Which Is It? Two Media Narratives About Platner: ‘We Did Our Jobs Perfectly’ and ‘We Were Fooled’

As both Ed and I have written, the institution with the most egg on its face in the Platner fiasco isn’t the Democratic Party or even the political consultant industry; it’s the media itself. 

The Democratic Party is the Democratic Party, from whom we expect the backing of total degenerates. It is their brand. 

Political consultants’ job is to turn people of questionable character into paragons of virtue or at least “relatable” figures, so if you buy the line of BS they are selling, it’s at least partly on you. 

But even today, most people have a vague sense that the media exists to ferret out the truth and present it so people can make their own decisions. It’s always been a myth, but it is the brand they have built, and most Democrats still think it’s true, which is why they remain Democrats despite all the evidence that Democratic politicians are scumbags and corrupt. 

After the “Biden is sharp as a tack” fiasco, Democratic voters briefly questioned that assumption, largely not because they were offended by being lied to, but because it cost them dearly in the electoral process, and even worse, made them look like fools in front of Republicans. 

They got over it, of course, because the alternative was accepting that conservatives were right all along. 

But now the media has let down Democratic Party voters once again, having created a false narrative about Graham Platner and once again making them look like fools. The media has damage control to do, and they have chosen two competing and incompatible narratives to do it. 

There is the “if it weren’t for us, Platner would still be in the race and implode after nothing could be done about it.” That will appeal to the true believers in Pravda. 

And then there is the “we were fooled,” just like you were. Poor us. We’re not liars, just incompetent. 

If your genuine takeaway here is that “the press did its job,” I would have to ask you a clarifying question: What exactly do you think their job is? https://t.co/k7fr21S0g0

— Mike Coté (@ratlpolicy) July 9, 2026

The first line requires real chutzpah, given that Platner was, most of all, a media creation. Sure, the DSA recruited him and the Axelrod political operation, of which Morris Katz is a part, worked hard to sell the Narrative™, but what made Platner a “thing” was the fact that the media started turning him into a star even before more than 20 people had heard his name. Glowing profiles in The New York Times and the Condé Nast magazines, including even Bon Appétit, for God’s sake, signaled to the national media that Platner was the Chosen One. 

They all dutifully followed the script, turning a rich kid who always failed and lived mostly off government benefits and his parents’ charity into a hero everyman whom the working class would flock to. It didn’t fool the working class, who smelled the stink of his toxic character a mile away, but it sure stroked the political erogenous zones of the virtue signalers desperately looking for a socialist who could win. 

Then there is the genre of the Michele Goldbergs and Molly Jong-Fasts of the world: we were incompetent fools who believed the lies sold to us by bad people. This is the same story that was told about the Biden fiasco. 

“It’s not that we were lying to you; it’s that we were lied to by bad people (who will remain our key sources) and taken in by the BS. 

“Look, I’m a gullible retard, which explains how I was fooled by Overgrubhubfuhrer Fatner’s campaign selling me a line of very obvious bullshit, so I can’t be blamed for the subsequent shitshow.” https://t.co/vaEcktTrbk

— JimDelRey (@JimDelRey) July 9, 2026

If Pravda Media readers had an ounce of sense, they would realize that isn’t an excuse, but an admission. But those people want to be sold lies to confirm their priors. 

Jen Psaki claims to be “outraged” at being deceived, but also sells the line that the media—MSNOW!—was onto Platner from the beginning. 

“Look, I’m a gullible retard, which explains how I was fooled by Overgrubhubfuhrer Fatner’s campaign selling me a line of very obvious bullshit, so I can’t be blamed for the subsequent shitshow.” https://t.co/vaEcktTrbk

— JimDelRey (@JimDelRey) July 9, 2026

Well, I guess if you can’t “circle back” anymore, you can at least try to lie convincingly, as she did while serving as Biden’s main spokesperson. It worked before, so why not again?

Goldberg at least had the decency to do a mea culpa, sort of, although in the genre of “I was fooled.” At least she expressed some shame about it, even if that shame may or may not be real. It would have been more convincing if she hadn’t waited until Platner’s campaign was totally dead and buried, but that is way too much to ask. 

Of course, there were the dead-enders like Mika Brzezinski who desperately tried to save Platner to the very end, acting like a defense attorney. 

MSNOW’s Mika Brzezinski presses Politico reporter Adam Wren on what evidence pushed the outlet to publish rape allegations against Graham Platner, asking what made the story more than a “he said, she said” case and what evidence directly tied Platner to the alleged crime.

🎥… pic.twitter.com/tR9vjyq2ZJ

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) July 7, 2026

But then again, she and her husband personally attested to Biden’s being the “best Biden ever” right before he collapsed into a sweating pile of flesh and bones in front of the country. Their audience is dead-enders, and they deliver. 

Of course, there is yet another path, taken only by the most prestigious outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal: ignore the controversy over the media’s failures. They are now writing analyses of the implosion without addressing the elephant in the room: their own role in propagating the Platner myth. Reading their postmortems, you would never guess that Platner became a “thing” because they MADE him a thing. 

Ed wrote about the Journal’s analysis earlier today. It is a master class in the genre of “analyses” that hide the ball. 

It’s a pretty neat trick, if you can pull it off. And rest assured, they can pull it off with the readers to whom their articles are pitched because those readers don’t want to face reality; they need to believe that the Truman Show they live in is reality. 

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