Top Democrats are rallying around a Senate candidate with a Nazi tattoo, a long history of engaging in various sexual proclivities, and various other issues that make him somewhat Trumpian in the worst possible sense of the term according to his detractors.
For more than a decade, Democrats and their progressive allies have insisted that President Donald Trump is unfit for office because of both his supposed white nationalist ideology and his long history of supposedly sexually abusing women. Following his second inauguration last January, The Nation reported on “The White Nationalist in Chief’s Return to Power,” claiming that “In just one week, the autocrat’s playbook of threats, lawlessness, dishonesty, and disregard for democratic norms wreaked havoc across the nation and around the world. As always, authoritarian politics in the United States are tethered to white nationalism. At this moment, Trump is the white nationalist in chief.” Since then, the so-called “Epstein Files” have exploded into the progressive consciousness – and parts of the MAGA consciousness to be clear – bringing with them new accusations of President Trump’s deviant sexual behavior including the claim that he’s, in fact, a pedophile. Several news organizations such ABC, PBS, The Guardian, and others have dedicated web pages to compiling his variously alleged “sexual misconduct allegations,” leading at least some progressives to outright declare him a rapist. As Jessica Valenti, a self proclaimed ultra-feminist, put it on Medium in 2019, “We have heard from more than enough women — and Trump himself — to state the obvious: The president of the United States is a rapist. I realize the usual practice is to use the term ‘accused,’ but this column is not a court of law and I am pretty well exhausted of eschewing common sense for the sake of niceties. How much more proof do we possibly need?” Of course, I could go on. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of examples of both of these accusations that have been used to conclude that President Trump has no business being an elected official. As Google’s Gemini put it, “President Donald Trump has been accused of being a white nationalist—or a sympathizer with white nationalism and white supremacy—on countless occasions by political opponents, civil rights organizations, and media outlets” and “The exact number of times critics have used the term ‘sexual abuser’ cannot be quantified, as it is a frequent phrase used by political opponents, activists, and the media in ongoing public discourse.”
Given more than a decade of scathing criticisms of this kind, one would think that Democrats would be at least somewhat hesitant to support any candidate who might be subject to the same sort of attack. If white nationalism and abusing women are disqualifying as they have repeatedly claimed – more times than even a computer can count – they should be so for politicians of either party, especially in a modern electoral environment in general and a political party in particular that claims to value diversity and the fair treatment of the various races and sexes. Otherwise, those making these claims about President Trump would be hypocrites at best, complete and total frauds at worst, interested only in their own power, and generally speaking, such things are not good for obvious reasons. Therefore, it might come as a surprise to some that many top Democrats are rallying around a Senate candidate in Maine, Graham Platner, who has both an actual Nazi tattoo emblazoned on his chest, a long history of engaging in various sexual proclivities including a profile on a mobile app widely used by groomers and pedophiles, and various other issues that make him somewhat Trumpian in the worst possible sense of the term according to his detractors. While some of these details have only recently come to light, more on that in a moment, many have been known for the better part of a year and yet he remains the front runner in the Maine Senate primary.
In fact, it was last October when news broke about the Nazi tattoo, a design similar to the skull and crossbones said to represent “Hitler’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II” to use PBS News’ phrasing. In response to these allegations, Mr. Platner himself claimed it “happened during a night of drinking while he was on leave [from the Marines] in Croatia, he said, adding he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazi police,” he’d “never been questioned about the tattoo’s connections to Nazi symbols in the 20 years” he’s had it, and besides, the Army itself never had an issue with it. “I also passed a full background check to receive a security clearance to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan’s security detail,” he said, then promptly had it removed. While we might forgive the candidate himself from denying and obfuscating on the matter, Democrats weren’t outraged in the least. There were few, if any calls, for him to drop out of the race, or any sense that such a symbol of hate emblazoned on a politician’s chest was disqualifying. Instead, none other than Senator Bernie Sanders, an early backer from nearby Vermont, was completely non-plussed, insisting he remained a stronger candidate than his chief competitor Governor Janet Mills. Mr. Platner himself somehow managed to spin it into a positive in the aftermath, claiming “I don’t look at this as a liability. I look at this as is a life that I have lived, a journey that has been difficult, that has been full of struggle, that has also gotten me to where I am today. And I’m very proud of who I am.” Since then, the tattoo has been described as “accidental,” or as Representative Seth Moulton put it, “Graham clearly made a mistake. What I appreciated about him is he owned that mistake. He took responsibility for it. And I don’t think that that’s disqualifying,” and even The New York Times has rushed to his defense, claiming as recently as last month that “Graham Platner Is No Nazi.” The author Michelle Goldberg, played dumb as well insisting she had no idea the origin of the design and yet she still didn’t care.
