Graham Platner, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Maine, wore a Nazi tattoo on his chest for 18 years and only removed it months before launching his campaign.
The same media that spent a decade calling Republicans fascists is now rushing to defend him.
The double standard is staggering.
Platner also allegedly told women worried about rape they should not “get blacked out, f*cked up around people” they aren’t “comfortable” with. According to The Guardian, he allegedly said that if someone broke into his home, he would “rape them … [but] not in a sexual way, not in a gay way.”
“Graham Platner is no Nazi.” — New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, defending the Democrat with an actual Nazi tattoo
For years, the left insisted Donald Trump and Republicans were Hitler. The Washington Post compared Trump’s rhetoric to Hitler in 2023. MSNBC declared Trump “truly earned comparisons to Adolf Hitler.” The New Republic ran a cover depicting Trump as Hitler, calling it “American fascism.”
Yet when Democrats finally encountered a politician with an actual Nazi emblem tattooed on his chest, the conversation shifted.
Democracy Now called Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s Jerusalem Cross — a Christian symbol — a tattoo “linked to white supremacists and Nazis.” When covering Platner’s real Nazi tattoo, the same outlet called it a “controversy” and said it merely “resembled a Nazi symbol.”
The New York Times linked Hegseth’s cross to white supremacy and cited an unidentified “fellow service member” who flagged him as a potential “insider threat.” For Platner? The Times published Michelle Goldberg’s op-ed titled “Graham Platner Is No Nazi.”
Her argument: Even though Platner wore a Nazi tattoo for 18 years, he probably didn’t know what it meant.
When Trump nominated Matt Gaetz for attorney general, the media erupted over allegations later dropped by the Biden DOJ due to witness credibility issues. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake wrote about “Trump’s Cabinet picks, and the morality problem,” asking if “the GOP care” about “troubled sexual histories.”
Blake’s piece on Platner? “It’s fair to say ugly personal problems don’t matter the way they once did.” He framed the race around “what voters think is more important: potentially disqualifying behavior or having an additional check on Trump.”
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens called Gaetz “the proverbial tip of the spear in a larger effort to define deviancy down.” His headline about Platner? “The Good That Can Come From Platner’s Candidacy.”
Stephens argued Platner’s candidacy offers “absolution — not only for Platner, but for every nominee or candidate, Republican or Democratic, with a blemished personal history.”
For years, being accused of Nazi symbolism — falsely — was disqualifying for Republicans.
Now, when presented with a Democrat who wore an actual Nazi tattoo for nearly two decades and made horrific remarks about rape victims, the left tells us he deserves a second chance.
Platner isn’t just a flawed candidate. He is the embodiment of every false accusation the left hurled at Republicans for a decade. The media’s rush to defend him reveals what their warnings about “fascism” were really about: power, not principle.
