Tuesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” network anchor Jake Tapper said the women who accused Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner of sexual assault were disappointed with the milder terms The New York Times used in its news story.
Tapper said, “One of the reasons why she says she was kind of caught in this toxic relationship with with Graham Platner when she dated him in 2013, 2014 is because of his PTSD, which he has spoken about and because of other issues surrounding PTSD, and she felt a sense of obligation to stick with him. She also said that when she would bring up things that he did when he had too much to drink that were violent, he would say things along the lines of, no, now you’re making me feel bad. And it was all part of this kind of toxic culture, this toxic relationship that they had. And honestly, she described some very horrifying things that, that, that were not included in that clip.”
He added, “In terms of his behavior, in terms of his, in her view, indifference to the feelings of women when it comes to consent, the feelings of women when it comes to emotion, when it comes to just the opinions of women. And I just want to note that, when The New York Times story came out at the beginning of June, I reached out, through a friend of Lyndsey and, through text to Jenny Racicot. And these are not women who wanted to come forward with these stories. They had hoped that The New York Times story would be, I think it’s fair to say that, they had hoped it would be written differently. I mean, Lyndsey Fifield describes what is clearly violence and domestic abuse in the Times, for whatever reason, didn’t use those terms. They talked about, mistreatment or whatever. But beyond that, they thought that there was going to be an effect that this would have on voters in Maine and it did not. And so they have, again, reluctantly come forward.”
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