Sen. Fetterman went after Graham Platner in a recent CNN interview.
Democrat Senator John Fetterman calls Graham Platner a creep for posting explicit pictures on Kik — aka “Predator’s Paradise.”
FETTERMAN: “What kind of a creeper has spent a decade on platform like Kik?” pic.twitter.com/EmkKwpDwnr
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 2, 2026
There are lots of Democrats reacting angrily to Fetterman. Many are saying this is a private matter and there are more important things to worry about. And, as I’ve said before I think there’s some truth to that.
The reason I think this hits a bit different from Platner’s previous scandals is the timing. Unlike his tattoo or his Reddit comments, this is from 10 years ago or even six years ago. This happened fairly recently and that seems to undermine Platner’s whole narrative to some degree. Nate Silver made this point on X:
The whole narrative they built is Platner had youthful, drunken indiscretions and was on a redemption arc. Which was always probably bullshit, and this story speaks to that. Voters can/should vote for him anyway if they share his policy goals! But that’s up for them to decide.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 1, 2026
This is the point I tried to make when I first wrote about this. Platner has so much ugly baggage that the only way for him to get away from it was to promise voters a redemption arc. Yes, he was a real dirt bag many years ago and spent time venting angrily on Reddit, but that was then and I’m not that guy anymore. He was very explicit about this change of heart when the Reddit posts first came out. Here’s what he told the Washington Post last October:
“Rape is a real thing,” he wrote. “If you’re so worried about it to buy Kevlar underwear you’d think you might not get blacked out f—-d up around people you aren’t comfortable with.”…
Platner disavowed the comments in a Friday interview with The Post that marked his first public remarks on the posts about sexual assault. He said he was at a low point in his life in 2013 after returning from a fourth deployment to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Feeling “utterly lost and isolated,” he said, he sought community on sometimes “toxic” corners of Reddit as he battled post-traumatic stress disorder that he was then not receiving treatment for.
“I don’t want people to judge me off the dumbest thing I said on the internet 12 years ago,” he said. “I would like people to engage with who I am today.”
He said he rarely served alongside women in the male-dominated infantry and has since come to see sexual assault in the military as a crucial issue. “I can honestly say I did not know what the f— I was talking about,” he added. “I have been for quite some time on the opposite side of this conversation.”
In short, Platner knows he was a bit of a creep 12 years ago but he’s matured a lot since then. He’s a new man.
If that’s your pitch fine. Voters are forgiving, especially where there’s evidence someone regrets their mistakes. But if, suddenly, there’s a story that less than 3 years ago you were on a scuzzy website sexting 6-12 women not long after getting married, it sort of calls into question that whole explanation.
Voters may rightly decided that the claim Platner is a new man doesn’t seem as credible if it turns out he was still the same crude guy 2 years ago. In fact, they may begin to wonder if he’s telling the truth even now. He’s blown up his redemption arc story.
Most of us remember Anthony Wiener, another politician who was sexting women and who got caught and then claimed he’d turned his life around and ran for Mayor of New York. And then in the middle of that campaign he was caught sexting women again. That was the end of his career. In fact he went to prison.
Maybe Platner is different but I’m not sure why voters should feel confident about that at this point. He said his bad days were 12 years behind him and we just found out they were 2 years behind him. What do we find out next?
Fortunately for him, most of Platner’s supporters don’t seem to care.
Breese Reagle, a sandwich shop owner, listened carefully as someone explained the latest controversy to engulf the campaign of Graham Platner…
Reagle, 37, shook his head. “It’s like, goddamn — again?” But he loves Platner’s politics and believes Collins must go. “When push comes to shove, I’m going to vote for him,” Reagle said.
In a dozen interviews in southern Maine on Monday, Democratic voters expressed dismay at the latest revelations but only one said the news would impact her vote in the November’s elections, where Democratic hopes of winning control of the Senate hinge on the race in Maine.
And that’s it. Platner’s redemption arc didn’t really matter to most of them except as a handy excuse for why they’d vote for a guy who had a Nazi tattoo and a string of offensive statements about every minority group. The fact that that all blew up this week doesn’t matter to Dems. They really only cared about winning all along.
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