Washington Examiner columnist Guy Benson ripped the New York Times over its Thursday report detailing disturbing accounts from several of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s ex-girlfriends.
“There is a sense of confusion and betrayal right now about the nature of this report, what was included and what was not,” Benson said on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom Friday.
Benson said he knows one of the women in the report, Lyndsey Fifield, through a friend group.
Fifield recalled Platner’s unsettling behavior from when they dated. The New York Times identified her as a conservative, and said she recalled him as “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness,’” according to the report.
Fifield fired back at the paper for downplaying the story by posting on X Friday.
“Why does it say ‘nobody could corroborate’ when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate?” Fifield said. “Why did they include an out of context quote from a friend joking ‘do not call Graham’ after I called off my wedding? (Because she knew I would never).”
“Where were the screenshots they’d said they would use? Or the mention that I’d supported local democrats and that most of my family (and husband) are liberal?” she continued. “The editors said it was too much, they explained.”
She also said the New York Times journalists “twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life.”
Benson noted that the timing of the report’s release is concerning as well, as it was published just days before Maine’s primary election, where he faces current Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).
Benson argued that this information from the New York Times should have been released earlier. The report said the interview happened “over the past two months.”
He also called out the Platner campaign for saying, “Let’s be very clear: This is a lifelong GOP operative who’s dedicated her career to electing Republicans,” as a way to diminish Fifield, despite the fact that other women identified in the report are Democrats.
Benson said Fifield gave “documentary evidence” against Platner and the controversy surrounding his Nazi tattoo. During his military service, Platner got a Totenkopf tattoo, which is a Nazi symbol. He claimed he had no idea what it meant.
In an interview with Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America, Platner said, “I am not a secret Nazi.”
In the New York Times report, Fifield said Platner had to have known what it meant, because he was the one who taught her the word for it when they were dating.
She said he referred to it as, “my Totenkopf.”
“What an obvious lie that he has been caught red-handed, and I would just submit with some of these other rumors about what has been alleged against him by other women,” Benson said.
“If you are willing to lie about the Nazi death camp tattoo on your heart, you might be willing to lie about virtually anything,” he added. “I think our assessment of his credibility and truthfulness should be weighed against that, just as our assessment of Lyndsey’s truthfulness and the other women should be weighed against the evidence they provide, apparently, to the New York Times, some of which got into the story, some of which did not.”
The Maine primary election will be held on June 9.