He seems to be getting the Mamdani treatment.
I know he has a tattoo on his chest that has potential nazi symbolism as its a skull and crossbones. However his argument is he just picked it off a wall and didn’t know the meaning, and after he found out the meaning he got the tattoo changed.
Is Platner being criticized for reasons other than just being a more progressive alternative to Mills?
Not just that. From an article published four days ago:
There’s no “potential” about it. It was literally a totenkopf.
He knew what it was for years. He only got it removed when the public found out about it.
It’s difficult to know what is in someone’s heart, but detecting bad judgement is pretty easy.
Had, it is covered now. And yeah the SS used it, but so do other military units, the Royal Lancers, Pirates, and of course just in Goth fashion. A very bad choice, he got his while in the Marines, in Croatia. Drunk soldiers make some bad choices, but he did three combat tours in Iraq, so we need to cut him some slack.
He suffers from diarrhea of the mouth. A loose cannon. Still better than Susan “my brow is furrowed but I will still vote what trump wants” Collins.
Since then, he keeps “accidentally” doing things like shaking hands with a Nazi mayor wearing a Heil Hitler shirt and letting him post the picture with a caption along the lines of “Platner and I have a lot in common”, or going on a Nazi podcast and telling the Nazi host that he’s a “long time fan” of the Nazi show, or retweeting somewhat innocuous posts that were made by Nazi accounts that mysteriously and “accidentally” showed up on his feed which is full of Nazis.
In other words, he’s a Nazi.
I think that’s a reason to reject him in Maine, but clearly many others disagree.
Details for the Nazi-adjacent dumbassery –
Retweeting a Nazi:
Nazi-ish podcast:
He’s either Nazi-sympathetic or just a massive complete idiot. Either way, if I lived in Maine I’d support Mills in the primary, as much as she sucks (and she does suck).
Oh, just because he has a Nazi tattoo and hangs out with Nazis and goes on Nazi podcasts and joined Blackwater because he wanted to kill minorities and all of a sudden he’s a Nazi?
I guess I don’t know what’s in his heart, but if he’s not a Nazi he’s dumb as shit and that’s also disqualifying.
Also, it makes it possible to label the Dems as the Nazi party, which the media will gladly do.
I don’t much care for ‘Democrats’ who don’t seem to know what they believe in, like John Fetterman, Tulsi Gabbard, Krysten Sinema, Joe Lieberman et al..
Two thumbs down on Platner.
This, in conjunction with the post just above this one.
TBF it’s so easy to stumble into Nazis these days… /s
(Now I have this concept to pitch that would have him teaming up with Pete Hegseth in a roadtrip podcast about tattoo parlors.)
A totenkopf isn’t just a skull and crossbones. It’s a VERY SPECIFIC type of skull and crossbones, which is neither the one used by the Royal Lancers or associated with pirates in pop culture.
I knew plenty of goths in high school. My sister was one. Never saw a single one of them wearing a totenkopf.
Yup, it’s like saying a lowercase “t” is a crucifix. It’s not just any skull-and-crossbones.
Yeah, well, I don’t think the kind of person picks a random tattoo off a wall without knowing what it means should be in the Senate either. Call me old-fashioned, but I think senators should have better judgment than that. Meanwhile, there is a well-vetted, well-qualified candidate in the race who has absolutely nothing wrong with her except that she’s an older woman and, apparently, not cool enough. I see no reason to take a chance on a candidate who is, at best, extremely flaky.
(I also find it … instructive to imagine what this race would look like with the genders reversed. “John Mills” would be popular for the same reasons J.B. Pritzker is, regardless of what he looked like or how charismatic he was. “Grace Platner” would never have recovered from her “Sure, I posted some things on message boards that I regret, but I had PTSD and it was affecting my judgment” moment, and “Sure, I got this tattoo, but it was in Croatia and I was drunk and I didn’t know what it meant” would have been way beyond the pale.)
He was a Jarhead then, serving, not a Senator. What soldiers do in warzones is often not well thought out-
My buddy, in the Iraq wars, said the No Booze rule had a weird new thing- take army hot chocolate, mix with instant coffee, eat with a spoon- repeat until on a caffeine high! CWO chopper pilot. Not as bad as a stupid fucking tattoo, sure, but they do silly things when drunk or bored or both. Every war.
Platner then covered it up, once he realized.
Mind you, not on my “best candidate list” by a long shot but better than Collins.
I’m not sure I see how it matters that he was in the military. He was in his twenties, which is plenty old enough to know that getting really drunk in a foreign country and getting a random tattoo is … just a bad idea on many levels. As I said, imagine if this were a female candidate! Not only would nobody consider it a valid excuse for a scandal, it would BE the scandal, a sign of epically poor judgment in itself. People might be willing to cut her some slack if she publicly acknowledged past substance abuse issues and was known to be in recovery, but not otherwise.
Wait, hold on, no one is actually believing that story, are they?
I can think of at least three reasons not to:
And that’s without getting into any of the non-tattoo allegations.
Whether anyone believes it isn’t the point. My point is that even if you do believe it, the story itself is enough of a red flag that it would already have damaged any candidate who wasn’t a charismatic dudebro type, and I’m frankly really tired of charismatic dudebros being held to a lower standard than anyone else.
“Hans… Are we the baddies?”
Croatia in 2007 was not a “warzone”.