Tabs are cheap when the story is good, and the tales grow taller on down the line ...
Per sources: Graham Platner’s campaign is now aware of the severity of the next round of information that will come out. Worse than Nazi tattoo. Worse than Reddit. Worse than ‘Predator’s Paradise.’
— Steve Robinson (@SteveRob) June 3, 2026
The emergency trip home had nothing to do with reporters at the house his dad… https://t.co/4xEt7wcUN6
The emergency trip home had nothing to do with reporters at the house his dad gave him. This is the DEFCON 1 of damage control.
Ed: I've heard what the new allegations will be in a general sense, but right now I'm not even sure it's real. The reaction from Team Platner makes me think it might be, though, because this is commensurate with the rumored story coming soon from an MSM outfit. Stay tuned.
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WSJ: In a private meeting Tuesday with some Senate Democrats, Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner attempted to quell growing concerns from some in the party that a string of negative revelations about his life had jeopardized his candidacy.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders asked Platner if any additional allegations would emerge against the embattled Democratic candidate, according to people familiar with the discussion. Platner said there weren’t any.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who also attended the meeting, followed up and said there is a big difference between marital issues and allegations of sexual assault, the people said. Platner agreed and denied any credible allegations of assault were forthcoming.
Ed: Hmmmmm. Interesting questions to ask, and an interesting response to them. I suspect that something's getting around in DC.
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Graham Platner is a deeply disturbed individual who doesn't belong anywhere near the Senate.
— Republicans (@Republicans) June 3, 2026
"He should be seeking therapy, not political office." pic.twitter.com/Hbs8Us2ULT
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Free Beacon: Maine's embattled Democratic Senate candidate, Graham Platner, praised a "cool pic" of Nazi-aligned troops aiming a rifle during World War II, zeroing in on their "German helmets" and weapon, in a now-deleted social media post, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal. ...
The image showed soldiers in German helmets during the conflict, pointing a Browning Automatic Rifle at the enemy over a defensive trench. A soldier gesturing to an enormous dog—which appears to be an Alsatian or German shepherd—dominates the foreground.
In a comment from his now-deleted Reddit account P-Hustle, Platner offered this response:
"German helmets and a [Browning Automatic Rifle]. What a cool pic."
Ed: Democrats who embraced Platner will have much to explain later if the campaign goes in the direction this indicates.
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“My boss called me into a meeting to explain why I’d acted like an entitled jackass in the staff meeting and to give me a chance to walk it back, I spent the whole meeting demanding she answer my questions about unrelated staffing decisions and then she fired me”
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) June 3, 2026
~ Scott Pelley https://t.co/l83tl1E8dC
Ed: If I were the person receiving these questions from Pelley in such a meeting, my response would have been, "None of your f*****g business, Scott. You worry about you, and I'll worry about me." They were more than patient with Pelley's arrogance.
===
Michael Shellenberger on Public: After being fired from CBS, former “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley yesterday said that “new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified.”
Those are remarkable claims for which Pelley presented no evidence. Indeed, it would be extraordinary for CBS to demand such things of a correspondent, either verbally or in writing, given the reputational risk to the network.
A more likely explanation is that Pelley disagreed with someone at CBS and then declared a difference of opinion to be a demand to lie. Support for this interpretation comes from the fact that he claimed Tuesday that CBS’s new management, led by Bari Weiss, was trying to kill “60 Minutes,” something for which he also did not provide evidence.
Moreover, the accusation makes no sense. CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss took the job to rebuild CBS News, not to wreck it, and a ruined “60 Minutes” would hurt her. Paramount’s owners did not pay billions for the network to burn its best asset for spite. So the simpler reading is that Pelley is the one stretching the truth.
Ed: Be sure to read more, either by subscribing or Shellenberger's X/Twitter post. This isn't Pelley's first time stretching the truth, either.
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When your brother was head of CBS News he fired Scott Pelley as nightly news anchor and cleared out his office while he was away on assignment for 60 Minutes.
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) June 3, 2026
"It's not the correct way to treat the face of CBS News." https://t.co/ESDmp6Q9MA pic.twitter.com/5usI6FfsKN
Ed: Yeah, but when the Left does it ...
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New York Times: “I’m only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect; we cannot do our work without it,” Ms. Weiss said on a 9 a.m. editorial call, according to a recording that was obtained by The New York Times.
“That foundation was broken on Monday,” she continued, referring to the explosive “60 Minutes” staff meeting where Mr. Pelley said that Ms. Weiss was “murdering ‘60 Minutes’” and asserted that Nick Bilton, the tech journalist hired to run the show, would “never be welcome.”
“Despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways,” Ms. Weiss said. “We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose.”
Ed: Choose it he did, both in these meetings and on social media. Pelley has basically made the case for his own firing from his own platforms. The people rushing to his defense are getting out way over their skis.
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How can he NOT be fired?
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) June 2, 2026
He said his direct boss and the woman who runs the network are “murdering” “60 Minutes” and aren’t qualified to do their jobs.
