Please tell me i’m not the only one who still finds this ridiculous and believes that only a court of law can determine guilt?
You forgot to mention how it’s antisemitic to point out Politico and NYT are both very pro Israel and are the ones coordinating the timing of these releases, not for any journalistic reasons, but to apply the most pressure possible to make a progressive who’s vocally against genocide to drop out of a Senate race he’s basically guaranteed to win…
Platner should definitely get his day in court, and CNN and politco arent reliable sources of much of anything. They are doing something similar to Imram Khan over at the International criminal court.
Yeah if he is truly innocent he shouldn’t have dropped out. To me now that he dropped out it appears to make him look guilty.
But yes, anyone facing accusations should be able to defend themselves in court.
Wait do the Democrats support the other ones
It smells like bullshit to me too. I dont live anywhere near Maine to have personal experience about it, but reading mainstream media stuff about the “terrible things platner has done” feels a lot like reading a study paid for by an oil company about how climate change isnt really that bad. The incentives of the sources are far too conflicted for me to put much stock in what they say
Historically, the Democrats actually care about the scandals of their own. Al Franken was solid as a US Senator, and yet when allegations came out of sexual harassment, he was pressured to step down, even when he expressed remorse.
As came out during the #MeToo movement regarding the predatory patterns of Harvey Weinstein, most women are not given regard when they report sexual assault or sexual harassment, and with the rise of the internet and social media (which allowed for the dialogue to spread faster and more widely) we now are seeing the glimmers of sexual predator culture being taken seriously.
What is terrifying to me is the Trump effect, the power of cult think, of propaganda and of religious conditioning is such that men on the right side have been getting away with predatory behavior for decades (the early ones that got caught were television evangelists, and despite their scandals they just had to pretend to show remorse and wait a while.)
We expected the same religious groups that condemned Clinton for his scandal with Lewinsky (a consensual affair between adults, according to Lewinsky) would also condemn Trump for his 2005 Access Hollywood hot mic comment, and yet 80% of white Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. Nearly that many Catholics voted for him as well.
Since then, we’ve seen US officials not even trying to hide their corruption, short of actually producing the Epstein files. And despite that we know that Trump and several political and ultra-wealthy figures are implicated in them, the Republican base doesn’t care.
That’s the power of cult methods and propaganda, and until we figure out a way to inoculate the public from those schemes, it’s going to factor largely in how human society organizes from now on.
And in the meantime, the conditions will stay in place in which predation prevails. Not just the sexual violence of men upon women, but also the deceptive and predatory practices of corporations on their
consumerscustomer base. See TERMS OF SERVICE and END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT, especially how they are applied to products that are directed at children.Is this a loophole in law?
Like, you can publicly accuse someone of sexual assault without filing a police report…
But then what? That person could respond with slander…but now instead of the state having to prove he did do it, he has to prove that he didn’t?
How do you prove you didn’t do something?
I really don’t like the precedent this is setting…
Also, in the narrative, he was apparently black out drunk, so he conveniently has no recollection and cannot defend himself.
Like seriously, what are you supposed to do if this happens to you? Someone you used to date comes out of the woodwork and accuses you of rape, in a form you wouldn’t even remember.
How are you supposed to react to such a thing? How would you react if someone showed up at your work, accusing you of rape, demanding you be fired without trial?
I think he should take her to court there are things that can prove his innocence. Warrants to get the cell phone pings of his location, the instagram data that was supposedly deleted can still be retrieved. The emails to the Therapist. He should also have other women in his life that he’s dated speak on his character.
If Johnny Depp can win against Amber Heard I think he still has a chance.
The women he’s dated have spoken on his character, it was pretty bad.
I dunno, this feels like how Republicans defend their own regardless of what comes out. I get you can like a guy’s stances but at some point, if we want to be the party of good, we have to act like it.
Nah Republicans are a different breed because they’ll keep supporting even after the court of law has been applied to establish guilt. I’m asking for people to at least let him get to court. Also what sources do you have to show people speaking on his character?
Mr. Platner could be rough with her, Ms. Fifield said, particularly when they were drinking, leaving her shaken and sometimes afraid. In the interviews, Ms. Fifield grappled with how to process her experiences. She was quick to note that 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 an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.
During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was “calm.” Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/us/politics/platner-maine-senate-girlfriends-relationships.html
There are people seriously pushing here that because this woman is conservative she must be lying.
I believe her.
That’s such a weird line, like she planned this out a decade before Platner got into politics?
It’s just so depressing. I get that folks can love his positions but goddamn, I also thought we had standards.
There’s some real conspiracy theory shit brewing here. Talk about the text messages being made up by Israel and whatnot. It’s a little much considering the most believable part of this story is that a man got drunk and forced himself on the woman he was seeing at the time.
Fine. Indict him for rape. Senators are not exempt from felony prosecution.
Sure, that’s up to the victim etc.
And as far as I’m aware, being a felon doesn’t make someone ineligible for running for Senate.
If he was convicted, and he didn’t have the honor to step down, the Senate would vote to kick him out at that point. The Senate has routinely voted to kick people out convicted of serious felonies. And he would be replaced with another Democrat anyway. Plus the establishment dems would be happy to see him go.
If he’s convicted, and if he doesn’t step down, he would be kicked out of the Senate by a vote of 99-1.
So, if his victim doesn’t feel comfortable undergoing the emotional toil of a legal battle about rape, that means he’s good people?
Have you also lobbied and argued for folks who stepped down etc after the Epstein files as almost none of that has gone to court yet?
So, if his victim doesn’t feel comfortable undergoing the emotional toil of a legal battle about rape, that means he’s good people?
If you really internalize the foundational values of our democracy, yes. You do understand that we’re not supposed to punish people without trial, right? If a victim doesn’t want to come forward, I can understand why. But protecting victims is no excuse to dismantle the very foundations of justice.
Have you also lobbied and argued for folks who stepped down etc after the Epstein files as almost none of that has gone to court yet?
To my knowledge, none of those accusations were made in an extremely opportune manner that demanded action be immediately taken without proper time to investigate them. And the people who were asked to step down are those who we have clear evidence of making damning emails with Epstein. That’s the key thing - we have the actual damning emails. We have very little contemporary evidence here.
Sorry guys, I do think this is a case of “The most terrible person you know just made a great point”, re: NYTimes timing of oppo research releases. Having serious accusations of rape in his past isn’t just an ethical black mark among a whole closet of other black marks we’ve already decided to look past, it could also mean he gets charged with rape while in office. And if it’s actually credible, you know for sure that they’ll indict him. Even ignoring the simple fact that we shouldn’t have rapists in government, Platner’s goose is completely cooked at this point in terms of the large pile of personal issues. Who knows, maybe he doesn’t drop out and Maine votes him in anyway and he ends up being a fantastic rep while in office. But he also still has time to swap with another equally-progressive candidate. A true leftist coalition has all types of people in it, but a true leftist coalition also needs to be honest with itself about sexual violence. We’ve racked up so many Ws this summer, I think we can bare one L if it means keeping a hard stance against sexual violence. This is for better or worse the exact sort of thing a democratic process is meant to filter for.
y’all got a name of this Maine progressive candidate waiting in the wings?
Troy Jackson is looking more and more like the best candidate to replace Platner.
