Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway Gave Graham Platner a ‘Hall Pass’ Before Rape Accusation Rocked Campaign

Here are two takes that aged like milk in the blistering Arizona sun.

Pivot podcast co-hosts Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway gave scandal-plagued Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner (D) a “hall pass” — as Galloway put it — last month as sordid headlines started to pile up about the wannabe liberal lawmaker.

But their kid-gloves treatment ended up looking especially bad this week, after Platner was accused of raping a woman he dated about five years ago on Monday. A clip from their June 2 podcast in which both hosts cut Platner a ton of slack went fairly viral on X on Tuesday.

By the time that podcast was recorded, Platner’s infamous Nazi “Totenkopf” tattoo — which he has since removed — was well-publicized, and news had broken a few days earlier that he sexted a number of women who were not his wife. A grip of unsavory Reddit posts had been unearthed too. But the Pivot hosts shrugged it off.

Swisher said the sexting story reminded her of Gennifer Flowers claiming she had a long-term extramarital affair with soon-to-be-President Bill Clinton during the ’92 election. She said it wasn’t a big deal and that Clinton went on to be a”pretty good president.”

“I don’t get bothered by it as much,” Swisher said about the sordid Platner headline. “None of it… he’s someone who had a drinking problem as a Marine, probably got that tattoo, has some mental health challenges which he’s trying to overcome, marriage problems which his wife is insisting they’re going to counselors and overcoming.”

Galloway added to that, saying a minute later that the scandals seemed like “one strike and you’re out.”

“I’m a Jew, I don’t love a Totenkopf tattoo, okay,” Galloway said. “If he gets drunk one night and gets a stupid f*ckin’ tattoo, the fact that he’s trying to protect our liberties the next day and might get blown up by an IED — he gets a hall pass.”

He continued by saying he was sick of the “purity tests” in politics, because they ultimately led to “an incompetent running against a 9/11 apologist” in the Los Angeles mayoral race. Galloway added it wouldn’t be an individual “crisis” that brought Platner or any other politician down, it would be the “inability to own it” and say “I f*cked up.”

But the rape accusation does appear to be a crisis that has the Platner campaign on the verge of folding.

The accuser, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, shared graphic details of the alleged rape with Politico:

Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.

Platner denied the allegation, saying “any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.” He then announced he was pausing his campaign to take “time to reflect on the best way forward.”

Watch above.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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