
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There is a special kind of partisan vertigo that sets in when you watch people who have spent a decade lecturing the country about decency, character, and &#8220;when they go low, we go high&#8221; suddenly decide that none of that applies if the candidate has a &#8220;D&#8221; next to his name. That is exactly what is happening in Maine, where Graham Platner, a man with a Nazi-style Totenkopf tattoo on his chest, a documented history of disturbing comments about rape, and a trail of inflammatory online posts, has become the Democratic Party&#8217;s newest progressive darling.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bill Maher&#8217;s Backhanded Endorsement</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Bill Maher, never one to shy away from saying the quiet part out loud, openly admitted on his show that Platner is &#8220;scary.&#8221; Not &#8220;misunderstood.&#8221; Not &#8220;taken out of context.&#8221; Scary. Maher ran through Platner&#8217;s list of issues, including sexting while married, old posts calling police &#8220;bastards&#8221; and making racist comments about Black people, and of course the Nazi tattoo, and then told Mainers to vote for him anyway.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">His reasoning was almost comically transactional. &#8220;We need to restore balance in our government, and a Democratic Senate would help a lot with that,&#8221; Maher said. As if controlling the Senate is worth more than basic human decency. He then dropped what might be the most chilling line of the entire saga, referencing an account from a former girlfriend that Platner described his plan for a home invader as wanting to &#8220;rape the home invader,&#8221; not in a sexual sense, but as an act of dominance and power.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Maher&#8217;s conclusion? Platner doesn&#8217;t need a Senate term. He needs &#8220;a gap year in Costa Rica.&#8221; And yet, vote for him anyway. That is not an endorsement. That is a hostage note.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Double Down</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">While Maher at least had the decency to sound uneasy, Senator Bernie Sanders has shown no such hesitation. After the allegations, the Reddit posts, the tattoo, all of it, Sanders was asked if his endorsement still stood. His answer was a flat &#8220;Of course. Why would I not?&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Elizabeth Warren has also stuck by Platner, both senators apparently viewing his progressive economic platform as more important than the mountain of red flags attached to the man delivering it. Sanders framed the race in apocalyptic terms, declaring that Democrats &#8220;cannot continue to allow the Republican Party to control the Senate and push forward Trump&#8217;s oligarchic and authoritarian agenda,&#8221; and insisting Platner is the only candidate who can stop it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That is the entire argument now. Power first, principles whenever convenient.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Jon Stewart Plays Defense Attorney</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Jon Stewart, who built a career mocking politicians for exactly this kind of hypocrisy, gave Platner a friendly platform on The Weekly Show to air his grievances against the Democratic establishment. Stewart argued that party leaders treat progressive candidates like &#8220;MAGA loyalists,&#8221; dismissing them as too extreme despite winning primaries, and called the establishment&#8217;s hesitation a sign that it is &#8220;lost.&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Platner used the airtime to frame himself as an outsider fighting entrenched power, telling Stewart that meaningful change has never come from institutions deciding to do the right thing on their own. Funny, considering the conversation conveniently skipped over the Nazi tattoo and the rape comments entirely.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Morning Joe Gives Him a Soft Landing</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">After his primary win, Platner sat down for a wide-ranging, friendly interview on Morning Joe, a show whose hosts have spent years positioning themselves as the moral conscience of the Democratic Party. The interview gave Platner exactly what he wanted: a chance to talk policy, present himself as a working-class veteran, and move past the controversies without serious confrontation.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>The View Implodes on Live Television</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Even The View, hardly a bastion of conservative thought, could not paper over the absurdity. Co-host Sara Haines did not hold back. &#8220;When you show me you have so much hate in your heart, that you can literally wipe off full groups of people,&#8221; she said, referencing the tattoo, which multiple ex-girlfriends say Platner once proudly identified as a Totenkopf, a genuine Nazi symbol. &#8220;He has shown us who he is.&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Alyssa Farah Griffin piled on, noting Platner &#8220;mocked wounded veterans&#8221; and has &#8220;a bunch of homophobic slurs that have emerged online,&#8221; adding that she personally knows and believes his accuser.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And yet Sunny Hostin, who previously said she would &#8220;hold my nose&#8221; and vote for him, doubled down, arguing Democrats should &#8220;put emotions on the side&#8221; and focus on retaking the Senate. Character, apparently, is negotiable when the math works out.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Schumer and Gillibrand Abandon Their Ethics</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">&#8220;Over the past year, we have created a path to win a Democratic Senate majority and put a stop to the chaos and damage of the Trump administration by defeating the Republicans who enable his harmful agenda,&#8221; they wrote in a statement issued by the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) just after Platner was declared the winner.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Fetterman</strong> <strong>Refuses to Play Along</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To their credit, not every Democrat has lost their mind. Senator John Fetterman did not mince words, calling Platner a &#8220;creep&#8221; and a &#8220;Nazi sympathizer.&#8221; He pointed to Platner&#8217;s username, &#8220;P-Hustle,&#8221; used both on the messaging app Kik and on Reddit, where he posted controversial comments about sexual assault before deleting them. Fetterman put it plainly: &#8220;When I was growing up, if someone had a clear Nazi tattoo on them, you probably could conclude that they&#8217;re a Nazi sympathizer.&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When asked who he would vote for between Platner and Susan Collins, Fetterman simply said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221; That is not an endorsement of Collins. That is a man unwilling to lie for his team.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What Republicans Did With David Duke</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now compare all of this to how Republicans handled their own Nazi problem decades ago. When David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, ran for Congress as a Republican in 1999, the party did not workshop his rebrand or give him friendly interviews. Republican Party chairman Jim Nicholson said flatly, &#8220;There is no room in the party of Lincoln for a Klansman like David Duke.&#8221; His candidacy was repudiated outright.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That is what accountability looks like. Compare that to Democrats, who are currently debating whether a man with a literal SS death&#8217;s head tattoo and rape fantasies described in his own words should represent them in the United States Senate, and the only real disagreement seems to be about messaging strategy.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Judge Him By What He&#8217;s Done</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Platner&#8217;s defenders keep asking people to judge him by what he says now, the redemption talk, the policy positions, the apologies. But character is revealed by what someone has done, not what they say once the cameras are rolling. What Platner has done includes wearing a Nazi symbol proudly for years, describing rape as an exercise in power and dominance, mocking wounded veterans, and sending explicit messages to multiple women while married.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If that is the candidate the Democratic Party is willing to embrace in the name of winning a Senate seat, then the only honest conclusion is that the party has lost any claim to the moral high ground it spent the Trump years insisting it occupied.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"></p>

Liberal Celebrities Embrace Nazi-Tattoed Senate Candidate Platner
