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Dems Finally Get Their Own Nazi...and the Reactions Have Been a Mess

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  October 22, 2025 10:45 PM

What a nightmare for Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who got hurled into the furnace this week after it was revealed he has Nazi-themed tattoos. These aren’t allegations; he admitted to it. He claims that he got them on a night of drunkenness while he served in the US Marine Corps in Eastern Europe. When you’re go-to line is ‘I’m not a secret Nazi,’ a Chernobyl-like public relations meltdown is on the horizon. The tattoo is located on his chest (via Axios):

Platner drew the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as an anti-establishment outsider, but his campaign is already trying to clean up recently resurfaced Reddit posts where he espoused offensive views about Black people and sexual assault victims. 

Platner's campaign shared video with Pod Save America of him singing shirtless that exposed a skull tattoo on his chest that resembles the "Totenkopf," a symbol used by Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS). 

The move was intended to get ahead of opposition research, and the GOP's Senate campaign arm seized on the images, accusing Platner of having a "Nazi tattoo."

Driving the news: Platner said in an interview with Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America that was released on Monday that the video was from his brother's wedding, where he lip-synced Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball." 

"I am not a secret Nazi," Platner told Vietor, adding that he got the tattoo in Croatia while deployed and was "very inebriated." Platner said he and his fellow Marines chose "a terrifying looking skull and crossbones." 

Oh, it gets better—he had it removed:

My Lord, drop out, man.  

The reactions have been both hilarious and disturbing. There have been elite memes mocking this man, but also a slew of Democrats and liberal hosts who have defended the Nazi tattoos. It’s almost as if they’re frustrated; they got owned after trying to cast Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as a Nazi for his Celtic cross tattoos. It is also a bit predictable that liberals wouldn’t know a real Nazi since they’re so historically illiterate. If Platner were a Republican, you bet this would be more of a story, but he got caught, he’s confessed, and now there’s only one thing for these people to do: defend this stuff. 

Ex-MSNBC host Krystal Ball tweeted, “For me personally I’ll take a candidate with a regrettable tattoo over one who has steadfastly supported a genocide.” 

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Yeah, peak idiocy, and she got wrecked over it. The “regrettable tattoo” only has its links to the most infamous genocide, but whatever.