A left-leaning YouTube podcaster tore into members of his own political camp this week, calling liberals who questioned Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner over abuse allegations "f***ing traitors" and "useful idiots", while dismissing the women who made the claims as tools of a Republican smear operation.
Kyle Kulinski, in a recent video, unleashed a lengthy tirade against anyone on the left who took seriously a New York Times profile of several women who previously dated Platner and described what the paper called his "unsettling" behavior. One of those women, conservative commentator Lyndsey Fifield, told the Times that Platner "would often be rough with her while discussing violence," though she clarified he never physically assaulted her.
The episode is worth examining, not because Kulinski's rant is unusual for political media, but because of what it reveals about the reflexes of the activist left when one of their own faces uncomfortable questions. The instinct was not to investigate. It was to discredit the accusers and silence the doubters.
As Breitbart News reported, Kulinski framed the entire controversy as a manufactured hit job. In his video, he directed his sharpest words not at Republicans but at liberals who expressed concern about Platner's conduct:
"If you are a so-called liberal and you are feeding into this smear campaign, let me be clear: you are a f***ing traitor and you don't give a s*** about taking down MAGA. You understand that? You're a useful idiot for the fascist war criminal pedophile rapist that is Donald Trump."
Set aside, for a moment, the grotesque language Kulinski used to describe the sitting President of the United States. Focus instead on the logic. In Kulinski's telling, the only reason a liberal might take these allegations seriously is sabotage, a desire to hand the Maine Senate seat to Republican Susan Collins.
He went further in a second extended remark:
"If you fancy yourself a liberal and you're harping away on Graham Platner based off this bulls*** smear story, you are an idiot, you're a moron, you're useless, you're a tool for the right and perhaps you're too stupid to realize it or maybe you do realize it. And low-key you would prefer Susan Collins wins over an actual leftist."
That framing is revealing. Kulinski did not engage with the substance of what the women described. He dismissed the entire report as fabricated, calling it "one of the most pathetic smear jobs I've ever seen."
The New York Times profiled several women who previously dated Platner (D-ME). Fifield, who dated Platner between 2013 and 2015, offered specific accounts. She alleged that Platner once twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom, and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn't get out, telling her to remain there until she was "calm."
She also attributed a disturbing remark to him:
"He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them."
Fifield additionally alleged that Platner had a Nazi tattoo. On Friday, she posted on social media: "Anyone who has ever extracted themselves from a relationship with a narcissistic abuser knows it isn't clean or easy."
In a separate post, she wrote: "I cringe remembering how many times I tried to play the 'cool girl' or fawn in response to what was clearly abusive, coercively controlling behavior by Graham."
Platner has claimed the allegations against him are false. But the specificity of Fifield's accounts, and the fact that the Times spoke with multiple women, not just one, makes the blanket dismissal by Kulinski and others on the left harder to sustain.
For years, the progressive left built an entire political framework around the principle that women who come forward with allegations of abuse deserve to be heard and believed. "Believe women" was not a suggestion. It was treated as a moral imperative, one that was deployed with maximum force against conservative nominees, officeholders, and public figures.
Now a Democratic Senate candidate faces detailed, on-the-record allegations from named women, and a prominent left-wing voice responds by calling those women's claims a "smear" cooked up by "a LITERAL REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE." Kulinski wrote on social media that Platner's "biggest crime is dating a creature as loathsome as a Republican." The women, in his view, are not credible accusers. They are political enemies whose accounts can be waved away because of their party affiliation.
This kind of internal Democratic dysfunction is not new, but the speed and ferocity of the circling-the-wagons reflex is still striking. The same political movement that demanded Brett Kavanaugh's nomination be derailed over unverified, decades-old allegations now treats detailed, named-source reporting in the New York Times as enemy propaganda, because the target wears a blue jersey.
Breitbart News reported Friday that Platner's poll numbers were already dropping before the Times article was even published. The specific figures were not disclosed, but the trajectory suggests the candidate was struggling on his own merits before the personal allegations surfaced.
That context matters. Kulinski's argument rests on the premise that the Times report is a decisive, manufactured attack designed to sink an otherwise strong candidate. If Platner was already fading in the polls, the "smear campaign" narrative becomes harder to maintain. Voters in Maine may have had their own reasons for cooling on his candidacy.
The broader pattern of troubled Democratic candidate selection is worth noting. When a party's bench is thin enough that its defenders must resort to scorched-rhetoric attacks on their own allies just to keep a flawed nominee afloat, the problem runs deeper than any single race.
The most telling part of Kulinski's outburst is not the profanity or the name-calling. It is the underlying demand: fall in line, or be branded a traitor. He did not ask liberals to weigh the evidence. He did not invite a conversation about whether the allegations had merit. He told them, flatly, that raising questions made them enemies of the cause.
That impulse, the demand for ideological conformity enforced by public shaming, is one the left has refined into an art form. It works in faculty lounges and on social media. Whether it works with Maine voters watching a candidate face serious personal allegations is another question entirely.
The Democratic Party has seen prominent members break with party orthodoxy on a range of issues in recent months. Each time, the reaction from the activist base follows the same script: the dissenter is not wrong on the merits; the dissenter is a traitor. It is a posture that prizes loyalty over accountability.
And it is a posture that leaves the party poorly equipped to handle moments like this one, when the facts on the ground are messy and the candidate's record invites scrutiny rather than reflexive defense.
Several questions remain open. What specific allegations did Platner deny in his social media response? What poll showed his numbers declining, and by how much? Were there additional women beyond those profiled by the Times? And will any Democratic leaders in Maine or Washington address the substance of the allegations rather than simply attacking the messenger?
The left's recurring internal conflicts tend to follow a pattern: an uncomfortable fact surfaces, the base demands lockstep solidarity, and anyone who breaks ranks gets publicly flogged. The question is whether that pattern serves the party's interests, or whether it simply ensures that flawed candidates and bad decisions go unchallenged until it is too late.
Kulinski's rant did not make the allegations against Platner go away. It did not address the women's specific claims. It did not offer voters a reason to trust the candidate. All it did was confirm, once again, that for a certain kind of progressive, the leftward lurch demands obedience above all else, and that "believe women" was always a weapon of convenience, not a principle.
When the rules only apply to the other side's candidates, they aren't rules. They're tactics.