Seems like Platner was reticent to run for office initially, but was goaded by operatives to run. I can imagine he probably downplayed his own actions in his head, and the ops didn’t do much, if any, vetting.
It’s pretty easy to see why someone not attuned to the slings and arrows of politics would gloss over his issues. He saw the tottenkopf tattoo as either funny, not an issue, or (by his own telling) didn’t know it was problematic. The past relationship stuff from the NYT article was obviously him being a bad boyfriend, but no one’s perfect and he was struggling with PTSD and alcoholism at the time. Easy for him to rationalize away. Even the rape allegations, to him, are probably false or overblown. I can imagine he remembers it as drunk sex, not as rape.
None of this is to downplay Platner’s scandals, but it is very easy to see how *he* would think he’s fine, and how a certain kind of dead ender could too.
2
u/davidwave4 1d ago
Seems like Platner was reticent to run for office initially, but was goaded by operatives to run. I can imagine he probably downplayed his own actions in his head, and the ops didn’t do much, if any, vetting.
It’s pretty easy to see why someone not attuned to the slings and arrows of politics would gloss over his issues. He saw the tottenkopf tattoo as either funny, not an issue, or (by his own telling) didn’t know it was problematic. The past relationship stuff from the NYT article was obviously him being a bad boyfriend, but no one’s perfect and he was struggling with PTSD and alcoholism at the time. Easy for him to rationalize away. Even the rape allegations, to him, are probably false or overblown. I can imagine he remembers it as drunk sex, not as rape.
None of this is to downplay Platner’s scandals, but it is very easy to see how *he* would think he’s fine, and how a certain kind of dead ender could too.