Democrat candidate facing new allegations of domestic abuse | Hour 2

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream I daily show prep with all of the links. Become a patron, go to vpetcleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. Last hour, I went through the soft catch and kill mechanism that the New York Times employed here to do the story, so they could say they did the story, but not do it in a way that amplifies the most egregious allegations against one gram Platner. These are new allegations, but from fifteen years ago, almost but new allegations, newly reported, and they bury them twenty two paragraphs deep, and they never use the term domestic violence or domestic abuse. And there's a reason. As I outlined in the last hour. The idea is that you catch the story and then you kill it. But if you can't completely kill it, then you bury the information deep down into the story. So this way, people who come to the story, read through it. They're not going to read all seventeen pages of the story. They're going to read like the first five or six paragraphs, and then they're going to leave. And they come away with this idea that. Graham Platner had had a lot of ex girlfriends and some said he was a great boyfriend and some not so much. And then you allow your allies in the media to attack the one woman who makes the allegations that the Times printed because they spoke to three They spoke to three women. They described him in similar terms. Spending time with him could be exhilarating, they said, but they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing. Asked to sum up how he treated her, the third woman, who remains anonymous, said quote, she felt like she was collateral damage to the world that is his. He's a narcissist, folks, That's what he is. Everyone is just to. Be used for him. Anybody that's hurt along the way, they are collateral damage to the world that is his now the only or sorry. One of the named women in the piece is Lindsay Fiffeld. When she first met Platner in twenty thirteen, he was a student at George Washington University, and she was working on veterans issues at the US Chamber of Commerce and beginning to make a name for herself as a conservative activist online. By the way, people have have said that this is some sort of a political hit job, right, but she points out, like back in two thousand and thirteen, before Trump came along, staffers dated each other across party lines in DC, like that was a usual thing that would occur. He was a bartender at a bar in DC called the Tune In, and so he was mixing and mingling with a lot of these congressional young staffers. She working on veterans issues, right, She yes, she's conservative, but she's working on vet issues, and so he's a veteran. Their roughly two year on again, off again relationship, she said, was hetty and passionate. Quote. This is a message that was reviewed by The New York Times. A text message that he sent to her quote, Lindsey, I love you in a way I can't even describe. You are literally everything to me. This strikes me as the love bombing of a narcissist. That's what they do, That's how they get the women back after they are abusive to them psychologically or physically. They love bomb you. I can't live without you. You're my entire world. Right. They say all of these things, and they get the women to believe that that is all true, but it is not. These are the things that narcissists say to women to get them back after they've been abusive, and they get them back and then abuse them again. That's the love bombing component here. Plattner could be rough with her, Miss Fefeld said, particularly when they were drinking. She was quick to note that quote. He never hit me. He never punched me, but she said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders, sometimes hard enough to leave marks, and on one occasion yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after they had an argument when she wanted to stay in the car, so they had an argument in the cab. She did not want to get out of the cab, and he pulled her out of the cab. During one argument, she said, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she could not get out, told her to remain there until she was calm and Eventually, she says she fell asleep and then left the next morning. She said it hurt, it didn't cause an injury. It didn't break my arm. Plattner strongly disputes any claims of physical intimidation or altercations. His care campaign said The Times could not independently corroborate Miss Fifeld's account of the altercations. She also recalled that Platner's display would display weapons and discuss violence, and this left her uneasy. She said he kept an AR fifteen laying around his apartment on Capitol Hill in twenty thirteen. Wouldn't that be illegal anyway? He would also sit around and sharpen an axe, a relic from his time working on the Appalachian Trail before he enlisted in the Marines, and he would watch TV and just sharpen his acts. He had what she described as a warrior ethos and would fantasize about killing people that he deemed to be a threat. She said that he told her that rape was about power, and he would say this a lot quote. If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them. And he said this would not be in a s sectual