Maine Senate Candidate Says He’ll Remove Tattoo Resembling Nazi Symbol

Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and veteran who had to fend off another controversy just last week, said he’s planning to remove a tattoo on his chest that resembles a Totenkopf, the Nazi skull and crossbones symbol also known as the “death’s head” emblem.

Platner, who has a big endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), revealed the plans Tuesday after the disclosing the tattoo to politics podcast Pod Save America a day prior, saying he had no idea what the symbol was when he got it while “very inebriated” with his fellow Marines in Croatia nearly 20 years ago.

In his statement Tuesday, Platner emphasized he remained unaware of the tattoo’s similarity to the Nazi symbol until he “started hearing from reporters and DC insiders.”

“I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that — and to insinuate that I did is disgusting,” Platner wrote in a statement Tuesday. “I am already planning to get this removed.”

During the podcast appearance, the Democrat hoping to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins offered more evidence that he had no idea what the tattoo resembled when he picked it off a tattoo parlor wall on a whim.

“I’ve … just lived my entire life like a regular person with the skull and crossbones on their chest, which by that, I mean taking my shirt off performing Miley Cyrus songs in front of my extended family,” he said ― a reference to a decade-old video of Platner that his campaign shared with the podcast.

“I mean, I went to college, I went to the gym, I did all the things. And at no point in this entire experience of my life did anybody ever once say, ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi,’” he continued. He added that when he later joined the Army, he was processed through the Military Entrance Processing Station, which includes a full physical. The Army prohibits tattoos of known hate symbols.

“It never came up until we got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo,” he continued. “And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I’ve not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years.”

But Platner’s recently resigned political director, former Maine state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, told local news outlet The Bangor Daily News that the campaign has been aware of issues with the tattoo since at least August. She added that Platner told her roughly a month ago that the tattoo “could be problematic.”

In a statement to the outlet, Platner’s campaign denied McDonald’s claims and dismissed them as “a lie from a disgruntled former employee.”

The controversy comes days after Platner came forward to apologize for inflammatory Reddit posts he’d made shortly after leaving the military. In the more benign ones, Platner called himself a “communist” who’d “stopped believing in any of the patriotic nonsense” since returning from deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But in others, Platner downplayed concerns about sexual assault in the military, arguing that “every whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a feature length film” and that “anyone who actually thinks the military is purposefully covering up rape” is an “idiot.” In another post, he said people who are “so worried” about rape should be more careful with their alcohol intake.

“As I read through them, I read things that I absolutely do not agree with. I read through and I see things that words and statements that I abhor,” Platner said in a lengthy apology video Friday. He added that being in “very male-dominated,” “very masculine world” of the military contributed to his thinking after he’d left the service in 2012.