OLD AND BUSTED: “I’m Not a Witch.”
The New Hotness? “I am not a secret Nazi:” Maine Senate candidate responds to tattoo accusations.
Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner fended off allegations he harbors racist views after a video revealed what appears to be a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest.
Why it matters: 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.”
Driving the news: Platner said in an interview with Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America that was released on Monday that the video was from his brother’s wedding, where he lip-synced Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.”
- “I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner told Vietor, adding that he got the tattoo in Croatia while deployed and was “very inebriated.” Platner said he and his fellow Marines chose “a terrifying looking skull and crossbones.”
As Jim Geraghty quips, “‘I just wish that at the tattoo parlor, Platner had asked a friend, ‘are we the baddies?’ Platner has declared, ‘I am not a secret Nazi.’ (Some might argue that when you’ve got an SS symbol tattooed on your arm, there’s not much secret about it.)”
UPDATE:
Platner is getting a pass because of his politics, not his gender.
We know this because many women got a pass for cheering on political murder. See Omar, Ilhan.
People pretend otherwise because they need to distract from what it says about their co-partisans. https://t.co/74fQ8WrzcX
— Legal Phil (@Legal_Fil) October 21, 2025