Graham Platner, once touted as the future of the Democratic Party, is having a week.
In case you’ve forgotten about him, Platner is the far-left “oyster farmer” (translation: rich nepo-baby who took up a blue-collar trade more as a hobby than a career) running for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Maine.
While he’s an underdog in the primary against Gov. Janet Mills, if he wins, he could be in a prime position to flip the seat held by Republican Sen. Susan Collins, particularly in a blue state in a year that favors the party out of power.
That means we kind of have to pay attention to the man and his various hypocrisies, which are more dangerous than those from the average Bernie bro.
Nowhere was that more on display than the past seven days, when the rich kid blamed “billionaires” for the “anti-trans” agenda in school sports and then decried “anti-Semitism” despite the fact that he seems to have an affinity for both actual Nazis and other standard-issue anti-Semites.
First, a clip from an interview he gave to Slate last week managed to go viral. In it, he claimed that opposition to self-proclaimed transgender males in Maine high school sports was the result of rich people afraid of getting their taxes raised.
“The anti-trans campaign in Maine is funded by an out-of-state billionaire to make sure that we have this discussion and we don’t talk about raising his taxes. That’s why it exists,” Platner said.
“I think there are, like, two trans kids that compete in high school sports in Maine,” he continued.
Platner then referenced the expiration of Obamacare subsidies.
“There are 40,000 Mainers who are going to lose healthcare because of the lack of the extension. I’m sorry, one of those things seems very important and real to me. One of them seems like an invented culture war scare to keep people divided.”
Graham Platner: “The anti-trans campaign in Maine is funded by an out-of-state billionaire to make sure we have this discussion and we don’t talk about raising his taxes. That’s why it exists. I think there are like two trans kids that compete in high school sports in Maine?… pic.twitter.com/qRjPkRSjST
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) March 6, 2026
I’ll admit to having heard a lot of defenses for keeping trans boys in girls’ sports that make no sense, but “people care because a billionaire told you to so you won’t raise his taxes” is a new one on this end. Props for novelty.
It’s unclear in the clip which billionaire Platner is specifically blaming — but, as Fox News noted, a group called Protect Girls Sports forced a ballot initiative in Maine this November to bar males in female sports after Mills refused to follow an executive order protecting women’s sports signed by President Donald Trump.
Republican mega-donor Richard Uihlein is one of the motive forces behind it, according to the Bangor Daily News, which is assumedly what Platner is referring to.
Nevertheless, it’s a bit ironic to hear this kind of eat-the-rich rhetoric from our humble oyster farmer — a man who, as the Washington Free Beacon noted, “attended an elite Connecticut boarding school that costs upwards of $75,000 and is the grandson of a world-famous architect known for designing $20,000 chairs.”
In other words, he’s a rich guy telling you to vote against a proposition that’s already generally popular because a richer guy is actually tricking you into making it popular.
Sound logic, if you ask me.
For most candidates, that’d be enough hypocrisy for one week. However, we had a spate of terrorist attacks this week, including one at a synagogue in Michigan on Thursday. Platner took to social media and said that “Antisemitism is on the rise, and it must be stopped.”
Antisemitism is on the rise, and it must be stopped. We must not and will not stand by while people are targeted and killed for who they are or how they pray. pic.twitter.com/O6B71Wel5o
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) March 12, 2026
In a vacuum, this assertion would be acceptable. Laudable, even. The problem is that the rise in anti-Semitism is coming from the left in general, and people like Platner in particular.
Let’s start with the fact that Platner literally had a Nazi tattoo:
This you? https://t.co/n1Yoa4n1ue pic.twitter.com/mPR7LjdvFO
— Senate Republicans (@NRSC) March 12, 2026
🚨 Graham Platner, a far-left Democrat candidate running for U.S. Senate in Maine, has a NAZI tattoo on his chest
The skull and bones on his chest is called “Totenkopf” and it was used by Hitler’s SS pic.twitter.com/IpZaO0Fdi4
— Ryan Saavedra (@RyanSaavedra) October 21, 2025
While Platner initially claimed he got the tattoo while he was in the military and didn’t know what it meant — simply picking the most minatory thing he could find because he was drunk out of his mind, according to his account — sources who knew him in the 2010s said he understood it was the “Totenkopf,” a symbol of a Nazi SS unit notorious for its actions in the concentration camps.
Platner brushed off the controversy, arguing it bolstered his campaign.
“It is amusing for me to watch the campaign described in the media as collapsing or falling apart — when internally, we frankly have not felt this strong since the beginning,” he said in November. “It hasn’t sunk my campaign. In fact, it seems, in many ways, it’s strengthened us.”
Well, if one Nazi-loving gesture strengthened his chances, why not a bunch of them?
That’s not a rhetorical question, alas. In January, he sat down for an interview with anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Nate Cornacchia, according to Jewish Insider, during which he described himself as “a longtime fan” of his YouTube channel, “Valhalla VFT.”
Cornacchia has, among other things, claimed Israel was involved in the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
In February, meanwhile, Platner boosted a social media post decrying a potential war with Iran made by Stew Peters, another anti-Semite who loves him some Holocaust denial. This time, Platner’s campaign said they removed the boost after finding Peters was running a “despicable account.”
And even without those specifics, there are the generalities: He’s the kind of leftist that calls military action against Gaza “genocide” and makes common cause with the people responsible for that pesky rise in anti-Semitism that causes Islamic State group sympathizers to attempt a terror attack against a synagogue.
This would be cosmic justice visited upon a guy who’s had it coming since he launched his campaign last year. The problem is that privileged-crypto-commie anti-Semite leftists have been touted as the future of the Democratic Party. Platner might not be the most visible, but he’s still been lumped in with figures like Zohran Mamdani and Rashida Tlaib as the next generation of leftist.
These past few days, in other words, should be viewed as an object lesson in just why that should scare the dickens out of us, even if he does lose the primary to Gov. Mills.
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