Below is my column in The Hill on the Democratic establishment and media rallying around Graham Platner. As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has repeatedly stressed, Platner is needed for them to retake power. The allegations of domestic abuse, the Nazi tattoo, and other controversies are secondary to that single overwhelming goal. The question is, when they take power by any means necessary, what will they be other than the majority?

Here is the column:

“Are we the baddies?”

That line from a famous comedy sketch came to mind this week as Democrats struggled to embrace Graham Platner, the Nazi-tattooed, Hamas-praising, veteran-bashing, sex-texting, self-described Communist who was just nominated to be the next U.S. senator from Maine.

The hilarious sketch from the British show “That Mitchell and Webb Look” portrays two Nazi soldiers suddenly questioning whether they might be the bad guys in World War II. Among other things, they notice the telltale death head or “Totenkopf“ insignia on their caps and uniforms. At one point, an officer asks his friend: “Hans — are we the baddies?”

It is a question that more Democrats should be asking as their leaders from House Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) back Platner.

For years, Schumer and others have been calling their political opponents “Nazis.” With help from an enabling media, they even fueled outrage over a false claim that Elon Musk had given a Nazi salute at an inauguration celebration.

Yet presented with a man who paid to have an actual Nazi death head tattooed on his chest, Schumer would only repeat the same mantra to reporters, that a Platner victory means Democrats will “win back the Senate.”

The co-host of ABC’s “The View” was cheered by the studio audience after declaring that Democrats have to abandon “the moral high ground. … Let’s get some power!”

Former Biden aide Ron Klain dismissed Platner’s tattoo as “a skull and crossbones to remember his fallen comrades.” But the SS-Totenkopfverbände was not a grief support group, and the Nazi Totenkopf is not a Jolly Roger symbol. Rather, it is the well-known symbol of Adolf Hitler’s Third SS Panzer Division, famous for committing multiple war crimes and massacres during World War II.

Klain, an aide who helped conceal President Joe Biden’s incapacity, might seem like the worst possible character witness. But he was soon surpassed by Hunter Biden, pardoned by his father to avoid federal prison time related to his years of drug-saturated, prostitute-laden, influence-peddling scandals. In joining Platner’s defenders, Biden the Younger wants the public to know that “I have not heard anything in any way that would say to me that he is an abusive, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, or racist person.” So that settles that.

Both Democratic politicians and the media lined up to repeat Platner’s dubious claim that he had no idea that this was a Nazi symbol. According to Platner, he apparently had no curiosity about the actual meaning of the large tattoo on his chest for years. But this claim (like a number of other claims about his background) was quickly debunked by his former friends.

One woman insists that he knew it was a Totenkopf and spoke to her about it, calling it “my Totenkopf.” Lyndsey Fifield told friends in an August 2025 in an email that Platner “has a Nazi tattoo on his chest” and that “it’s a Totenkopf.”

When asked how his former girlfriend could have been discussing the meaning of his tattoo before he announced for Senate, Platner just continued to deny any such knowledge. Then another former girlfriend came forward to say that he is lying and knew the symbol’s significance. She had been attracted to Platner for his leftist politics, but she still shared Platner’s reasoning behind the tattoo: He told her that he had decided to keep it to remind himself “the U.S. was the evil bad guy overseas.”

Platner insists that these are all lies. Democratic leaders are clearly choosing not to believe them. They are also dismissing the accounts of former girlfriends alleging that Platner physically and mentally abused them.

Once again, politicians and pundits are assuring voters that these women, like the tattoo, are not critical to their voting for Platner. This includes figures like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who previously insisted that “we must believe survivors, not bully them.”

Whitehouse now says he is “unimpressed” by the allegations and the multiple women coming forward “seems like a lot of nothing.” He also reminded voters that one of the alleged victims is a Republican. So “MeToo” is apparently now “meh” in the new Platner party.

The question is whether Democrats will put their rhetoric through a certain denazification. Democrats have repeatedly analogized Trump to Hitler and his followers to brownshirted neo-Nazis. Indeed, defeating Republicans today has been compared to stopping Hitler in 1933.

So, for a party that literally sees Nazis around every tree, the one possible Nazi that they cannot see is the Democrat who had the Nazi tattoo on his chest.

In the meantime, Democrats keep openly cultivating hatred. This week, during protests in San Antonio against the Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit, one organizer called on protesters to be “obnoxious” and “make sure they know we hate them.” As he spoke, a man dressed as death chopped the air with a sickle. Another protester mimicked Charlie Kirk being assassinated, to the delight of the crowd.

All of this still leaves Democrats in the same position as the characters in the skit where Hans (like Klain) tries to say that maybe a Totenkopf is just like a harmless skull and crossbones. After all, he notes, pirates have skull symbols, and “Pirates are fun!”

But his friend then asks if that is really “how it comes across?”

The same question could be asked of fellow Democrats as speakers call for hate, as a guy dressed as the Grim Reaper hacks at invisible Republicans.

When you start dismissing Nazi tattoos, alleged female abuse victims, and calling for abandoning any moral high ground, you might want to ask, “Are we the baddies?”

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.“