Old and busted: Let’s punch Nazis! New hotness: Let’s hug Nazis!
Chuck Schumer inadvertently finds himself in the old and busted column on this score. Schumer recruited Maine governor Janet Mills to run against Susan Collins in an attempt to win control of the US Senate in the midterms. At the time, the strategy seemed sound. Mills had gone toe-to-toe with Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration, and Mills won two statewide elections already, both times with record-setting vote totals for gubernatorial elections.
And most of all, Mills didn’t have an SS Totenkopf tattoo on her chest.
What Schumer apparently didn’t anticipate was the enthusiasm that progressives and their funders would have for Graham Platner, who actually did have an SS Totenkopf tat on his pec. For eighteen years. Mills couldn’t raise enough money to keep her campaign going, even with Schumer’s imprimatur. She bailed, and now Democrats will have Platner run against Collins.
Now NOTUS reports that Democrats are angry with Schumer not because they got stuck with a Nazi-curious candidate, but because Schumer didn’t get behind Platner fast enough:
But as the party moved on from a Mills campaign that insiders say failed to launch and in the end met dire financial straits, Democrats are questioning Schumer’s strategies.
Schumer “has an idea of what voters want that’s stuck in 1996,” and he’s “deeply removed from the anger that people feel,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of the progressive candidate recruitment group Run For Something.
Litman said Schumer’s primary interventions are “sowing dissent” because putting “your thumb on the scale, and to do it so incorrectly, undermines that institution’s relationship with voters.”
Schumer’s position within the party has grown more tenuous. Some Senate Democratic candidates have said if elected, they would not support him as Democratic leader. Other members of his caucus have conspicuously endorsed candidates who are running in primaries against Schumer-aligned competitors.
Ahem. Litman seems to forget that Mills did grab national headlines in the spring of 2025 because she kept firing back at Trump in defending progressives’ trans policies and DEI. Those were not the policies of 1996; those are the policies that progressives demanded as late as, well, today. Instead of backing Mills with money and organization, however, far-left activists decided to invest in a candidate who tattooed himself with a Nazi symbol, called himself a “communist,” urged people to fight fascism with “a good semi-automatic rifle,” and blamed women for sexual assault for not wearing “Kevlar underwear.”
Does anyone really wonder why Schumer went out of his way to recruit Mills, an actual progressive?
Of course, Schumer is now bending the knee to the Totenkopf Candidate:
Schumer and Democrats will now try to defeat Collins with political newcomer Graham Platner, an attention-winning but controversial candidate whom the Senate majority leader publicly snubbed for months.
The two sides are already moving to mend fences with each other after Mills’ announcement: Officials from Platner’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee were in communication with each other Thursday, according to an adviser from Platner’s campaign. Democratic groups praised the military veteran’s campaign, and Platner himself said he was “eternally grateful” for Mills’ service to the state.
Despicable. And this leaves every other Democrat having to explain why they freaked out over Pete Hegseth’s Jerusalem Cross tattoo as some kind of cryptofascist messaging while embracing the man who wore Heinrich Himmler’s symbol for eighteen years until covering it up with some weird Celtic tumor:
Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen defends Maine Democrat Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo and social media posts, including saying women should “act like an adult” to avoid rape.
HOST: “The dude had a Nazi tattoo…”
VAN HOLLEN: “He went through a really rough period…” pic.twitter.com/q9ihMofs8I
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 30, 2026
For eighteen years. He only got the new tat last year when pictures of the Nazi symbol began floating around when he began his campaign for the Senate nomination.
This is the moment that the GOP has to learn its lesson from Claire McCaskill and make Platner into the Democrats’ Todd Akin. Every Republican candidate for Senate and the House this year has to demand whether their Democrat opponent supports Platner’s tattoo, statements on communism and political violence, and why they’d support someone who sported Nazi symbology literally until he got caught. The RNC has to make Platner the fascist poster boy for progressives across the country. The gloves have to come off now, especially when the progressives that pushed Platner as a nominee are also following his advice on normalizing political violence and encouraging assassinations.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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