On Platner, the Media Recycles the Biden Excuse Again

Back in April I wrote a post titled “Why Does the Media Keep Missing These Huge, Career-Ending Stories?” The idea was pretty simple. After the complete face-plant on Joe Biden’s mental decline, we got lots of excuses but the most common one was that the media wasn’t to blame because they’d all been lied to.

…after Harris lost the race that we finally got the real story. Biden had been fading all along. As far back as the start of his term there were concerns and things got much worse by the midway point. Everyone around him knew and no one talked. This became the media’s excuse for why they missed the biggest story of the Biden term. Those darn Democrats had fooled them.

Chris Cillizza did a whole spiel about this for his show in which he argued that he’d been suspicious about Biden’s health but the White House had pushed back hard and made him feel guilty for asking.

“Republicans would regularly ping me and say ‘Why don’t you ask more questions about Joe Biden and how he’s doing? He’s 76, 77, 78-year-old man,'” Cillizza said. He continued, “And I would sort of brush them off because what I would say is ‘Well, there’s no obvious evidence that he’s declining. He moves a little slower. He talks a little slower but there’s no evidence that he’s declining.’

“And the White House and the people around Joe Biden were absolutely adamant that suggesting anything…asking the question about whether he was in some physical, mental or both decline was offensive. ‘How could you?! It’s age shaming.’ And I think impacted me at some level. Because while I did ask the question from time to time…I didn’t really push on it if I’m being honest.”

A bit later he returned to this adding, “There was a shame factor that went into that. People around Biden worked to make you feel bad when you asked whether he was up to the job of being president, running for president again and serving for another four years…And they did a very good job, until they couldn’t any more, of hiding it.”

The media really wanted to get the story right but those darn Democrats are just such stellar liars. They fooled the world! Except of course that the evidence was right there all along. That photo above of Biden tripping on the way up the stairs is from early 2021. Many more videos would follow but always there was some excuse and the media took a pass on what was obvious.

We saw it again when Eric Swalwell suddenly dropped out of the race for governor in California. Only after he was gone did we learn that the rumors about him had been circulating for years behind the scenes. But once again, the media took a pass until the guy was a few months from becoming the next governor.

And here we are again with the Platner story. The media built this guy up from nothing and now they’re pretending the fault is all Platner’s because he lied to everyone. This is from the Bulwark.

There is one person and one person only to blame for the disaster unfolding in Maine: Graham Cunningham Platner.

This asshole knew who he was and what he’d done. He put himself forward anyway. He lied—over and over—to the public, to his supporters, to the media. He asked people to prostitute themselves for him and cover for him. He encouraged the Bernie Bro cult that coalesced around him.

Now everyone who went out on a limb for the guy is cut off. The Maine Democratic Party is in an impossible situation. And Susan Collins is seventeen weeks from her election and she doesn’t even have an opponent.

Sure, you can blame Platner and his people for lying, just like you could blame Biden’s people and Swalwell’s people. But there’s supposed to be a layer of public fact checkers that look into this stuff with a skeptical eye. Where were they?

It’s not like there weren’t red flags galore. We knew about the Nazi tattoo and the Reddit posts last year. Every possible red flag was blowing in the breeze and still it took all these months for the largest media outlets in the country to talk to a few ex-girlfriends and find out he was a creep. Even then they delayed and downplayed the story in a way that seemed calculated to give him a pass.

I actually understand why Democrat leaders didn’t take our stories seriously when the Times reported them in June but are taking them seriously now.

It was by design.

The line most shared from the piece was the claim that the Times “could not corroborate” my story despite…

— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) July 7, 2026

The NY Times ultimately botched the story even though they’d been told all the ugly details off the record. It was because their coverage was so bad that one of the other exes became more forthcoming on the record with Politico.

And the “blame Platner” chorus is really just a way for media types to say don’t blame me. Like Chris Cillizza, they were all lied to and didn’t know what a creep Platner was. 

They keep making this same mistake over and over. There are rumors and red flags and video and they just keep letting themselves get fooled by the professional liars telling them all the rumors are false and the red flags are ancient history and the video are cheap fakes. Let’s be honest. They seem eager to accept whatever lame excuses they are given so long as the person is a progressive.

At some point you just have to step back and see the pattern repeating itself over and over. At some point you have to admit that it’s not just the liars who are to blame. It’s also the people who keep taking their word for it or treating it with kid gloves. If you don’t at this point understand that progressives lie a lot to protect their candidates, you don’t belong in a media job covering progressive politicians.

Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy HotAir’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.

Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.