Commentary Culture Investigations

Jimmy Kimmel Live! guest host Tiffany Haddish tried a little too hard on ABC on Wednesday to portray herself as the latest victim in President Trump’s battle with the late night comedians. Despite Trump himself saying nothing about Haddish and the White House statement only coming after a reporter’s question about Tuesday’s show, Haddish claimed, “This is the day that I finally became Jimmy Kimmel!” and wondered if she would still get paid if Trump succeeded in pulling her off the air.

Haddish began by cueing up a clip of herself from Tuesday and declaring, “The president is very focused on issues that matter right now, and apparently, I’m one of them. I got a shoutout from the White House today. For real, y’all. For real. They issued an official statement about this joke I made last night.”

 

Jimmy Kimmel guest host Tiffany Haddish tries a little too hard to make herself the latest victim in Trump’s battle with the late night comedians. Despite Trump himself saying nothing, she ranted, “So anyway, some little snitch at USA Today asked the White House to comment on… pic.twitter.com/KvqQhaFANr
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) July 9, 2026
 

In the clip, Haddish quipped that “People are blaming Donald Trump for the loss after he got FIFA to help Team USA. It seems like everything Trump touches dies. Which, I guess, is why his tiny hands are all [bleep]ed up. Or maybe that’s from grabbing Nikki’s barbs by the [bleep].”

Thoughtful viewers would then observe Haddish moving the goalposts as she switched from “the president” being focused on her to a spokesperson responding to a press inquiry as she ranted:

So anyway, some little snitch at USA Today asked the White House to comment on that joke, and a spokesman named Davis Ingle said, ‘Who the hell is Tiffany Haddish?’ Who am I? Huh! Huh! I’m the bitch you walk past to get to get to your coach seat, mother—! Who am I? Who am I? I’m a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model! That’s who I am. Who am I? Who the [bleep] Is Davis Ingle, huh? Is that a new character on Little House on the Prairie, but your ass in the White House? You’re in the wrong house. But this is exciting! The White House is mad at me, y’all! This is the day that I finally became Jimmy Kimmel!

Turning to sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez, Haddish asked, “I do got one question, though. If the president pulls me off the air, do I still get paid for the whole week? Do you know, Guillermo? Do I get paid?”

Rodriguez joked that she wouldn’t, but more importantly, Kimmel himself wasn’t even pulled off the air because of Trump or something he said about Trump. He was suspended by ABC for comments about conservatives pushing back against conspiracy theories related to Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin’s political beliefs and then not realizing he did anything wrong after the criticism intensified.

Here is a transcript for the July 8 show:

ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!

7/8/2026

11:38 PM ET

TIFFANY HADDISH: The president is very focused on issues that matter right now, and apparently, I’m one of them. I got a shoutout from the White House today. For real, y’all. For real. They issued an official statement about this joke I made last night.

HADDISH [7/7/26]: People are blaming Donald Trump for the loss after he got FIFA to help Team USA. It seems like everything Trump touches dies. Which, I guess, is why his tiny hands are all [bleep]ed up. Or maybe that’s from grabbing Nikki’s barbs by the [bleep].

HADDISH: So anyway, some little snitch at USA Today asked the White House to comment on that joke, and a spokesman named Davis Ingle said, “Who the hell is Tiffany Haddish?” Who am I? Huh! Huh! I’m the bitch you walk past to get to get to your coach seat, mother—! Who am I? Who am I? I’m a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model! That’s who I am. Who am I? Who the [bleep] Is Davis Ingle, huh? Is that a new character on Little House on the Prairie, but your ass in the White House? You’re in the wrong house. But this is exciting! The White House is mad at me, y’all! This is the day that I finally became Jimmy Kimmel!

I do got one question, though. If the president pulls me off the air, do I still get paid for the whole week? Do you know, Guillermo? Do I get paid?

GUILLERMO RODRIGUEZ: Sorry, but I don’t think so.

HADDISH: What?

RODRIGUEZ: You don’t get paid at all.

UPDATE: Thursday’s CNN This Morning apologized for the citation of the parody account. Read more below.

On Wednesday’s CNN This Morning, during a conversation on the health of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), CNN cited a figure named “Rep. Jack Kimble” on a list of lawmakers who had talked to McConnell amid his hospitalization. The only problem: Jack Kimble was not a real person and was a fake Republican congressman who posts on an X parody account.

