Democrats are in a tough position in the Senate races in 2026, as there are few vulnerable seats for Republicans.
One of those vulnerable seats was supposed to be in Maine, where Susan Collins, who is a Republican senator from a very purple to blue state, looked to be vulnerable against the Democrats. The Democrat chosen to run by the party was Graham Platner.
Graham Platner is a Bernie Sanders acolyte. He’s a far-leftist.
And now he is in trouble.
He’s in trouble because he is a radical, insane communist who seems to like Nazis. I don’t know where all this fondness for Nazis is coming from, but it does seem like a bizarre number of people are kind of into the Nazis these days.
The reason this is coming up is because Graham Platner apparently released a video showing him shirtless when he was drunk at some sort of event, and displayed a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest.
Axios reported:
“Platner drew the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as an anti-establishment outsider, but his campaign is already trying to clean up recently resurfaced Reddit posts where he espoused offensive views about Black people and sexual assault victims. Platner’s campaign shared video with Pod Save America of him singing shirtless that exposed a skull tattoo on his chest that resembles the “Totenkopf,” a symbol used by Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS). The move was intended to get ahead of opposition research, and the GOP’s Senate campaign arm seized on the images, accusing Platner of having a “Nazi tattoo.”
Platner then decided to go on the Pod Save America podcast, joining Tommy Vietor (former van driver for Barack Obama).
Platner said that the video was from his brother’s wedding, adding, “I am not a secret Nazi.”
It’s never a great political sign when you have to say you’re not a secret Nazi.
“I went to college,” Platner said. “I went to the gym, I did all the things. And at no point in this entire experience, of my life, did anybody ever once say, hey, you’re a Nazi. It never came up. Until we got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo. And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I’ve not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years.”
Controversy has now broken out over whether he meant to have a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest.
Now, I don’t know how many people accidentally have Nazi symbols tattooed on their chests. I feel like the number is relatively low. That’s not something you just randomly stumble onto. You get drunk one night and say, “Hey, let me get that Nazi tattoo here on my chest.”
Jewish Insider (JI) reported:
“But according to a person who socialized with Platner when he was living in Washington, D.C., more than a decade ago, Platner had specifically acknowledged that the tattoo was a Totenkopf, the “death’s head” symbol adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit that guarded concentration camps in World War II. “He said, ‘Oh, this is my Totenkopf,’” the former acquaintance told Jewish Insider recently, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue. “He said it in a cutesy little way.”
The exchange occurred in 2012 at Tune Inn, a popular dive on Capitol Hill where Platner later worked as a bartender and was a frequent patron while he attended The George Washington University on the G.I. bill, according to the former acquaintance. He would often take his shirt off drinking with friends late at night at the bar, and on at least one occasion had stated he knew what the tattoo represented, the former acquaintance recalled.
Platner gave varying accounts of the image during this time, saying at one point he was aware it was a Totenkopf when he had first gotten the tattoo several years prior and at another time claiming he had not known, according to the former acquaintance.”
That is why he’s revealing the video now, early, in an attempt to get past it before the vote.”
JI continued:
“Platner’s former political director, Genevieve McDonald, who resigned from his campaign last week over her objection to his recently unearthed incendiary Reddit comments, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that “Graham has an antisemitic tattoo on his chest.” “He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff,” McDonald wrote in the post, which was reviewed by JI. “Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”
This is not a gigantic shock coming from Platner because there were a bunch of Reddit posts that are pretty ugly as well. In one of them, he openly described himself as a communist. He called all cops “bastards” and dismissed sexual assault in the military. He also defended a man with a Nazi SS lightning bolt tattoo who later admitted to impersonating a federal officer at a BLM protest in Las Vegas in 2020.
What’s amazing about this — aside from the fact that Graham Platner seems to be a bit of a scumbag — is this the kind of stuff that would normally get you canceled, especially by Democrats (if you weren’t a Democrat).
Jon Lovett, one of the Pod Save America brothers, tweeted out:
“Only perfect candidates off the Harvard law conveyor belt pls, highly disciplined, all boxes checked, well liked and humble, absolutely no spiritual connection to having a physical body except for severe IBS, volunteered at a soup kitchen in high school, signs email ‘cheers,’ etc.”
There’s a big gap between that and the drunken dude who is routinely spewing garbage and has a Nazi tattoo on his chest.
Also, Jon Lovett routinely calls people Nazis. Interesting how that double standard immediately applies.
Bernie Sanders declared, “There’s a young man who served his country in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he went through some really difficult experiences seeing friends of his killed or whatever, and in spite of all of that he had the courage to run. I personally think he is an excellent candidate. I’m going to support him.”
I don’t think Sanders would be making the same excuses if the person were on the other side of the aisle.
When asked about Platner’s comments on sexual assault, Sanders then shot back, “Have you served four tours of duty?”
I love Bernie Sanders pulling out the patriotic military service card after spending an entire career ripping on the American military industrial complex and America’s foreign policy.
But in the end, this is the Democratic Party. It is all about power. It is not about actual, consistent argumentation. They are perfectly happy to have a self-described commie with a Nazi tattoo on his chest running for the Senate in Maine. If it means the Republicans lose control of the Senate, that’s it.
That’s what really matters to them in the end.
Dems love to call political opponents “Hitler” and “fascist” when they lose an argument, won’t acknowledge the real fascists in their own party.
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