Rather incredibly, the revelations about the Nazi tattoo came a few days after it was revealed that Mr. Platner had engaged in shall we say questionable dialogue online, attacking fellow members of the military, women, and the homosexual community. In now deleted posts on Reddit, he insisted sexual assault victims should “just take some responsibility for themselves” and “act like an adult for f–cks sake,” avoiding things like alcohol so they don’t end up in a “compromising situation,” claimed “all” police are bastards complete with “F**k these cops,” asked “Why don’t Black people tip?” and when questioned about a vote on a local issue against a power line in Maine, told everyone to “F**k off and die.” In addition, he responded to a video of a fellow soldier getting severely wounded during an ambush in Afghanistan by insisting, “This video never gets old… Dumb mother [expletive] didn’t deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt.” Elsewhere, he referred to soldiers in general as “fat,” “lazy,” and rather ironically as it turned out, said they had a propensity to cheat on their spouses. Lastly, he bizarrely admitted to masturbating in public spaces, claiming I “jerk off every time I sit in a portash*tter.”
Despite this, the majority of Democrats and their fellow progressives continued to support Mr. Platner, seeing no issue with literally having a Nazi brand or a foul mouth targeting what they generally consider protected groups. Instead of condemning him as they should have based on more than ten years of discourse, they rallied around him, claiming these disqualifying weaknesses were actually strengths. The progressive website The Jacobin engaged in some particularly nausea inducing spin when they pondered “Why the Smears Against Graham Platner Didn’t Work,” claiming “Opponents went all in on smearing Graham Platner as a Nazi based on a bad tattoo choice. It didn’t work. Maine voters decided they’d rather have universal health care and an end to reckless wars than a polished politician with an unblemished past.” Setting aside how ludicrous it is to call the evidence of his own tattoo and statements a “smear campaign,” they concluded “Voters cared less about what he said on Reddit a decade ago than about his passion for taxing the billionaires and guaranteeing health care as a human right. They cared less that he once got a regrettable tattoo on shore leave than that, like many vets who saw friends killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, he drew the obvious conclusion about starting similar wars going forward and has fiercely and vocally opposed Donald Trump’s assault on Iran. In other words, voters decided that…Individual people, with all of our flaws, need to find ways to forgive each other and channel our rage against the system that’s failed us all.” The New York Times leaned heavily into this biography, claiming Mr. Platner was an every man, an “Oysterman, Veteran, Prep-School Alum” who made his “working-class persona key to his campaign” while failing to mention that his parents were rich enough to loan him $200,000 to buy a house. Not to be outdone, Jonathan V. Last writing for The Bulwark was ready to make him the 2028 Democrat nominee for President, insisting he has a 1 in 3 shot of leading the party.
Perhaps even more incredibly, additional revelations over the weekend that Mr. Platner had exchanged sexually explicit messages with multiple women and had a profile on a highly suspect “dating app,” what has been described as a “predator’s paradise” while he was married has done next to nothing to change this dynamic. As The Wall Street Journal first reported, Mr. Platner’s wife Amy Gertner brought these texts – sent to around a dozen women and apparently including naked imagery – to the attention of his campaign last fall as part of internal opposition research. The campaign, however, considered it a “private matter” and attempted to proceed as if nothing happened, pretending the person who leaked the information recently was at fault for betraying him or something. Simultaneously, The Daily Wire reported on his usage of Kik, which features an image of him shirtless wearing only a towel. “Platner’s Kik profile was created on June 26, 2016. The Democrat was almost 32-years-old when he joined the app, on which an estimated 70% of users are between the ages of 13 and 24.” Before then, Forbes reported that Kik had a “huge child exploitation problem” and two years later, the BBC found that it was at the center of over 1,000 child sexual abuse cases between 2013 and 2018, but as the Wire put it, “even among consenting adult users, Kik is no ordinary messenger. The platform has been described as ‘the app with the most severe sexual content.’ Kik offers sexually explicit live chats with women, and is often found at the center of ‘sexploitation’ cases, wherein predators coax someone to send nude photos, and then use the images for blackmail, the New York Times reported in 2016.”
Many democrats have rallied around him regardless, insisting it’s merely a private matter and should not be subject to debate, or if it should be, he’s properly explained himself or something. Senator Ruben Gallego claimed, “He’s talked about it, you know. He’s talked to his wife about it. The voters of Maine are going to decide what they’re going to do, but we know that at this point this man can still win the race. And as long as he continues, I think we’ll all be there.” Senator Sanders defended him as well, claiming “We got a housing crisis. People can’t afford healthcare, they can’t afford groceries, they can’t afford to fill up their gas tanks. And I think it’s important for us to focus on the issues facing working families a little bit more than Graham Platner’s marriage. I wish their marriage the very best. But right now, I think we should be focusing on the crises facing the working class and electing people of the guts to stand up to the oligarchs who control our country.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stood by him as well, saying “We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.” While the primary isn’t until next Tuesday and it’s possible he will lose – that progressive voters will feel differently than their leadership – it doesn’t matter. The leadership and the intelligentsia has already spoken, and they have made it clear to everyone that everything they said about Donald Trump was bullshit. They didn’t care at all about the underlying issues and they only said these things because he was an opponent, someone who needed to be defeated and therefore any argument would do. When it came to someone they believe is one of their own, they happily claimed the opposite because all they really care about is power.
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