UNEXPECTEDLY! Maine Democrat With Nazi Tattoo Also Made Homophobic Social Media Posts, Report Finds.
“The unearthed posts show a pattern of homophobic language and rhetoric that mocked or demeaned LGBTQ+ people,” the Advocate reported Wednesday. “In some cases, Platner appeared to use slurs casually in discussions unrelated to sexuality; in others, he explicitly framed gay people as the punch line.”
In 2021, Platner posted, “I like how our gay antics make him so uncomfortable he hates us. I’m doubling down on gay chicken next time in honor of this Air Force pussy.” A year earlier, he wrote, “This was the gayest (not in the fun dick sucking way) thing I’ve ever seen. This dude is literally everything I hate all rolled into one.” In other posts, he taunted users to “back it up with facts, fags,” and mocked military officers as “gay.”
Platner confirmed and apologized to the Advocate for what he now calls his “indefensible” anti-gay remarks, which he posted between 2016 and 2021. “I made a lot of comments over the years and talked a lot of shit on the internet,” Platner told the LGBT news site in an interview. “I stopped using that specific kind of language a while ago … and today I find that stuff abhorrent. And I am sorry that I ever used it.”
At Hot Air, John Sexton, quoting from Jewish Insider and CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski goes out on a limb: Platner Knew About the Nazi Tattoo.
I don’t think he’s a secret Nazi. I do think he’s a liar who made up a story about not knowing what this was because it was easier than trying to explain himself to a bunch of left-wing partisans who were already headed for the fainting couch over his previous comments.
Even MSNBC is having a hard time supporting him.
Bottom line: Even if one accepts Platner’s apologies for his past behavior, believes his account of when he learned about the meaning of his tattoo, and thinks that he may have evolved from his past errors, it’s clear that he has a questionable track record. There are legitimate reasons to be suspicious of how deeply held his current progressive beliefs are, and how disciplined he would be as a politician.
He’s a confirmed liar as of this week, not four years ago. I guess we’ll see if that matters to Maine voters.
MSNBC may be distancing themselves from Platner, but Vox founder Matt Yglesias is “ride or die” for the man with the Totenkopf:
At least, he says he is:
Perhaps Yglesias wants “a fiesty left-populist outsider” after the way the WaPo profiled him a couple of years ago as a boring old establishment leftist: “The boring journey of Matt Yglesias:”
“I don’t always agree with Matt, but he always makes you think with his unique and sharp insights,” says Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, via email. Klain has liked and shared multiple Yglesias tweets, usually ones that praise White House actions in defiance of wailing liberals or henpecking conservatives. Yglesias, Klain adds, “offers ‘unconventional wisdom:’ He’s not afraid to break with others and put his views out there — a perspective that is hard to find in a dialogue dominated by conventional wisdom.”
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But enough serious people take Yglesias seriously to negate the many people who don’t. His Substack was tied for most-followed newsletter by members of the Biden transition team, according to digital strategist Rob Blackie, and Yglesias himself was No. 4 on the list of most-followed journalists. Some of Yglesias’s posts on policy — particularly one on Build Back Better negotiations in February — have reportedly circulated among White House staff.
“There’s a broad sense that he’s a public intellectual, and they take his ideas like they’ll take other ideas,” says a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss outside influences on the administration. “He’s not super influential, but he’s a prominent normie liberal, just like Joe Biden is a normie liberal.”
Or perhaps he just likes the look of Platner in a Hugo Boss suit:
