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Nothing to Worry About, Platner Assures Democratic Senators

“Worse than [the] Nazi tattoo.”

That’s the claim of Steve Robinson, who runs the website Maine Wire, regarding some sort of forthcoming scandal news about Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner. I think that may be the first time those words have been put in that order in the English language.

Robinson isn’t alone; other folks claim to have heard similar claims of some worse scandal that will emerge soon.

Yesterday on X, I had some fun wondering just what skeleton Platner could have in his closet that could be worse than having a tattoo of the Nazi SS Totenkopf tattooed on his chest for 18 years.

A tattoo that the military history buff insisted that he never recognized as a symbol of the Nazis, even as he discussed on Reddit forums the German helmets in a photo of the Swedish Volunteer Battalion in a trench during the Continuation War in 1941. (More solid reporting from the good folks over at the Washington Free Beacon.) For a guy who says he knew nothing about the Nazis, he sure seemed to know a lot about the Nazis.

A tattoo that he coincidentally just happened to cover up in his photo on the hook-up app, Kik.

If you’re not familiar with the app Kik, Aaron Ford, the Democratic attorney general of Nevada, offered some details in August of last year.

“Kik’s anonymity feature and low barrier to entry, among other things, harm Nevada’s youth,” said AG Ford. “The company’s actions and false claims of safety also put Nevada’s children in danger. I will not allow companies to neglect their responsibilities to Nevada’s youth, and I will bring any offender that does so to court.”

Kik’s easily created anonymous accounts have created a haven for child predators and facilitated the dissemination of child sexual assault material. Until recently, Kik actively marketed itself to teen audiences, all the while failing to disclose known hazards and risks.

The OAG has alleged that Kik’s low barrier to entry — the app did not require email, phone or other identification — and its large userbase — the company once boasted that 40 percent of American teens used its platform — made the app a “predator’s paradise” according to one serial offender.

So, the Maine Democratic Senate candidate was looking for extramarital sexual thrills on an app that a Democratic law enforcement official and one of its users has characterized as a “predator’s paradise.”

Platner still had an active profile on Kik as of the start of the week.

The Wall Street Journal has the scoop about how Platner assured Senate Democrats in Washington on Tuesday that he has no more skeletons in his closet, and that they don’t have anything to worry about with additional scandals or bombshells.

In a private meeting Tuesday with some Senate Democrats, Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner attempted to quell growing concerns from some in the party that a string of negative revelations about his life had jeopardized his candidacy.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders asked Platner if any additional allegations would emerge against the embattled Democratic candidate, according to people familiar with the discussion. Platner said there weren’t any.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who also attended the meeting, followed up and said there is a big difference between marital issues and allegations of sexual assault, the people said. Platner agreed and denied any credible allegations of assault were forthcoming.

“It’s not a secret I’ve had a messy, complicated life,” he told the senators, one of the people said. “The worst of the rumors we’ve all heard are not true.”

I don’t know about you, but that wording does not seem particularly reassuring if you’re a Democrat. First, which rumors was Platner referring to? And if only “the worst” are not true… how about the merely moderately bad? Doesn’t that sound like a de facto concession that some rumors out there are true?

Mind you, in April, Platner assured a supporter that he had no additional scandals or past bad behavior to disclose.

Toward the end of a town hall meeting in Sabattus, Maine, in April, the night before Ms. Mills dropped out, a Platner supporter named Carolyn Greeley asked him a blunt question.

“Is there anything you need to share with us?” she asked.

Ms. Greeley was bothered by his past comments about women, she said, and wanted assurances that there would not be more damaging revelations to come.

Mr. Platner was unequivocal in his response. Republicans would certainly “make stuff up” about him, he said. He had dated, had girlfriends, “gone through life.” But everything had already been “dragged up,” he promised the crowd.

“In my past, there is not some big, dark secret,” he said.

And here’s Platner in an interview with the New York Times, May 16:

Q: The test right now is if you can run in a general election. There have already been quite a few controversies, and we’re going to talk about that later. But the G.O.P. is going to dig up everything and more that they can. 

Platner: And probably lie at some point.

Q: Is there something new you want to get ahead of? 

Platner: No. I have lived my life. I’ve been there for the whole thing. I know what I’ve been through.

In other words, Platner has twice already assured the public that he has no other scandals he needed to admit, and then the Kik account and sexting came out. If you’re a Democratic senator, why on earth would you believe his assurances now?

One more thought, from that essay from River Page in the Free Press that I mentioned earlier this week, about the notion of regrettable tattoos.

Likely, there are many in Maine who can sympathize with Platner’s embarrassing situation. One in four Americans say they regret at least one tattoo, according to a 2023 consumer survey, and removing them is a $1.29 billion industry.

Okay, but when people say they regret a tattoo, I figure it’s often a circumstance that they got a tattoo of the person who they thought they were going to marry, but who ended up cheating on them or dumping them. Or they got one that they thought was of the Chinese characters for ‘serenity’ and the tattoo artist gave them ones that mean ‘gullible.’ I have a hard time believing there are that many Maine voters who relate to getting a symbol of the Nazi Schutzstaffel concentration camp guards.

It’s been fascinating to see the euphemisms deployed to defend sticking with Platner at this point. Jesus Mesa of Newsweek refers to the Democratic Party’s “purity tests” and “years of holding candidates to strict standards of personal and ideological conduct.” Don’t have a Nazi tattoo for 18 years, and don’t use the app called a “predator’s paradise”… those are “strict standards”? Those are “purity tests”?

Amanda Litman, co-founder of Democratic recruitment and training organization Run for Something, said in a video statement, “[I]s Graham Platner a perfect person? No.” Again, the standard is not perfection; the standard is no connections to neo-Nazi-ism nor presence on a social media platform for sexual predators.

Litman also declared that “people are allowed to grow and change.” (Take that, straw man!) Except the sexting was from last summer. Where’s the evidence that he’s grown and changed?

There are a handful of voices on the left who are horrified by what they’re seeing from their fellow progressives, who adamantly insist they stand for something better and higher than the moral turpitude of Donald Trump and the glaring hypocrisy of his religious-right defenders. But Alan Elrod notices that a whole bunch of supposedly feminist men are defending Platner with blatantly misogynist rhetoric.

Jerusalem Desmas notices that the defenses of Platner are coming oddly close to insisting that cheating on your wife is a virtue: “What unites these reactions isn’t so much the defense of Platner as the staunch denial that there’s anything wrong here at all. Cheating isn’t a moral failing we can forgive; it’s a mark of rugged authenticity, and any qualms about infidelity are the prissy reflexes of an out-of-touch elite. . . . A choice I make because someone else lied to me isn’t really my choice at all. This is the old liberal point about why deception wrongs us — it’s not about the sex, it’s the theft of another person’s ability to make an informed decision about her own life.”

(Some people would argue it is about the sex, but let’s also recognize that a lot of people would be deeply distraught to hear their spouse declare that they’ve secretly fallen in love with someone else but hadn’t consummated the relationship.)

Magdi Jacobs reminds us that Platner was expelled from the elite Connecticut prep boarding school Hotchkiss, and that Platner’s claim he was expelled for truancy does not align with the school’s stated policies. Expulsion at the school requires . . . more serious violations.

ADDENDUM: Our Dan McLaughlin notices a badly forced comparison: “Gessen is at it again, this time on Hungary, telling us, ‘This Is the Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too.’ The first problem here is that Viktor Orbán was defeated because he was running for reelection. Trump is not.”