Matt

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch Like the bible. 🤣

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch You are still wrong though.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch One, 😄

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch I'm not sure you can be any more wrong.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch You define the core message....

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch Thus, you have a subjective viewpoint.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch So, you are subjective then. Look up what subjective means.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch By your words. There is at least one slave version of the Bible and at least one version that is not.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch You were just talking about more than one version of the Bible. 🤦

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch So, you have a subjective view on the bible?

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch You are literally proving that the the bible is subjective by saying that.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch Wrong. Around the confederate era, many Christians used the bible as supporting for slavery. Do your due diligence.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch 😄 Nice try.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@DigitalDisdain @___TheGOOdWitch Yhe King James Version (KJV) was the main Bible translation used by Christians in the antebellum and Confederate South to justify slavery.

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@acpea @joewrote @AaronRegunberg The quoted diary phrase itself does not contain Platner's name. No publicly available screenshot, full diary page, or extended verbatim excerpt has been released by the NYT or Fifield that shows the sentence explicitly naming him (e.g.,"Graham was the most toxic...").

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@acpea @joewrote @AaronRegunberg Was she talking about him or other guys she was dating?

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

It's kind of wild to find out that the Republican in the NYT story that says she had a toxic relationship with Graham Platner is Lyndsey Fifield. Having been in DC for too long, I know a decent number of people who know her quite well. For a long time she was the co-host of a podcast with her best friend Bethany Mandel, called Ladybrains, though she has also worked for multiple super PACs, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Heritage Foundation.

Some background, presented without judgment: In 2014, Fifield began work as digital director for American Action Network, a Republican Super PAC that oversees House races. The next year she became social media manager for the Heritage Foundation, where she stayed for the next seven years.

In 2022, she joined the Super PAC backing Nikki Haley for president, switching to the official campaign side the next year, and staying until the campaign flamed out. She now lists herself as a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a prominent dark money group that is best known for helping usher Brett Kavanaugh on to the Supreme Court and giving Susan Collins the talking points she needed to make her decisive speech in his favor.

The NYT breezed past all this, saying she was "a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns."

In an interview for a news outlet called Red Alert Politics that named her to a “30 under 30” list back in 2016, she said that she wanted to “emulate the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s approach to online activism.” Breitbart, known for pushing the boundaries when it came to political combat, is perhaps best remembered for having exposed Anthony Weiner’s penchant for sending nudes to young girls, and for his work elevating James O’Keefe.

That she worked for Independent Women's Forum recently is even wilder since IWF played a critical role in Kavanaugh's confirmation and in persuading Collins to support it.

Heather Higgins, chair of IWF, laid out the group’s role in a talk several years ago. “We wrote a memo. It was used by a lot of members of the Senate and the House, Fox News, and elsewhere. Most important, Susan Collins told me that without that memo, she would not see how to support him,” Higgins said. “And if you look at the speech she gave on the Senate floor, it’s entirely the playing out and architecture of how we said to structure the argument — what to say and how to say it, which is just so gratifying. We’re watching TV and we’re like, ‘That’s ours! That’s ours!’”

Meanwhile, the timeline Fifield gives of their relationship is confusing, because during at least some of that time she was actually dating a different person, her longterm boyfriend who became her fiancee before she called off the wedding in 2018. We all know this because she and Mandel did a podcast episode on it that went mega-viral in Republican circles back then. Apparently this is the kind of thing the NYT thinks is important now, so I guess it requires more reporting. I'll report back.

Here is Heather Higgins celebrating IWF's role in getting Susan Collins to confirm Kavanaugh:

[Matt @MatthewGoedtel]

@VZaiven @joewrote @AaronRegunberg And vis versa.