In the final segment of the show, host Audie Cornish introduced the topic of McConnell’s health concerns and showed a graphic with four quotes as she said, “So you have a lot of Senate Republicans coming out. We’re going to just show some on screen, Isaac, all saying, “I talked to him.” “I talked to him.” “I talked to him for 20 minutes.” “I talked to him for 45 minutes.”

Of the four quote boxes shown, they cited spokespeople for Senate Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Senate WHIP John Barrasso (R-WY), along with CNN commentator Scott Jennings.

The other quote came from… a satirical Kimble account tweet. The CNN quotation read:

“I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior Senator from Kentucky. He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 45 minutes.” – Rep. Jack Kimble.

 

OOPS: CNN This Morning cites parody account of fake congressman @RepJackKimble on list of quotes about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s health. pic.twitter.com/GBXJ37bkoe
— Nick (@nspin310) July 8, 2026
 

Funny enough, this is not the first time a media outlet has been fooled by Kimble’s account and has been cited in multiple fact checks, including a Reuters fact check from 2024 and one from Snopes in 2025.

Kimble also has a Wikipedia page dedicated to him where an introduction reads:

Jack Kimble, also known by his Twitter username @RepJackKimble, is a fictional and satirical character active on the social media websites Twitter and Bluesky.

In 2010, he even duped former The Washington Post columnist Johnathan Capehart, now a host of a weekend morning show on MS NOW, who saw a tweet from Kimble’s account and then wrote a whole opinion piece based on it.

Kimble responded to the CNN citation with a post that read: “CNN’s leftwing bias exposed.”

 

CNN’s extreme leftwing bias exposed pic.twitter.com/5YEbGToOA7
— Rep. Jack Kimble (@RepJackKimble) July 8, 2026
 

If CNN clicked on the account instead of just citing a tweet from someone scrolled by and saved as they thought it was from a real congressman, they could easily tell the account was satirical from its hilariously and clearly photo-shopped profile picture and banner.

 

 

Was it too much to ask for CNN to do a simple web search of a clearly satirical congressman? Where were the fact-checkers?

On Thursday’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish apologized for the error and admitted one of the quotes on McConnell’s health “was mistakenly taken from a parody account on Twitter.” She continued, “Now, obviously, we should not have done that, and we regret the error.”

The transcript is below. Click “expand”:

CNN This Morning

July 8, 2026

6:57:44 AM Eastern

(…)

AUDIE CORNISH: So, you have a lot of Senate Republicans coming out. We’re going to just show some on screen, Isaac, all saying, “I talked to him.” “I talked to him.” “I talked to him for 20 minutes.” “I talked to him for 45 minutes.”

(…)

[QUOTES FROM ON-SCREEN GRAPHIC at 6:58:07 AM Eastern]

MAJORITY LEADER JOHN THUNE SPOKESPERSON: “They had a length and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics including national security.”

SENATE GOP WHIP JOHN BARRASSO SPOKESPERSON: “He spoke with McConnell this afternoon for about 20 minutes and that the Kentucky Republican ‘was fully engaged and is eager to get back to the Senate’,”

REP. JACK KIMBLE: “I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior Senator from Kentucky. He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 45 minutes.”

SCOTT JENNINGS: “I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior Senator from Kentucky. He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes.”

(…)

July 9, 2026

6:24:28 AM Eastern

CORNISH: And yesterday on the show, we displayed quotes from a Republican – some Republicans, about Senator Mitch McConnell’s stay in the hospital. One of them was mistakenly taken from a parody account on Twitter. Now, obviously, we should not have done that, and we regret the error.

It is not exactly a novel insight to say that Democrats do best in big cities, but Comedy Central’s Ronny Chieng was still floored by the idea on Wednesday’s edition of The Daily Show. During an interview with Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, Chieng wondered how the Democrat was able to win in a heavily Democratic city while also throwing race into the conversation.

Chieng was trying to understand the keys to Pureval’s success but wanted something more than the typical clichéd answers politicians give to such questions, “I understand, listening to folks, okay, blah, blah, blah. We get it. I’m just saying that, yes, you are incredibly good-looking. So, you listen to people, blah, blah, blah. I’m just saying, this is a very divisive time and you’re running as a—you’re not a white person, and you are presumably a little bit progressive, which I am stereotyping based on your political affiliation.”

