Phelim McAleer: Contrasting coverage of US election hopefuls exposes media bias and state of politics today

Platner has drawn massive mainstream media coverage. The elections are crucial for Democrats. They need to flip seats to retake the Senate, and they see Maine as one of their best chances.

Maine has baffled them and the pundits for decades. Trump has lost the state in every election he has run, yet it keeps electing and re-electing Republican Susan Collins to the Senate.

Past Democratic strategy was simple: insult the voters. “You guys are just uneducated, racist, and stupid - not like us college-educated folks who enjoy a nice glass of wine and understand transgender issues.”

Shockingly, that didn’t work. So this time they tried something new. They would recruit a white working-class man who could appeal to regular folks. Enter Graham Platner. He was sold as a hard-scrabble oyster farmer, a Marine Corps veteran who worked as a harbourmaster and spoke the language of the common man because he was one of them.

The mainstream media ran with the story. Then alternative outlets began digging. Platner was actually the scion of wealth. He had attended Hotchkiss, one of America’s most exclusive private schools, and his father lent/gave him $200,000 to buy his house.

These inconvenient facts were mostly ignored. The media were heavily invested in his victory. Many journalists see their job as stopping Trump’s presidency rather than reporting the truth. If Democrats regain Senate control - they need only a couple of flips - they can persecute and prosecute the president, block key appointments and stop new Supreme Court justices.

Then came stories harder to bury. Platner, it turned out, had a large Nazi-linked tattoo on his chest - the SS Totenkopf skull and crossbones. The media dismissed it as youthful exuberance. Then social media archaeologists uncovered old Reddit posts full of rape comments and insults toward wounded soldiers. Again, this was chalked up to a “dark time in his youth.”

But this weekend, even that defence collapsed. Roughly one year after his 2023 marriage, Platner was caught texting and sexting at least six women who were not his wife. The scandals have now piled up so high that Platner may be the most damaged major-party candidate in recent memory. If he remains the candidate, the re-election of Susan Collins seems assured.

On the other side of the country, in my hometown of Los Angeles, former reality TV star Spencer Pratt is challenging the Democratic incumbent for mayor. Predictably, the leftist media are out to undermine him.

They compare him endlessly to Trump because both were on television. It doesn’t matter that the current mayor was in Ghana when thousands of properties burned in the LA fires, despite prior warnings about fire danger. Nor does it matter that she neglected working fire hydrants and full reservoirs.

None of that seems to register with the press. They go for the easy Trump parallel. But just as with Trump, the harder they attack Pratt, the higher he climbs in the polls. The media still don’t understand the appeal.

People didn’t support Trump because he was rich or on TV. They supported him for his America First policies: stopping mass immigration, protecting American jobs, and using tariffs when needed.

Similarly, Pratt wants to save Los Angeles. He and the people here know we don’t have to accept tens of thousands of homeless people camping on our streets. He promises to end the tolerance of street encampments and the crime that comes with them. The billions already spent have only encouraged more homelessness, not less. Pratt is right about that.

By the time you read this, Pratt may have advanced from today’s Los Angeles mayoral primary, while Platner will be hanging on by the scarred skin of his covered up Nazi tattoo. The contrast couldn’t be clearer.

One candidate’s scandals are downplayed because he fits the political narrative. The other is relentlessly attacked because he threatens it. That tells you everything you need to know about media bias and American politics today.

l Phelim McAleer is a Co Tyrone born journalist based in Los Angeles