“I don’t want to get too forensic,” says every water-carrier posing as a journalist while attempting to rescue a flailing ally.
Chris Hayes’ qualifier comes across as especially absurd in this clip from an embarrassingly obsequious interview with Graham Platner. Remember how his platform ‘reported’ on Christine Blasey Ford’s utterly uncorroborated claims against Brett Kavanaugh? Blasey Ford provided not a single piece of evidence that ever put them at the same time and place, and her claimed witnesses all refused to back her story. And yet M-SNOW has spent the last eight years on “forensics” in claiming Kavanaugh’s guilt, while Hayes struggles with real evidence that paints Platner as a Nazi-adjacent liar.
M-SNOW and the Platner campaign must have hastily arranged this whitewash appearance once they realized that the New York Times would publish its watered-down version of an exposé of Platner’s violent and abusive past with women. Other media outlets are now reportedly talking with other women, perhaps including some who reportedly pulled out of the NYT’s effort. Within a few hours of publication, Platner took questions from Hayes that were less than softballs and more like eephus pitches intended to let Platner issue denials without explaining much.
And even then, despite Hayes’ lack of interest in “forensics,” Platner looked ridiculous. This was the absurd nadir for both:
CHRIS HAYES: Did you know what this Nazi tattoo was about before last October when you said you first became aware of it?
GRAHAM PLATNER: No, I did not. pic.twitter.com/M5wH8TSdrx
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 5, 2026
CHRIS HAYES: The Times reported that they saw texts of Lyndsey Fifield, including a text in August. This would be before October of last year, in which she basically said that you had a “Nazi tattoo,” and she joked about how she was going to go volunteer for Collins. Now, again,… pic.twitter.com/g1AJ6vpFrl
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 5, 2026
CHRIS HAYES: The Times reported that they saw texts of Lyndsey Fifield, including a text in August. This would be before October of last year, in which she basically said that you had a “Nazi tattoo,” and she joked about how she was going to go volunteer for Collins. Now, again, this is a text that got sent so we can place the time. Right? This is in August. How does she know it’s a Nazi tattoo in August of last year and you don’t know it’s Nazi tattoo in August of last year?
GRAHAM PLATNER: Well, she certainly didn’t send that text to me. So whoever she sent it to and was talking to, that’s I can’t say why, but I will say that I certainly didn’t know.
Come on, man. Platner has described himself as a military expert and historian. He wore that tattoo for eighteen years. His ex-girlfriend knew it was a Totenkopf and texted about it more than ten years after she last had contact with Platner, and two months before Platner claims he first learned about it. A journalist doesn’t have to get “forensic” to do math, and to keep following up for a better explanation. Platner got caught in a lie, but Hayes isn’t interested in exposing that; he’s only interested in rescuing the liar.
“She didn’t send that text to me.” Lyndsey Fifield hadn’t had contact with Platner for more than a decade, and yet she knew about the Totenkopf and what it meant because Platner told her about it at that time.
Also, Platner tries to claim that the tattoo was just a “skull and crossbones.” A normal skull and crossbones design would look more like the symbol we commonly associate with pirate flags and warning symbols, such as those seen on the sign below:
If Platner had asked for a skull and crossbones design, this is what he would have received. The Nazi SS symbol of the Totenkopf is something very different and very specific. The SS designed it to be distinctive, and this form has no other historical reference other than the Nazis and the death camps:
Totenkopf is a highly STYLIZED version of the skull & crossbones. The generic skull & crossbones tattoo is different and what most people easily recognize. Croatia has Neo Nazi elements. Tattoo artists? pic.twitter.com/Wbb34PDaZG
— Garner Fretz 🇺🇦🌻🇮🇱 (@garner_fretz) June 5, 2026
Platner’s lying about the tattoo, and he’s lying about everything else too, including his working-man background. That’s a deception created to lift a ne’er-do-well into politics, as the New York Post explains today:
Graham Platner has done a better job of hiding his privileged roots than the Nazi tattoo on his chest — a move which is by design.
The embattled Maine senate candidate is vocal about his disabled war veteran, rugged oyster farmer, “working class” persona; less about his attendance at an $80,000-a-year boarding school, lawyer father, or major architect grandfather.
That’s because he’s been coached how to present himself, molded to present a specific image and, in a sense, manufactured.
The truth is he was discovered and coached by a pair of Ivy League-educated radical Democratic Socialists, replicating a playbook they’ve used in Nebraska and Iowa. That revelation could be more damaging than the tattoo, sexting women other than his wife, blasting fellow veterans and admitting to masturbating in a port-a-potty, as it strikes at the heart of Platner’s alleged authenticity.
Everything about Platner’s working-class persona is fake. He barely works at all; he lives in a house bought with a loan from his father. He’s mainly employed at self-reinvention these days on behalf of socialist activists desperate to find someone they can prop up as a white working-class male for a political party desperate to appeal to that demo.
Nate Silver, not exactly a conservative’s conservative, put it best after watching the journalistic hummer Platner received on M-SNOW:
Keep in mind that if you’re defending Platner at this point you’re signing up for 5 more months of defending an obvious pathological liar.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 5, 2026
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