way, not in a gay way, he was like, I would rape them to show them that I am dominant. Who talks like this. Asked about these remarks, a Platiner campaign official did not dispute them. A friend who knew Platner and miss Fifeld during the period said the comments sounded out of character, which is weird. Have you seen his Reddit posts? Because it does. Guy. I didn't know who this guy was before he started running for Senate, but based on his posts on Reddit, it actually sounds completely in character for him. He's talked about this sort of thing a lot, so I don't know, remember the Portajohn story where he would take advantage of himself in the Portajohn's that's what he said. I don't know if that's true, but that's what he said. Miss Fifthfeld said she did not expect her friends to offer any corroboration to her story. Why because she never told anybody at the time, saying she was embarrassed. Another reason why women don't tell their friends this kind of stuff is because they know their friends will tell them to leave him, and they don't want to leave him. I can save him, I can fix him, right. He just needs somebody that loves him. I can be that person. He tells me that I'm his world. He tells me he loves me more than life itself, and he would do anything for me. Blah blah blah blah. Love bomb, love bomb, love bomb. But if any of her friends had heard that he grabbed her out of a cab or twisted her arm behind her back and chucked her into a bedroom and basically locked her in there, which I believe is a crime, they would tell her you need to leave this guy, because if he's doing this to you now, what's he going to do to you in the future, right, And she doesn't want that advice. She doesn't because she and she doesn't tell them because she knows that's what her girlfriends will tell her, especially if her girlfriends are Conservatives. They're like, you need to leave this man. This is not healthy. So she was embarrassed she didn't tell them. Plattner's campaign said in a statement, quote, Let's be very clear, this is a lifelong GOP operative who has dedicated her career to electing Republicans. But she says she has no connection to the campaign of Susan Collins, Plattner's likely Republican opponent. She acknowledged that the Independent Women's Forum I think it's called her foundation, had been supportive of Susan Collins, but said she had not been active with that organization for years. She says, I know it looks like bitter ex girlfriend Republican trying to take down a Democrat, but it's got nothing to do with that. If he was running as a Republican, I would be doing this exact same thing. The president of Independent Women, Carrie Lucas, said Fitffeld had never been an employee and was last paid by the organization back in twenty twenty two. The total amount that she was ever paid was about fifteen thousand dollars over the course of two years twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. Plattner's campaign then arranged interviews for The New York Times with three other women who dated him over a period of seven years, some of it overlapping, and all support his candidacy. They describe him very differently. They one called him a gentle giant. Carolyn lem said she that he never made her feel unsafe or showed any signs that he was struggling with the physical or mental effects of his military service, which is weird because that's part of his story. That's what he's been saying. He has used the PTSD as a reason for all of the poop posting on Reddit, of the comments that he's made, all of the behavior he said PTSD pt I'm fully disabled PTSD in all of this. Yet they go out and find some ex girlfriends who are supporting him in the race, who all vouch for his character and say, no, he didn't have any PTSD, he wasn't suffering, he wasn't drinking too much, he wasn't being violent, he wasn't doing any of this. And again, so now they are contradicting him his own story. Who to believe, which brings us back to the Nazi tattoo. The timing doesn't work. It never did, and Fiftfeld's proof on this is it is unavoidable now for the Platner campaign to the point or to the extent that even Chris Hayes at MSNBC had to ask them about it, And even Chris Hayes recognizes that the timeline is bunk. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past. While transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. 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You can go back and pull my earlier podcast I call bs on this from the beginning, and now we've got now we have the proof. So last fall, a few months after announcing his campaign, Platner said that he had learned from news media inquiries that the tattoo on his chest was a widely recognized Nazi symbol, and so then he had it covered up. Platner said that he had not known what the image was other than a terrifying looking skull and crossbones on the wall of a tattoo parlor in Split Croatia, where he and other marines in his unit had it done in two thousand and seven. It was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol. Okay, didn't resemble a Nazi symbol. It literally is a Nazi symbol. Okay. This is what Plattner told Politico back in October. I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that, and to insinuate that I did is disgusting. FIFTHELD called that a lie. She