I’ve been a fan of Dana Perino since she served as White House press secretary for George W. Bush, and boy, did she nail it on The Five Tuesday while talking about the Graham Platner situation.
Platner’s campaign is imploding after Politico reported a sexual assault allegation against him on Monday. Even though Platner calls the allegation “categorically untrue,” establishment Democrats are finally ready to cut him loose, because, you know, everything else that had come out about him apparently wasn’t enough.
Perino zeroed in on how The New York Times handled the story before it exploded. She explained that the accuser handed the paper five sources to corroborate her account. The Times contacted only two of them, who vouched for her character, and left it there.
“They didn’t call the other three, the other three who had the contemporaneous notes from when she had detailed it,” Perino said. “So the New York Times, they call it like a catch and kill thing, right? There’s like, oh, let’s try to bury this.”
Then Perino raised the question Democrats would prefer nobody ask. “So when did the Democrats actually start to care?” she said. The answer had nothing to do with conscience. I’ve said before that this had nothing to do with the allegations and everything to do with the polls. Perino agrees.
“It’s because the recent polling shows that Graham Platner was going to lose to Susan Collins,” Perino said. “And they thought, wow, we only have two weeks to figure this out.”
Hellbound and Down 