PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner said Tuesday that he got a tattoo years ago of an image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, but he ignored its meaning and chalked it up to a drunken Marine trying to scare him.
Mr. Platner is the latest in a string of Democratic candidates to shrug off dark revelations about his past, reflecting a new era in politics and the example set by President Donald Trump, who has undaunted moving forward with controversies that would have been campaign-ending revelations just a decade ago.
New revelations about Platner loom Behind the discovery of a series of controversial online statementsThis includes dismissing sexual assault in the military. It also follows the pattern set by Jay Jonesthis year’s Democratic candidate for Virginia attorney general, is refusing to withdraw from the race even after text messages surfaced suggesting he should give a prominent state Republican “two bullets to the head” in 2022.
Jones apologized for comments that also included a suggestion that the children of his then-Republican opponent might face the same fate. Jones will remain in the Virginia race on Nov. 4, saying it will be up to voters to decide whether he is qualified to serve as president. The scandal surrounding them spilled over into the gubernatorial race, with Democrat Abigail Spanberger having to repeatedly raise the issue.
Platner’s old post raises new questions
Platner, a Democrat and oyster farmer, has been a hot topic among Maine progressives, especially since Gov. Janet Mills was sworn in for a second term last week. Participated in the Democratic Party’s election for the U.S. Senate.. Both Democrats are vying for the chance to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who has been in office for 30 years.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills greets members of Congress before delivering the State of the Union address at the State Capitol in Augusta, Maine, on January 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bucati, File)
Platner attempted to explain his past online comments in a video posted to social media last week. In it, he not only made previous statements denying military sexual assault, but also questioned the gratuity practices of black patrons and criticized police officers and rural Americans.
“There’s someone I don’t recognize,” he said in a five-minute apology video.
In an interview posted Tuesday on the Democratic podcast Pod Save America, Platner sought to further distance himself from comments posted online between 2013 and 2021, calling them the ramblings of a recent military veteran.
“It was a moment when I wasn’t exposed to things yet, and I had opinions and thoughts that were colored by my experiences in the service,” he said during the podcast.
However, Platner himself brought up the tattoo, saying he got it in 2007 when he was in his 20s. He said he was infected on a night of drinking in Kosovo while on Marine leave. A video shown during the podcast shows Platner dancing shirtless with a tattoo visible on his upper chest.
Plattner said he and his fellow Marines “chose the scary-looking skulls and bones from the wall because we were Marines, and as you know, skulls and bones are pretty standard military equipment.”
The Anti-Defamation League, a prominent anti-Semitism advocacy group, reviewed the video and determined that the image of the tattoo was a specific symbol of Hitler’s paramilitary organization, the Schutzstaffel (SS), which was responsible for the systematic murder of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II.
“This looks like a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo. If true, it’s a problem for a high-ranking candidate to get a tattoo,” Oren Segal, senior vice president for counterextremism and intelligence at the Anti-Defamation League, said in an email to The Associated Press. “We understand that sometimes people get tattoos without understanding the association with hate. In such cases, the person wearing the tattoo should be asked whether they reject its hateful meaning.”
Meaning of Platner’s tattoo: “I had no idea”
Still, Platner did not immediately deny the symbol’s meaning during the interview, except to say, “I’m not a secret Nazi.”
“I have lived my life as a normal person with a skull on my chest,” he said. “In all my life experience, no one ever said to me, ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’ It never occurred to me.”
But former Platner executives say they should have known.
“Maybe he didn’t know when he received it, but he received it years ago and knows full well what it means and should have covered it up,” Genevieve L. MacDonald, Mr. Platner’s former political director who quit the campaign last week, said in a Facebook post Tuesday.
Mr. Platner is scheduled to face Mr. Mills in next year’s primary.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who supports Mr. Platner, stuck by his candidacy, telling reporters on Tuesday that Mr. Platner is an “excellent candidate.”
Sanders added: “I’m going to support him.”
Democrats follow in Trump’s campaign footsteps
These episodes, including Jones’ explosive revelations in Virginia, follow a decade in which Trump rewrote the standards of what could derail a campaign.
Trump won the 2016 presidential election despite the leak of a recording of his conversation with an Access Hollywood reporter 11 years ago. he boasted in derogatory terms About making sexual advances toward a woman who is not his wife. Trump also mentioned “There are really great people on both sides.” In 2017, a woman protesting a white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, was struck and killed by a white supremacist’s car.
Most recently, Trump was impeached twice during his first term, and was subsequently impeached before being elected to a second non-consecutive term in 2024. Convicted in 34 criminal cases The plan was to illegally influence the 2016 election by paying hush money to a porn star who said the two had sex. Mr. Trump denied the allegations.
“I think there’s a sense among Democrats that if Republicans can ignore calls for him to resign, why can’t we?” said Todd Belt, director of George Washington University’s School of Politics and Business.
During last week’s attorney general debate, Jones addressed this very issue, referencing Trump’s speech in which he called on his supporters to object to the 2020 presidential election before many of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, which Trump lost.
“What about when Donald Trump used inflammatory language to incite a riot to try to overturn an election here in this country?” Jones said.
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Krusi from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti in Washington also contributed to this report.
