The Democratic candidate running against Sen. Susan Collins in Maine was already facing questions about a Nazi-linked tattoo, social media posts urging violence, homophobic slurs, and bragging about being a communist.
And it just got even worse.
Fox News obtained archived posts from Graham Platner’s now-deleted Reddit account that show the radical leftist Senate candidate making graphic sexual comments about masturbating in portable toilets and his love of explicit graffiti inside restrooms.
In a March 2017 post on Reddit’s r/Military forum, Platner responded to a thread about nostalgic military smells by writing that he masturbates “every time I sit in a porta-s—er” and that the blue chemical smell had “conditioned” him.
In a separate 2021 post on Reddit’s r/USMC forum, Platner responded to a thread dedicated to explicit graffiti found in military portable toilets during overseas deployments. He said a phallic drawing he encountered at Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan was “beautiful,” “engorged and veiny,” and moving “towards its penetrative glory.” He described sitting in “sheer awe” and feeling “soul filling joy” at being allowed to “witness such glory.”
Platner’s defense when Fox News asked about his controversial posts has been consistent. He says he was joking.
“You should read the comments in context. It’s very clear I’m joking,” Platner previously told Fox News. “It’s called s***posting. It’s when you argue with people on the internet and try to bother them. So, yeah, no, it’s very obviously not true.”
GOP strategist Mehek Cooke wasn’t buying it.
“Platner is not a truth-teller. He is someone whose instincts appear crude, reckless, and deeply unserious,” Cooke said. “And by the way, if they were really ‘jokes,’ why delete the posts? That sounds less like humor and more like a CYA cleanup operation.”
“One tasteless post can be chalked up to immaturity,” she said. “But a years-long trail of vulgar, sexually degrading, and slur-filled commentary is a character issue.”
“Platner has shown he can survive controversy inside a Democratic primary. But in a general election, especially against Susan Collins, the cumulative effect of his stances, controversies, and comments matters.”
Platner previously appeared on a podcast with a tattoo later identified as a Nazi symbol — he insisted he is “not a secret Nazi.” He deleted posts from 2020 in which he called himself a “communist” and a “socialist” and now says he was joking. His archived posts contain homophobic slurs and praise for Hamas military tactics. A 2013 post suggested people concerned about rape should not “get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” Most recently, he was confronted with posts from 2020 in which he called PTSD a “bull—-” excuse. Now he claims his own PTSD diagnosis to explain why his online behavior was erratic.
Platner, a Marine Corps veteran who served four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, became the Democrats’ presumptive Senate nominee in Maine after two-term Gov. Janet Mills dropped out last month. He has the backing of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.