said he knew when they were dating years ago that the tattoo was a Nazi symbol. He called it my totenkop. I would have never known what that was. She said. He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo. Fifeld said that he told her that he and other members of his unit selected the tattoo because they were like a death unit. They were killers and saw a parallel between their unit and the Nazi shutshafalaful or ss. That used that image. They literally deliberately selected it because it was relevant to their military unit, she said. Platner quote strongly disputes Fifthfeld's account of what he knew about the tattoo and what he told her. Now, remember this is a guy who said that he was like self medicating with alcohol. He was drunk for like, I don't know, fifteen straight years, right, And we are to take any of these denials as true, even though he has been caught in multiple lies to this point. By just last week or actually this week too, he lied when people asked him, is there anything else coming out? And he keeps saying no, and then something else comes out, and he knew that this story was coming out. Fifeld says that they have been targeting her for months. Inside DC, They've been running a smear campaign against her because they knew where this was coming from. They knew it was her. But she's a stay at home mom now out in some suburb or something, and so she's not even involved in politics, so they can't really harm her politically, right, career wise doesn't matter. And she went to the Twitter machine today and told the story of how she called out this lie to his face in front of other people, and he got really angry about it. So this from the woman who was quoted in the New York Times piece. By the way, she says that she feels like she was set up by the New York Times. In another post to actual posts from yesterday, she talks about how back in the Before Times, which was before Trump broke everybody's brains, generally a lot of people everyone in DC got along just fine and were friends and dated no matter what party affiliation, really, and nobody called each other Nazis. So when he told me this is my Totin cop and poked his tattoo, he explained he got it because he and his group of Marines were killers, just like the guys who used that logo. So it wasn't really a Nazi thing. It was just a special unit thing, and she said, I had no idea if that's true, and that it preceded World War Two. She says, I don't know if that's true, that it predates World War two, but that's what he told me, was that the unit went and got this tattoo all together knowing what it was. And she grew up in a military family, and she said, you know all of the like a lot of her family members and veterans have different kinds of logos and emblems and whatever. But she said, I just accepted the reasoning. And it was only after we broke up I saw him continue to tell people different versions of the story, like while he was shirtless at the bar, which he was often, and I realized that he's trying to distance himself from the act that he got it deliberately. I heard him once tell somebody it's a Nazi tattoo, but I didn't know what it was when I got it. And I looked at him and I said, bro, why are you lying? And he looked back at me with a terrifying, hateful face. She says, because when you pierce the delusion and lies of a narcissist, they will try to destroy you, and that's what he has been doing behind the scenes for months. But lol, it won't work because I don't work in DC anymore and I'm a stay at home mom in the suburbs and my kids can't fire me because I make the pancakes and they kind of like me. Here's what she said. Well, actually, hang on a second, let me play, Let me play. Graham Platner went onto MSNBC for damage control purposes. And here's Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Well, now it's called miss now or miss now, And even Chris Hayes knows that this timeline does not corroborate what ram Plattner originally said about when he found out about the Nazi tattoo. During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door close to the other side so she couldn't get out, telling her to remain there until she was calm. Eventually, Miss Fifield said she fell asleep and left the next morning. It hurt, she said, but she added, it didn't cause any injury. It didn't break my arm. Did that happen? No, it did not. There are some allegations in this piece that I just want to be kind of unequivocal about are simply not true. Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew at my tattoo was. These are the statements of someone who's politically motivated. In this piece, there's a lot about my struggling, not being a good boyfriend, certainly self medicating with alcohol. And I've been very upfront since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service. And that's what that combat that's what that kind of life looks like. And so there are things in this that I absolutely will take responsibility for and have been speaking about openly for months now. But those serious allegations are just not true. You did not grab her by the wrists. You did not put your hands on her shoulders. You did not push her into a room that you close the door on. She's lying about that is what you're saying. Yes, that is not true. You mentioned