So when The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal revealed Saturday how his own wife had warned his campaign that he had swapped sexual messages with multiple women, his team was ready to swing into action.

They circled the wagons, refused to apologize, and then went on the attack.

Amy Gertner, Platner’s wife, claimed that she had been betrayed by a former campaign staffer and was “deeply hurt” at the “invasion of our privacy.”

“I confided deeply personal details about my marriage to someone I considered a friend,” she said. “I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind.”

If it sounds like a familiar playbook, that’s because it is. Donald Trump has ridden out scandal after scandal with a similar routine. Countless Republicans have followed suit, shrugging off negative headlines as partisan attacks. Just ask Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who last week won the Republican Party’s nomination for Senate, despite an FBI investigation, impeachment proceedings, and an extramarital affair with a campaign donor.

Now, Platner and top strategist Morris Katz, the 27-year-old hotshot behind the rise of Zohran Mamdani in New York, are testing whether it can work for Democrats too.

They have aggressively pursued the source of the story, Genevieve McDonald, a former state legislator. She was the campaign’s political director before leaving in October. (She quit around the time that other scandals were roiling the race.)

The Bangor Daily News obtained a message sent by Katz to McDonald, via an intermediary, on Friday as news outlets circled.

“Just want to be clear on where we are right now,” he wrote in the message. “If the story goes in its current iteration we’ll communicate directly on the record, and by name, that Genevieve violated the personal trust of Amy and Graham and shared explicit falsehoods to sabotage the campaign.”

Once the story was out, Katz turned both barrels on the former team member.

“It’s no one’s f***ing business what happened in Graham & Amy’s marriage before he was ever a candidate for office,” he posted on X on Saturday afternoon. “There should be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust, and prioritize vengeance over decency.”

The intention was clear: To reframe the story, making it less about a problematic candidate and more about an untrustworthy aide. It also allowed the campaign to lean into its core message, that this candidate is one who would go to Washington to take on the ultimate example of an opportunist prioritizing vengeance over decency.

At the same time, it represents a massive moment for Katz. He has followed the political trajectory of other strategy messiahs, emerging suddenly to take up a position of extraordinary influence within the party, such as David Axelrod at Barack Obama’s side or James Carville with Bill Clinton.

Katz worked on John Fetterman’s Senate campaign, which became something of a model for him in taking candidates who looked as if they had just got home from a blue-collar job and spoke like it. Which brings him to the tough-talking Platner campaign, mixing economic populism and outsider credentials.

But outsiders come with risks.

The texting stories arrived just 10 days before Platner’s June 9 primary. He is odds-on to win, although there are two other names on the ballot: longshot David Costello, the 2024 nominee, and Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME), who suspended her campaign in April.

By Monday, Platner had opened another line of attack, going after his Republican opponent, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and her wealth. He was also out with a new ad, evoking some Trumpisms for good measure. (“We are taking back what is ours.”)

The question now is whether the latest scandal and its response — deny, distract, attack — can work not just with the Democratic faithful, but in November and a general election against a tough Republican opponent.

British blushes spared by redactions

The fallout from Lord Peter Mandelson’s dismissal as British ambassador to the U.S. continues. On Monday, more than 1,000 pages of government documents were handed to Parliament as lawmakers examine just how Prime Minister Keir Starmer could have appointed a pal of Jeffrey Epstein to such a crucial post.

There will be plenty of embarrassing reading. Already, headlines reveal Mandelson’s damning verdict on Starmer and his top team as lacking “verve.”

But it could be worse. Mandelson is known as a gossip merchant with a sharp tongue. So what did he really think of Trump? And what did ministers say about the American president in their messages to their man in Washington?

We may never know. At least not for now. Many of the disclosures will be redacted on grounds of national security or international relations. So private messages critical of Trump will not see the light of day.

Starmer has seen his warm relationship with Trump fizzle over his reluctance to come to Washington’s aid in Iran. At least he doesn’t have to endure more transatlantic tension from today’s disclosures.

Lunchtime reading

Trump says he’s ‘playing out’ ceasefire negotiations with ‘crafty’ Iranians: Our Jamie McIntyre has the latest on the war with Iran, and Trump’s most recent early morning social media posts.

How a former No 10 adviser can carve a path to California’s governorship: How Steve Hilton, a Donald Trump-endorsed former adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron, could win the largest governorship in America.

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