The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Unexpected Heroine Lyndsey Fifield

Posted on | June 6, 2026 | No Comments

When the story broke Thursday, I was stunned. The ex-girlfriend of Graham Platner featured in the lengthy New York Times story was someone I’ve known since 2010. I spent most of the afternoon calling and texting friends who also knew her, and they were similarly surprised.

Did any of us who knew Lyndsey back in the day, when she was fresh out of college and just trying to break into the world of politics, imagine that her name would become nationally known as the “Republican operative” whose tales of an abusive relationship with a D.C. bartender might tip the balance of the U.S. Senate? No. No, we never imagined this.

As I explained earlier this week, anyone who was paying attention knew that the opposition research file on Platner was voluminous, so that we could expect new scandalous revelations every week from now until November, presuming Platner didn’t quit before then. What I did not expect was that someone I’d known for more than 15 years would be the source for one of those revelations. In fact, it appears, it was Lyndsey who first got the word out about Platner’s Totenkopf tattoo, months ago. She related in a long thread on X Friday that she did not want to “come forward” about her relationship with Platner in 2013-2015, when she was working for the Chamber of Commerce. At the time, Platner was working as a bartender at the Tune Inn on Capitol Hill, a so-called “dive bar” popular with congressional staffers. The relationship was traumatic for Lyndsey, who describes Platner as a “narcissistic abuser.”

Fortunately, Lyndsey later met a nice guy, married him, and now has two young daughters. She is widely known and respected in D.C. political circles and is certainly not any kind of “MAGA extremist,” having worked in 2023 for Nikki Haley’s primary campaign against Trump. In fact, Lyndsey has explained, her husband is a liberal. She was asked on X why she was dating Platner and explained that, in the pre-Trump era, the dating scene in D.C. was much more “bipartisan.” Although people tended to date within their own political camps, young singles in the capital (Lyndsey was 27 when she started dating Platner) weren’t litmus-testing potential partners. As Lyndsey has said, she was shocked when her ex-boyfriend became a Senate candidate in Maine, and felt a duty to do something, even though she didn’t want to get publicly involved. She’s a suburban wife and mom who doesn’t need that kind of attention. However, staffers for the New York Times somehow got her phone number — I’ll give you three guesses how, and the first two don’t count — and persuaded Lyndsey to cooperate with their plans for a story.

My friend Will Upton, who likewise has known Lyndsey for years, has an excellent story in the Daily Caller explaining the “soft catch-and-kill” strategy of which this New York Times story is a perfect example:

The term ‘catch and kill‘ refers to a shady practice where a public relations firm or consultant works with a friendly news outlet that was pitched or ‘stumbled’ upon a negative story about a client to effectively ‘catch’ and then ‘kill’ the story — or delay it until it no longer has impact.
A ‘soft catch and kill’ works similarly, though it mostly involves the publication still running the story in a timely manner, but the details are softened or buried deep in the narrative to soften the bite. The outlet can claim it did its job, but they’ve given the target just enough wiggle room to survive.
The Times’s goal here was not to fairly give hearing to allegations against Platner; it was to play Fifield for a sucker, give her story just enough air that the Democrat Party’s cretin media and consultant class could zero in on it and crush it.

Lyndsey is very much leaning on her Christian faith to help her survive the predictable onslaught of attacks. Among these attacks is what Debra Saunders has called “a long guilty-by-association tweet” from Ryan Grim of Drop Site News. This is actually an answered prayer for Lyndsey, because one of the items that Grim cites is a 2016 interview with Red Alert Politics, when she was named to their “30 Under 30” list. It’s impossible now to find that interview online (Red Alert Politics got bought out by the Washington Examiner, and most of its former content has disappeared), but Grim somehow got a copy of it. And in that interview, talking about her career goals, Lyndsey described her desire to “emulate the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s approach to online activism.” Dear reader, Lyndsey Fifield knew Andrew.

It was in New Orleans, in April 2010, at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) that Andrew Breitbart and Lyndsey were hanging out. You can see her reaction to one of Andrew’s stories about his undergraduate days as a student at Tulane University. The guy in the background, second from left, is Dave Weigel, who was covering the SRLC for the Washington Post. After Lyndsey became suddenly famous Thursday, I checked my archives and found those pictures in my April 11, 2010, post, “Breitbart Party Voodoo.” (Breitbart was telling us, “I don’t believe in voodoo anywhere else, but in New Orleans? It’s real!”

Did I have any clue at the time that 24-year-old Lyndsey Fifield would one day make headlines? No way. She was just some silly girl fresh out of college, but I have to admit that I’m getting a bit choked up while writing this. She has shown such courage and, Lyndsey, if you’re reading this, please just know: Andrew would be so proud of you!



 

Category: Maine, New York Times, Scandal

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