the. Tattoo, So I want to talk about that because I think this was troubling to a lot of people, and I think again your account of it assuages some of that fear. Clearly in main voters as reflective again by reporting and pulling. She says same person that you refer to the tattoo as my totten kumf, which is the German word for this particular Nazi symbol. There's other reporting and jewishs that are in October in which an anonymous acquaintances you use that same phrase. Did you know what this tattoo was about before last October when you said you first became aware of it. No, I did not, And I also think it's important to note that it's very likely and I think that she is that same source. She's the person who's been telling people this from the beginning, and so I feel like, you know, we're kind of rehashing the thing we've been through. I had that tattoo for seventeen years. It's a skull and crossbones. I got it with other Marines who I served with in Iraq, in Croatia, and in the time that I had it, I got a security clearance with the State Department. I re enlisted in the United States Army, where I was screened for gang and hate tattoos, and I took my shirt off in front of my family. Many of whom are Jewish. We even released as a campaign a video which you're putting up on the screen right now of me dancing at my brother's wedding to his wife who is Jewish and fully extended Jewish family. And I would not have taken my shirt off in that context if I had known, And so any statement saying that I did know is again totally false. Wait, okay, so. If you knew it was a Nazi tattoo, that's the only reason you would not have taken your shirt off at your brother's wedding. That's the reason I think most people don't strip down at their brother's weddings. But maybe, I mean, I've been to a lot of weddings. I've never seen anything like that happen. But I mean, I don't know the main culture. This is the equivalent of I have lots of Jewish friends. That's what he's saying. They didn't see any problem with it. Maybe they didn't see it. Maybe in the dark wedding reception hall they couldn't make out what it was on your chest as you were gyrating around the dance floor. Maybe they couldn't see what it was. I don't know. So this woman Lindsay Feifeld says, anybody who's ever extracted themselves from a relationship with a narcissistic abuse or knows it isn't clean or easy. Ringe remembering how many times I tried to play the cool girl or fawn in response to what was clearly abusive, coercively controlling behavior by Graham, I also know how dangerous it is to become the target of a narcissist, So even long after our relationship ended, I continue to be upbeat anytime he reached out, though I would also immediately shut down any attempts on his part to initiate flirting or romanticizing of the past. Yes, the day I saw him announce he was running, I wanted to make sure people knew he had a Nazi tattoo, and I was terrified he would find out it was me, But of course he knew it was me. What's ironic is I absolutely never would have shared my story if he hadn't been relentlessly attacking my character behind the scenes for months. Once the tattoo story came out, I tried to signal that I wasn't the source and stayed completely silent about him on social media, even as most of my friends posted regularly about what a bad person he is. But then in early April, the New York Times came to me. I asked how they got my number. I said I was not interested in sharing my story. But they said, wait, there are other women women terrified to tell their stories too, and you need to band together. We will help you, we will protect you. Men can't keep getting away with this, they said. Hours before their first call to me, I saw Eric Swalwell's nameplate get removed from his office in the Cannon Building, and I felt like this might be fate. I welcomed the two journalists into my home days later, nervous and overwhelmed. Justin Fairfax had just murdered his wife and himself the previous day, and even conservative pundits were conjecturing that if only these women hadn't accused him of abuse, this never would have happened. But I told them so. In other words, she's talking about all of these current events that are happening. Remember, all of this stuff was going on at the same time, right the state lawmaker out of Virginia, Eric Swalwell, And she's like, now she's approached by the New York Times, and they're saying, you need to band together so this stuff doesn't happened. We need to protect women, right, and she believed them first mistake. Reading from Lindsay Fifeld's post after the publication of the New York Times story, she says, I should note here that my life is great. My life is just beautiful, talks about her kids. Life is full. Why would I blow my life up like this? Why would I risk the psychotic docsing from violent leftist activists? She said she did it because she couldn't stay silent as he continued to lie. And I want my daughters to speak boldly if they are ever abused as I was. So she ignored advice from her friends and her conservative bias and decided to fully trust the New York Times journalists. They asked that I not talk to any outlets, and she did not. But then we went by, she said. They kept coming back to us, saying the editors needed more, that I needed to go on the