 

 

He then got to his question with more references to white people before catching himself, “In this time when, like, the Democratic brand is very toxic, kind of, this progressive stuff is very toxic in the middle of the country. So, how did you get elected? How did you convince these white people—how did you convince these people to get on board with you with what you were trying to do?”

It’s not rocket science. Most red states still have blue areas, just like most blue states have some red areas. Cincinnati is one of those blue areas. In Pureval’s first mayoral election, his general election opponent was another Democrat. Additionally, Ohio is about 79 percent white while Cincinnati is 49 percent white.

Despite Chieng’s desire to avoid clichés, that is what Pureval gave him in response:

Yeah, again, the only answer I have for you is politics is about empathy, and in order to win that person’s vote in a very short amount of time, you have to convince them that you understand their issues, that you are passionate about their issues, and that you are going to fight like hell to fight for the things that they care about. We have been successful in doing that—not just through rhetoric, but also through actually delivering results, and that I know you guys are more focused on the federal level, but that is the difference between federal politics and local politics. The federal nonsense doesn’t work at the local level, and we understand that in Cincinnati and are delivering for our citizens. 

The comedy shows have this habit of highlighting progressive mayors getting elected in dark blue cities to help advance the idea that they represent the future. However, they typically ignore the mayors’ more controversial stances. For instance, Chieng never asked Pureval about recent allegations the city considers race when awarding contracts.

Here is a transcript for the July 8 show:

Comedy Central The Daily Show

7/8/2026

11:26 PM ET

RONNY CHIENG: I understand, listening to folks, okay, blah, blah, blah. 

AFTAB PUREVAL: Yeah.

CHIENG: We get it. I’m just saying that, yes, you are incredibly good-looking. So, you listen to people, blah, blah, blah. I’m just saying, this is a very divisive time and you’re running as a—you’re not a white person, and you are presumably a little bit progressive, which I am stereotyping based on your political affiliation.

In this time when, like, the Democratic brand is very toxic—

PUREVAL: Yeah. Yeah.

CHIENG: —kind of, this progressive stuff is very toxic in the middle of the country. So, how did you get elected? How did you convince these white people—how did you convince these people to get on board with you with what you were trying to do?

PUREVAL: Yeah, again, the only answer I have for you is politics is about empathy, and in order to win that person’s vote in a very short amount of time, you have to convince them that you understand their issues, that you are passionate about their issues, and that you are going to fight like hell to fight for the things that they care about. We have been successful in doing that—not just through rhetoric, but also through actually delivering results, and that I know you guys are more focused on the federal level, but that is the difference between federal politics and local politics. The federal nonsense doesn’t work at the local level, and we understand that in Cincinnati and are delivering for our citizens. 

Go figure, it turns out the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One isn’t as perfectly safe and secure as the administration insisted it was.

