Not long after Janet Mills withdrew from the Senate primary in Maine, rumors swirled that the GOP had built an extensive oppo research file on Graham Platner. By that time, Platner’s Totenkopf tattoo had been exposed months earlier, but his radical-progressive agenda got the Obama Bros arguing that all veterans went through a Nazi phase (for eighteen years?) and that we all needed to put his death-camp symbology in proper context. Supposedly, though, what would come next would sink Platner for good.
Well, maybe in a rational Democrat Party, it might. A rational Democrat Party wouldn’t have allowed Platner to even get close, though. And so far, what has emerged since seems pretty anti-climactic.
Beege covered some of the new material yesterday, but today, Fox News focuses on Platner’s attacks on fellow veterans. Presumably, not the veterans who shared Platner’s fascination with death-camp symbols:
Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s deleted Reddit account has continued to cause headaches for his campaign in recent months, and a recently resurfaced post appearing to mock a U.S. soldier almost killed in combat is stirring up more controversy.
“This video never gets old,” the Reddit account “P-Hustle” — which Platner has acknowledged he owned — posted in June 2019, in reference to a viral video from the helmet cam of Pfc. Ted Daniels taken during a clash with Taliban fighters in 2012 that ended in Daniels being shot four times. He earned a Purple Heart for his injuries.
“Dumb motherf—– didn’t deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat a– wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban’s part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home, he managed to make every possible s— decision possible when it comes to small unit combat.”
Let’s talk first about the video itself. When the video emerged in 2013, Daniels did draw criticism for his actions at first, including from his chain of command, for uploading a video that could be used for Taliban propaganda. The Army said so publicly at the time:
The Army viewed Daniels’s video as a potential propaganda victory for the Taliban. In it, he is helpless, scared and alone. His fellow soldiers appear to have abandoned him. “If I were a Taliban propaganda video producer, I would be personally thanking this soldier for uploading this video to YouTube,” said Maj. Chris Thomas, an Army spokesman in Afghanistan.
However, Daniels hadn’t intended to publish the material himself; it got noticed by a YouTuber, who made it go viral and then never responded to requests from Daniels to take it down. Daniels later explained the context of the mission, including parts that didn’t get captured by his helmet cam:
PFC Daniels said the team was on a reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering mission at the time.
“The rest of the squad was pinned down by machine gun fire, I didn’t start the video until a few minutes into the firefight,” he said.
“I came out into the open to draw fire so my squad could get to safety.”
After that, the nine-day wonder of Daniels’ video dissipated into the oblivion of the viral-video and news cycles.
In other words, Platner’s criticism in 2019 wasn’t exactly outside the mainstream, even within military circles. It was, however, several years late, well after the debate over the video had become a faint memory for everyone except for Daniels and the PIO archives of the US Army. Platner’s posts ignored Daniels’ explanations and unnecessarily belittled him and his service. It looks as though Platner went out of his way to – using his own term – “s**tpost” on Reddit in a way that bolstered some weird need to look tough online. It was petty beyond belief at the time, and looks worse today.
But it’s still a petty issue, and this is the problem with the campaign thus far against Platner. We hear about more in the can that will make Platner look bad, but it’s very difficult to look worse than (a) carrying a Nazi tattoo for 18 years, and (b) suggesting that rape victims bear some responsibility for their sexual assaults. Both of those came out months ago, and nothing even remotely as bad has surfaced since. Rather than making Platner look even worse, the newer material looks relatively mild compared to what came out before. GOP strategists must believe that the effect of these more recent reveals will be cumulative, but instead they are distracting from the real problems in Platner’s background: his Nazi fascination and his misogynist beliefs about sexual assault, not to mention his public embrace of communism. All these new releases accomplish is to make those real issues look more like “old news” and allow Platner to keep changing the subject.
If oppo researchers have anything in the can that can compete with or outstrip those, they should publish it now. Otherwise, they should stay out of the way and force Platner to account for the worst parts of his background, as much and as often as possible.
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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