Marine vet running for Senate has Nazi tattoo on chest

A Marine veteran of the Afghanistan War is running for the US Senate from Maine. Around these parts we tend to respect vets that run for office, even if they are doing so as Democrats. Well this fella, Graham Platner, took to a podcast to admit that he’s got a great big Nazi tattoo on his chest. He’s planning on removing it. He blames a night of your typical drunken Marines on liberty antics. Who here hasn’t gotten a giant SS-Totenkopf prominently tattooed while out with the boys?

Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is aware of the tat, and still supports Platner’s Senate bid. Time was that a person with a Nazi tattoo was political kryptonite, but the Democrat party is very accepting of those who want to push all the Jews into the sea these days.

The Press Herald has the story;

A leading Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine took the unusual step this week of disclosing he has a tattoo that has been linked to Nazis.

In an extended interview on “Pod Save America” that aired Monday night, Graham Platner said he and fellow Marines got a skull tattoo while drunk on leave in Croatia in 2007 without knowing about its association with Nazi Germany.

“We got very inebriated, and we did what Marines on liberty do, and we decided to go get a tattoo,” Platner said. “We chose a terrifying looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are pretty standard military thing.”

Platner, a combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, made the disclosure by providing a video of himself dancing in only his “silkies” (Marines’ running shorts) at a family wedding, because he said political opponents were pitching stories about it to national journalists.

The tattoo on his chest appears to resemble the Totenkopf, which is German for “death’s head.” It was worn by Hitler’s brutal SS guard and became a symbol of the unit guarding concentration camps, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The Army prohibits people with tattoos that are “extremist, racist, sexist or otherwise indecent” from serving. And Platner noted that the tattoo was never an issue during his screening for the Army National Guard or when he was cleared to serve on a security detail for the ambassador for Afghanistan.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and a progressive icon who helped launch Platner’s candidacy with an early endorsement and Labor Day rally in Portland, told Huffington Post reporter Igor Bobic Tuesday that he continues to support the candidate. Bobic posted Sanders’ comments on the social media site, X.

“There’s a young man who served his country in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he went through some really difficult experiences seeing friends of his killed or whatever, and in spite of all of that he had the courage to run,” Sanders said, according to Bobic. “I personally think he is an excellent candidate. I’m going to support him, and I look forward to him becoming the next senator in the state of Maine”

This isn’t his first stumble on the campaign trail. His political director resigned after Pattner’s past comments on reddit came to light. Here’s a bit on that; 

Graham Platner’s campaign for U.S. Senate has been rolling through the state like a juggernaut since launching in late August.

His background as an oyster farmer and military veteran has excited progressives and others eager to challenge the national Democratic establishment. And his entrance has generated largely glowing coverage from local and national media outlets.

That all changed this week when national media began reporting on a series of years-old social media posts that were deleted before he announced his candidacy.

…

Politico reported that Platner suggested in 2018 that violence may be necessary to achieve social justice, saying that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history” and “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.”

CNN was the first to report on the deleted messages, including comments in 2021 agreeing police— “all of them” — are bastards and that rural white Americans “actually” are racist, in 2020. And he said his service in the Marines and Army National Guard made him “stop believing in any of the patriotic nonsense that got me there in the first place.”

There’s more at the link. While all this sounds like your very typical modern Democrat, Platner says that all of these usual modern Democrat talking points was the fault of his PTSD and he’s all better now.

He has explained that he struggled with post traumatic stress disorder following his military service but said Thursday he no longer feels the same sense of disillusionment he once did.

Yikes.

Category: Marines, Politics, Veterans in politics, WTF?, YGBSM!!