The executive editor of the New York Times, Joe Kahn, just did an interview in which he boasts about his 2,200-person newsroom and talks about the need for skeptical editors, including those on the political right, who ask “what are we missing here?”
The Times newsroom’s latest investigative effort to discover what’s attracting young people to socialism sure could have benefited from that kind of scrutiny. It appears, unfortunately, absent.
Under the print headline “Groundswell for Democratic Socialists Rooted in Crushing Cost of Living,” and the online headline “How Economic Anxiety Is Driving the Democratic Socialists’ Surge,” the New York Times interviews the socialists themselves, who, predictably, deliver a Marxist analysis of the situation.
“In interviews, many D.S.A. members, leaders and strategists argue that the driving force in the primary results and in the group’s expanding influence is a sense, especially among young people, that the economy isn’t working for many people. This economic frustration — and the spotlight given to it by Mayor Zohran Mamdani — is prompting many to join the D.S.A., with the national organization announcing that it had surpassed 120,000 members on Saturday,” the Times reports. “At the national level, progressive strategists say they are trying to make the case that economic grievance is what’s driving recent D.S.A. election wins.”
The article also speaks about “layoffs in white-collar industries, the threat of job displacement from artificial intelligence, rising costs of living.”
The headline is flawed, because there is no “groundswell” for Democratic Socialists. There were a few low-turnout Democratic primaries in heavily left-wing New York City districts where socialists won as well as one in Colorado. There were other primaries where socialist candidates lost. In a country of nearly 350 million people, 120,000 is not that many.
Had a Times editor pushed the reporter to interview people outside the socialist-progressive bubble, the economic explanations might have met with some skepticism. After all, the economy is fairly strong. The stock market has been testing record highs, and government-measured inflation has come down along with the prices in dollars of gold and Bitcoin. The unemployment rate in June was 4.2 percent. And even if people are feeling economic strain or anxiety, a resort to socialism isn’t necessarily the most logical reaction. People reacted to the stagflation of the 1970s by turning not to socialism but to President Reagan’s emphatically capitalist pro-growth tax-cutting. Plenty of people reacted to the Bidenflation of the early 2020s by electing Republicans, not socialists. And plenty of people react to economic challenges by moving out of New York City to lower-cost places, or by figuring out a way to earn more money by creating more value, rather than by trying to vote in socialists to destroy the free enterprise system and to confiscate and reallocate the hard-earned wealth of people who have succeeded in that system.
The Times reporter, Emma Goldberg, didn’t reply by deadline to my email asking “did you think about expanding the pool of people interviewed to the story to non-socialist, non-progressive sources?”
Had she done so, she might have encountered some political analysts who attribute the turn to socialism to youth too young to have remembered the disaster that was the Soviet Union’s communist economy. Or to a U.S. education system that is failing at teaching reading and math, let alone history or economics.
She might have even brought in a perspective from President Trump, who has been talking about the issue. Trump addressed it in a press conference on Wednesday after hammering the theme over Independence Day weekend. “Communism’s easy to sell,” Trump said. “You’ve got free rent, for the rest of your life. What they don’t say is that you’ll be living in squalor in 12 months.”
“It’s never worked and it’s not going to work,” Trump said of communism. He noted that one reason he had support from Hispanics is many of them had come from communist countries and seen its horrors. “What is working is the United States. Think of it. We have more jobs than we’ve ever had. People are making more money than they’ve ever made. I’m talking about workers now. They’re making higher salaries than they’ve ever made before. It’s just the best system and it’s got flaws, but everything’s going to have a little flaw, but it’s been amazing.”
The post ‘Crushing Cost of Living’ Driving Youth to Socialism, New York Times Claims appeared first on .

On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski served up a shocking bit of selective skepticism as scandals continued to engulf Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner.

After John Heilemann stated that Platner had “lied” to prominent Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in saying that no more damaging revelations were coming, Brzezinski jumped in.

“All right. Well, first of all, just to one of the points Heilemann made, we don’t know if he lied to Democratic leaders. Nevertheless, these accusations are out there. And they they are having a very profound effect, that is for sure.”

Mika was clearly leaving open the possibility that the accusations against Platner by Jenny Racicot and Lyndsey Fifield are false—that the two women are the liars.

Mika’s suggestion seemed to shock her husband and co-host Joe Scarborough. As you’ll see in the screencap, Scarborough turned to her with eyebrows literally raised.

You might have expected Brzezinski to sound at least a bit indignant at the very real likelihood that Platner also lied to HER! When he appeared on Morning Joe on June 10th after his primary win, and was asked whether more damaging stories were out there, Platner said:

“There is nothing out there that will run counter to any of the stories that I’ve talked about openly this entire campaign.”

‘Don’t Know If He Lied’? Mika Leaves Door Open for Platner Accusers to Be the Liars! pic.twitter.com/b8CHV9gRd6
— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) July 8, 2026

Yet now, with fresh and far more serious allegations — including Racicot’s claim that an intoxicated Platner entered her home uninvited and forced himself on her despite repeated objections — Mika appears more protective of the candidate, casting doubt on whether he misled top Democrats while soft-pedaling the accusations themselves.

When even far-left former Platner endorsers like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ro Khanna have publicly called on him to drop out, what does it say that Mika is still holding out the possibility of his truthfulness?

Mika’s hedging illustrates a longstanding liberal-media double standard: allegations against Republicans are often treated as instantly disqualifying, while similar (or worse) claims against Democrats receive every benefit of the doubt—including unsubtle speculation that the accusers might be fabricating their stories.

Here’s the transcript.

MS NOW
Morning Joe
7/8/26
6:16 am EDT

JOHN HEILEMANN: We obviously had seen, starting with the, the, the, the Reddit posts and then the Nazi tattoo and then the various allegations around sexting with women and now these, these allegations of, of aggressiveness and violence with women leading up to this, culminating in this rape allegation, that this is a candidate who had baggage, from, from here to, to Los Angeles and, and probably was gonna face many more accusations going forward, some founded, some unfounded, who knows? 