Like in what profession would he *not* be fired??? https://t.co/1E1kDI7pst
Ed: Exactly. This behavior is unhinged and demonstrates a vast sense of entitlement that Pelley has never earned. Even if you're not a fan of your new boss, you don't do this unless you either want to get fired – in which case Pelley should get no sympathy – or you think you're bigger than the organization ... in which case Pelley should also get no sympathy.
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Charles C.W. Cooke at NRO: First off, if Pelley cared about his job that much, he probably shouldn’t have behaved as unprofessionally as he did when he met his new boss, Nick Bilton. As the Washington Post reports, “Pelley laid into Bilton during a Monday morning ‘60 Minutes’ meeting, when he questioned Bilton’s qualifications” in front of a host of other staff. During that meeting, Pelley also insisted that Bari Weiss, his other boss, “has no qualifications for her job,” and, later, when Bilton organized a private meeting, Pelley continued in the same vein. ...
There is simply no circumstance in which an employee can behave like this and expect to remain employed. A lot of journalists in this country seem to believe that they belong to an elect class to which the normal rules do not apply. They do not. Journalists are protected by the First Amendment, yes, but they are not more protected than anyone else, and nor do those protections afford them the right to behave like jerks in the workplace. CBS is a private company. It is not, at root, any different than Unilever or Ford or Home Depot. Scott Pelley attacked his boss in public and private. Scott Pelley was fired. Film at 11.
Ed: No one will miss him either, because he's revealed himself to be an arrogant ass. He got what he wanted, or at least he got what his behavior earned him. This isn't a teenager popping off to the shift supervisor at McDonald's; Pelley is a grown-ass man, or at least he's supposed to be.
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The Obama Bros coming to the passionate defense of Scott Pellley kind of proves the entire point doesn't it. https://t.co/ejV421EUXN
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) June 3, 2026
Ed: Some guy named Ben Rhodes once bragged about lying to reporters and getting away with it in service to the narrative as a White House senior aide. Maybe he just likes Pelley because Pelley carried the same water.
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Matt Taibbi: Right, that’s the problem with anti-Trump agitation in America: mincing words! Opponents haven’t yet reached that magical two billionth Hitler comparison or dared to use terms like “fascism” in headlines, or invoked the mafia, the Klan, or the Antichrist. If only Trump critics would speak with more clarity. He’d be finished! ...
It wasn’t long ago that political parties bent over backwards in the opposite direction, boasting about their slavish flattery of the middle-voter, selling it as a virtue when they placated centrist crime fears by executing a few extra prisoners before elections or overperformed with “security Moms” by taking out extra ads hyping terrorist rumors. Now we’ve flipped all the way around, to a world where that mythical average voter has no natural advocate.
This is no fad, but a long-developing story about ideas that have long been hegemonic in academia, the press, and Hollywood for forty years, followed by backlash politics on the other side. Universities have been cranking out graduates raised on theorists like Audre Lorde and bell hooks and Kimberle Crenshaw whose sermons on collective “intersectional” oppression at the hands of an entrenched patriarchal enemy have stressed total deconstruction as the only way out. Trained to see everything through the lens of structural barriers, the Democratic Party is full of activists who think paradise awaits once we overthrow the “exclusionary norms” that built what Lorde described as the “Master’s House.”
These ideas remain deeply unpopular with the very people Democrats claim to want as their own base, i.e. working-class Americans. A person who hasn’t read too many of the wrong books sees male and female and moves on; a person who has read too much nonsense imagines everything is a social construct and gets a thrill from working with colleagues to change “woman” into “bleeding thing,” as Mayor Wu just tried to do.
Ed: It's another great rant from Taibbi, with his usual pox-upon-both-houses mindset, but with plenty of direct criticism of the Left's insanity, too.
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🚨 LMAO! A Democrat Congresswoman just STORMED OUT of Marco Rubio’s hearing, as Rubio clowned on her
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 3, 2026
“Wait, why is she leaving?! …Well, thank you for coming!” 🤣
He’s got all these Democrats SUPER angry 😂 pic.twitter.com/cnL51k4olU
Ed: Between Bessent and Rubio, the White House had a pretty good day on Capitol Hill today.
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Axios: The House on Wednesday passed a resolution to rein in President Trump's military campaign in Iran.
Why it matters: It's Congress' first successful rebuke of Trump's Iran war effort after multiple Democratic-led war powers attempts failed.
Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), the one Democrat who has consistently voted against Iran war powers resolutions, flipped and voted yes.
Four Republicans — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) — voted in support of the measure.
Ed: This doesn't change much. The Senate would have to pass it too, and Trump can and likely will veto it. This is more of a political statement that Trump is running out of runway for this war.
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Wow. @SixtyMinutes releases Scott Pelley combat footage. pic.twitter.com/NFucw505y4
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) June 3, 2026
Ed: Never go the full Pelley.
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Last night's lyric: "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits.
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