rep. Ro Khanna’s attempt to derail a ridiculous pro-Israel measure, the Senate vote-a-rama to pass a $70 billion bill to fund Trump’s immigration crackdown, and more.
Platner Accuser Is a GOP Activist Who Co-Founded ‘Ladies for Kavanaugh’
Lyndsey Fifield, one of three women who described to the New York Times alleged “unsettling” behavior by Graham Platner when they dated him in the 2010s, co-formed a group called “Ladies for Kavanaugh” in defense of then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when he faced accusations of teenage drunken behavior and alleged sexual assault.
In October 2018, amid a fierce fight over Kavanaugh’s nomination, the New York Post reported: “Inez Stepman and Lindsey [sic] Fifield are two millennial women who co-founded the group Ladies for Kavanaugh to show their support for the nominee when they felt that view was being left out of the public discourse. Their day jobs are in conservative politics, Stepman at [the] Independent Women’s Forum and Fifield at the Heritage Foundation. (Their pro-Kavanaugh group was formed on their own time.)”
“In the wake of the baseless, 11th-hour accusations orchestrated to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation, we couldn’t stay silent anymore,” Fifield told the outlet.
The New York Times, however, was silent about this pretty pertinent part of Fifield’s background when it dropped its big ‘scoop’ on Graham Platner’s “volatile” and “toxic” relationships with former girlfriends, including Fifield, “that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.”