record, so I did. We needed more screenshots. I gave them. I met every benchmark. They sat eager to provide more sources or evidence as needed. After the story was published, I started to ask them wait Where are the stories from the other women that you put me in touch with that we talked about this stuff together? Like there were two other women. One of the victims said that she and one of the victims they realized as they were chatting that their relationships with Graham Plattner overlapped completely. In other words, he had been cheating on both of them the entire time they were together. She gave them pictures of her diary, screenshots of messages. They connected me to two other victims so we wouldn't feel so alone. I insisted to each of these women that I trusted the journalists and that we were doing the right thing, despite their sadly very accurate sense that something was wrong. She goes on to say that let's see here. Oh, after the story goes up, where are the stories from the other women? Where are their accusations of sexual assault? Okay, so the Times put her in touch with two other women, and those two other women claim that Graham Platiner sexually assaulted them. Where are their accusations of sexual assault? She says? Why am I the focus of the story? Why are there eleven paragraphs dedicated to detailing my work history? More than has been published about Graham Platners by far. Why does it say nobody could corroborate the details when I offered them sources that could corroborate. Where were the screenshots they said they would use, or the mention that I had supported local Democrats, or that most of my family, even my husband, they're all liberals. Where's any of that mentioned? The editor said, Oh, that's too much. The Times also did not include any mention that I did confide in multiple friends through the years that Graham had been abusive, long before he ever ran for office. Those friends confirm that they told this to The New York Times, and none of that was published. She says, it dawned on me that this really was a setup all along. The journalists I trusted, who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell, methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign, violating the trust of his victims, shattering the trust that I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life, That's the New York Times, folks. That's always been the New York Times. That's why despite every now and again, like for this story that I wanted to get that. I wanted to read the story. I refuse to give them any money. Won't do it. I will not pay to get behind their paywall to see a story even that I want to rip apart. Won't do it, because that's the kind of stuff you get with the New York Times. That is atrocious, absolutely atrocious. And here's the thing too, all you people that are out there still defending Graham Platner on this stuff, there are still two other women out there with these accusations. Do you think that story is gonna stay buried? Do you think there may be somebody else that does what Matt Drudge did when the Washington Post refused to print the Monica Lewinsky story. Somebody will get that story out. It's going to get out. Gary says. Most of the politicians and media are narcisses. That is true, Trump, Obama, Platner, Carlson, the sixty minutes guy. They think they aren't untouchable. They believe their own lies. Most people don't want to believe someone will look them in the eye and lie to them in person, like the New York Times reporters did. They think most people are human like them and wouldn't do such nasty things. Brad says, Hell must have frozen over Sonny Hostin from the view, and the Democrats have finally found a lying, adulterous woman abusing Nazi that they do like. Yes, it just took somebody, not Trump, right, I thought I had something else here. I'm looking at the text line here. This is from Oscar. What do the polls look like in Maine? Are they close? They're getting closer. I could tell you that. I suspect that there's a round of polling that's going to be done if it's not already in progress, you know, and that may set the course here over the next week or so. Aaron taking advantage of oneself and a porta John? Is this part of life while on deployment. I served eight years in the Marine Corps, deployed multiple times. Everybody does it, but typically not something you talk about outside the circle of like minded individuals, especially if you're planning on running for office. Yeah, and you probably don't want to post that online. Stacey says, Okay, the symbol for the symbol is for the Nazis that led Jews to the ovens. You bet killers bs. He had no idea men who abuse women are liars and nine eighth number says he admits he was drunk. He must have been the happiest drunk ever if he ever touched anyone. Yeah, exactly. I'm not buying it. Like he remembers that he didn't do any of the bad things, but he acknowledges that he was like blackout drunk for large portions of his post deployment time. Not buying it, John says, why is this guy always taking his shirt off behind the bar. That doesn't seem sanitary at weddings, that doesn't seem appropriate. Yeah, no, I don't get it either. I don't get it either. He's just he's that guy. I guess all right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.