(edited transcript)
JULIAN ZELIZER:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Then and Now. I’m Julian Zelizer of The Long View.
JONATHAN ALTER:
And I’m Jonathan Alter of Old Goats.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
Jon, I thought we could do a little more recent history. Two stories were in the news this week that I’m sure everyone saw who follows the news saw.
The first involves Graham Platner, the Senate candidate in Maine, who’s had a series of unfolding scandals. But finally, accusations of sexual assault that emerged this week resulted in his stepping out of the race. Democrats may now need to pick a new candidate, and there was a lot of pressure on him to do so.
The second story involves a judge saying that President Trump does need to pay what I believe is the first installment to E. Jean Carroll under a court order from a while ago. That payment has been delayed as Trump tried to tie it up in the courts. It’s a $5 million payment, and a federal judge in New York made that decision.
The juxtaposition of these stories — and, obviously, the first case was known in 2024, when Trump was reelected — brings up this question: Is there an asymmetry? Is there a difference between how Democrats and Republicans handle these issues and respond to them as they emerge? I’m curious about your thoughts on this issue.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Well, you know, it reminds me of something my daughter, Charlotte Alter, who’s a writer, once said: Trump gets away with everything, so Democrats get away with nothing.
It’s kind of amazing because, if you go back to 2016, there were women accusing Trump of all kinds of things, and it didn’t really stop him. The Access Hollywood tape — “grab them by the pussy”— hurt him momentarily. People thought it was going to cost him the election against Hillary Clinton, including a lot of Republicans, and it didn’t.
So there is a sort of double standard — not in the way the press treats it, but in the way the parties react.
I saw an interesting poll in The New York Times this morning that said that, basically, two-thirds of Republicans don’t care if one of their candidates has been accused of something serious, and two-thirds of Democrats do care if one of their candidates has been accused of something serious.
But there’s enough blame to go around, because Democrats aren’t always great on this either. They can be slow, and I think the Platner case is a good example of that — of coming to terms with this.
There are also a lot of complexities. All you have to do is look at the Al Franken case, or the case of Tara Reade. That was where Democrats learned that you don’t always believe the woman. That’s a woman who accused Joe Biden of molesting her.
So these issues are not one-size-fits-all. They’re situational.
But I do think that, strangely enough, considering the fiasco of the Platner situation — which, by the way, helps the Democrats get the seat in Maine — it’s good news for the Democrats. Amid all this “Democrats in disarray,” this will end up giving them a better chance of getting that seat.
But setting aside the politics and going back to the main issue here, I think that, moving forward, the political media establishment, the parties, and voters on both sides have to have high standards for their candidates, and also move more quickly when there are indications of serious character flaws among those candidates.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
Yes. I think the bad reaction would be a race to the bottom in treating these issues, as opposed to pressure to keep high standards in who we elect for public office. I think that’s an important point, Jon.
Anyway, another episode of Then and Now. We’ll talk next week.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Thanks, Julian. Bye-bye.