It’s interesting, Nate Cohn at the, for the New York Times, just dropped a piece this morning where he said that the most recent New York Times poll showed how thin Platner’s support had become even before these rape allegations. Which is to say some thirty percent of his supporters were basically saying, “We’re still with him, but we’re, we’re not– our support isn’t unconditional, and we, if, if other shoes were to drop, we might, have to abandon this candidate.” 

And so his vulnerability, despite his performance in the primary, was apparent to everyone on all sides, and, and, and so now we, we are where we are. 

I, I don’t, can’t imagine a world where Graham Platner thinks that it’s a better future for him to stay on the ballot. And, I mean, his future in politics is, is pretty much over. 

Certainly over, given the way he looked in the eyes of these Democrats, prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders and, and Elizabeth Warren, and lied to them about the possibility that there were more things that were gonna come out.

I don’t think he has a future in Democratic politics, but I can’t imagine he thinks his life would be better if he were to stay on the ballot and take the Democrats to certain defeat in November. But you’re right, he still has that little bit of leverage, and everyone is still waiting on him. The state can’t really go forward in terms of moving to find a replacement until he makes his decision. The sooner would be better from the state party’s perspective, the national party’s perspective. So a lot still hinges on him. 

But those cards are kind of a diminishing asset because the reality is after Monday, you know, the, the, the only thing that can salvage any part of his reputation is for him to get out.

. . . 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: All right. Well, first of all, just to one of the points Heilemann made: we don’t know if he lied to Democratic leaders. Nevertheless, these accusations are out there, and they, they are having a very profound effect, that is for sure.

The many donors out there to the Graham Platner Senate campaign who might be upset about the incredibly poor vetting that was performed on their candidate might be interested to know about evidence of malfeasance and corruption by one of the primary vetters that has just been revealed by an interesting source.

And that source is someone familiar to longtime readers of NewsBusters. None other than Mike Elk (pictured) who earned the reputation as perhaps the most lethargic labor reporter in the world but definitely at Politico where he briefly worked about ten years ago.

However, despite his reputation for lethargy, on Wednesday Elk perhaps redeemed himself by making a shocking revelation about one the main vetters of Platner in his Payday Report publication: “Platner’s Guru Daniel Moraff Asked Me to Lie for Him (I Didn’t).”

In the news about Graham Platner, one name keeps coming up that is familiar to those of us in Pittsburgh: Daniel Moraff. The Wall Street Journal labeled Moraff “The ‘Mad Scientist’ Behind Graham Platner’s Scandal-Plagued Rise.”

Moraff recruited Platner after seeing a video of him advocating for Frenchman Bay. Moraff told The Wall Street Journal that he spent only a few days vetting Platner, but was convinced that he was the guy they needed after seeing only a video of him.

​I first got to know Moraff when he worked on Summer Lee’s first campaign for state representative. Later, he was dismissed from Summer’s campaign for reasons that were never entirely clear to me, and it remains a subject of debate here.

​I didn’t know Moraff well, but would occasionally see him around town. We weren’t close friends, but when we ran into each other, we would often talk politics and share a few laughs. As a journalist, I saw him as a source, not a friend.

Can you feel the angry Platner backers already taking notes? The former lethargic Politico labor reporter continues with his saga of corruption:

​In September of 2022, I was down in Rio de Janeiro when I received a message from Moraff saying he needed to speak to me urgently. I tried to blow him off because I was deep into covering the election of President Lula and didn’t have time. In November, after Lula’s election, he contacted me again, and I agreed to talk to him.

​What happened next shocked me and raised questions about what may have happened in his work for Platner. ​Moraff told me he was recruiting Brian Pietrzak, a General Electric locomotive factory worker and UE member, to run for Congress in Erie. He said he wanted Pietrzak to run as an independent. While researching Pietrzak, Moraff found anti-Trump quotes he had given Payday and asked me to delete them.

​In October of 2020, Pietzrak spoke at a Biden rally at Carrie Furnaces in Rankin, PA, where he blasted Trump at length.

​“No union member should vote for Trump,” Pietrzak told Payday Report in October of 2020.

​Moraff explained at length that Pietrzak’s quote against Trump could hurt his chances of appealing to Trump voters in Erie. I told him deleting a quote as a political favor would violate journalistic ethics. He insisted I do it even after I said no.

