In a rare editorial that will surely send the media hall monitors into fits, CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil absolutely eviscerated the Democrats for coddling Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner (he hasn’t withdrawn yet). But Dokoupil was only half right.
Watch the editorial, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Thursday, July 9th, 2026:
WATCH: CBS's @tonydokoupil SAVAGES the Democrats' embrace of Graham Platner, despite the many obvious red flags that emerged throughout the campaign. On the nose for sure, but Tony D missed a spot: the media coddled Platner as well. The media hall monitors will rage nonetheless.… pic.twitter.com/452IZIebwY
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 9, 2026
TONY DOKOUPIL: The Big Question tonight is why did so many in the Democratic Party, the party of Black Lives Matter and Believe Women, continue to see Graham Platner as a future star? Despite scandal after scandal that seemed to undermine those principles and more? Despite his old Reddit comments about, among other things, why Platner thinks black people don't tip? Despite his chest tattoo with a Nazi history? And despite the accusations of abuse against women? Through all of that and more, Platner downplayed or denied the claims and was defended by the party in some of its biggest voices.
CHRIS Van HOLLEN: I do believe people should have second chances.
CHRIS MURPHY: If this is a character election, the incumbent has a lot to answer for as well.
BERNIE SANDERS: I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that Graham Platner is the next senator from the State of Maine.
DOKOUPIL: So what's behind all that support for him until now? Could it simply be that he was winning? That he had blown out the sitting governor in the Democratic primary? It sure seemed like the Democrats’ best chance to beat Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins. In political circles, the answer, it appears, was yes. Many Democrats knew Platner had character issues. The theory, from Daniel Moraff, the political strategist who plucked Platner from obscurity, and made him into a star, was that the voters wouldn't care. That they wanted, quote, “real people who have lived real lives.”
DANIEL MORAFF: I think we want people who didn't run for student council, right? We want people who have not been spending their entire lives planning their ascent to political power.
DOKOUPIL: But after Platner was accused of rape this week, it turned out that theory had its limits. Character does matter. Platner denied the accusation, but for some Democrats, he’d committed the one offense no political party can tolerate. He started to look like a loser.
Dokoupil spared no words as he tears through Democrat leaders willing to look past Platner’s rows of red flags in pursuit of power. He is also right that Democrats only ditched Platner once it became apparent that he might lose to longtime incumbent Susan Collins. The latest allegations provided the offramp, and the rejection cascade ensued.
But what’s lost in all of this, and where Dokoupil falls short, is that the Elitist Media are just as culpable of the same willful omissions. The media looked the other way at the Totenkopf tattoo, reluctantly covered the sexting scandal, and joined The New York Times in making conservative activist Lyndsey Fifield the focus of that particular story- a modified “catch and kill.”
The media are just as guilty of enabling Platner as the rest of the left. That essential part of the story was missing from an otherwise trenchant and much-needed editorial.