​Cajoling me, Moraff told me that, “No one would know that I deleted the quote.” I told him that wasn’t the issue, and that it was unethical, so I refused. He told me to forget the conversation and never mention it to anyone. It’s important to know Moraff asked me to lie for a candidate he was recruiting.

​Given what happened with Platner, I think the incident with Moraff asking me to lie is important. If Moraff felt comfortable asking me, someone that he didn’t know that well, to lie, it means that he possibly got influencers and journalists in the past to lie on his behalf.

When I heard that Moraff was involved in vetting and recruiting Platner, I recalled this experience. It showed me that Moraff was willing to lie to get someone elected and to ask journalists to do unethical things to help sell those lies.

Hmmm… It would be interesting to find out if Moraff asked journalists other than Mike Elk to lie and, if so, did they comply. In any event this revelation shows that Moraff was at the very least corrupt.

We already knew that Moraff and his companion did not appear to take the vetting of Platner very seriously as you can see in the following video when they both giggled like goofy teenagers when asked about the vetting process. However, Elk provides us (and especially potential attorneys for a possible class action lawsuit by the donors) solid proof of outright corruption.

Daniel Moraff gives off a vibe of self-satisfied cleverness, a confidence that he is more clever than everyone else, and that his cleverness alone will be sufficient to avoid error. pic.twitter.com/DWoOotMfFQ
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) July 8, 2026
Exit question: Will Politico cite this breaking story provided by their former lethargic labor reporter from whom they parted on not the best of terms?

After considerable deliberation subsequent to new scandalous revelations, Maine’s Democrat Senate nominee Graham Platner has decided to suspend his campaign. His lengthy announcement video triggered a wide range of reactions, including harsh condemnation on what many would consider to be a friendly outlet.

Watch as MS NOW’s Catherine Rampell, sitting in for Chris Hayes, absolutely nukes Platner after running his suspension video:

BRUTAL: Watch as MS NOW’s Catherine Rampell buries Graham Platner over his campaign suspension video
GRAHAM PLATNER: From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank all of you. And keep fighting. We’re gonna win someday.
CATHERINE RAMPELL: Well, that was Graham Platner officially… pic.twitter.com/KGIRE4jcAt
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 9, 2026

MS NOW ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES

7/8/26

8:23 PM

GRAHAM PLATNER: From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank all of you. And keep fighting. We’re gonna win someday.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Well, that was Graham Platner officially announcing that he is dropping off of the ballot for Maine Senate or for, excuse me, for federal Senate from Maine- but taking zero responsibility for any of the scandals and more troubling things in his past that have destroyed that campaign, instead blaming, let’s see, corporate media, the political establishment, lots of hate for the political establishment, saying that “We banded together. We did it the way we were told we were supposed to make change, and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it.” 

So lots of finger-pointing and blame and not taking any responsibility. Note that whoever he conceives of as the political establishment, you do have many of his once allies, including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, also calling for him to drop out- people who believe many of the same policy ideas believe in many of the same policy ideas that Graham Platner himself says that he was taken down for. He also said during that ten-minute video that “All we were asking for was healthcare, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas. We were asking for a fair system. We are asking for an end to the corruption.” So, lots of allegations that he was being taken out by nefarious forces that are forcing him to suspend his campaign rather than the drip, drip, drip of scandal after scandal that has dogged his campaign and that have littered the last few months with red flags.

Rampell is right. Herr Oystergruppenführer devoted a lot of time to blaming his woes on many external factors- whether it was “the system”, the women who were victimized by his multiple aggressions, or Israel. As Rampell rightly notes, Platner never took personal responsibility for his behaviors and for the impacts of his failure to disclose them.

It is interesting that Platner blamed “the media” for his woes. If anything, the media coddled him and put him in a protective cocoon. His Totenkopf tattoo should have been a disqualifier but the Elitist Media looked the other way. In fact, the tattoo wasn’t mentioned until the message board scandal broke. And when The New York Times published the accounts of former girlfriends, the focus and scrutiny shifted away from Platner and to the conservative ex.

Rather than scrutinizing and vetting Platner, the media coddled him and hid his glaring defects from public view. His failure is also their failure.

 

Amanda Hoover, Business Insider It’s too early to say if AI is frying our brains — but the research so far doesn’t look good.

Christopher F. Rufo & Kenneth Schrupp, City Journal Four years after passage of a disastrous 2022 law, cops just roll past the Figueroa Corridor, one of California’s most notorious sex…