Graham Platner may be running for the U.S. Senate. He’d rather run from his past — and, of course, the reporters asking about it.
On Saturday, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee in Maine was confronted with a very simple question: whether he regretted making a now-deleted Reddit post in which he wrote that a wounded Purple Heart recipient “didn’t deserve to live.”
Platner’s initial answer was silence.
The post in question came from a Reddit account called “P-Hustle,” which Platner has acknowledged is his, and was written in June 2019 in response to a viral helmet-cam video of Pfc. Ted Daniels, who was shot four times during a 2012 firefight with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Daniels survived and was later awarded the Purple Heart.
“Dumb motherf—– didn’t deserve to live,” he wrote of Daniels. “At least his stupidity and fat a– wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban’s part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home. He managed to make every possible s— decision possible when it comes to small unit combat.”
When pressed on whether he owed Daniels or Maine voters an apology, Platner leaned heavily on his own military record in his defense. “I did four tours in the infantry,” he said. “Any attempt to say that I disrespect veterans is slanderous and offensive.” Asked again if he owed Daniels an apology specifically, he pivoted to name-dropping wounded friends with Purple Hearts.
FIRST ON FOX: Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner dodges an apology when confronted over a deleted Reddit post where he said a Purple Heart recipient “didn’t deserve to live.”
Fox News Digital asked him what he would say to offended voters — and whether he owed Pfc.… pic.twitter.com/eYyvKxKQ6c
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 24, 2026
Not exactly a straight answer.
Daniels didn’t let it slide. In a Fox Business interview, he responded directly to the man who mocked him from behind a keyboard. “People like this don’t say stuff like this to my face,” Daniels said. “It’s online, and that right there tells me, Graham, you’re a coward.”
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Rob O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden, was equally blunt. “Mr. Platner was way out of line talking about a soldier that way,” O’Neill told Fox News Digital. “If you swear an oath to the country, it doesn’t even matter what the politics are. Every single time you fight, it’s for the man next to you. Politics goes out the window. And to wish ill on someone like that under fire is just, like I said, it is the opposite of everything I’ve ever been raised to believe.”
The problem is that these comments Platner has made are not a few one-offs. Platner has a trail of social media wreckage that keeps growing. He’s attacked Army soldiers as “fat” and “lazy.” He praised vulgar graffiti. He’s posted crude comments about porta potties — including a 2017 gem in which he wrote that he still had to pleasure himself every time he sat in one because of a “conditioned” response. When a reporter recently asked him about that one directly, on camera, he didn’t laugh it off or deny it. He walked into a school building and disappeared.
And, of course, the big one is that he got a Nazi tattoo he acquired while in uniform. He reportedly bragged about it for years before quietly covering it up because of his Senate campaign.
And the sad thing is that none of this has mattered to Maine Democrats. Platner became the Democrats’ presumptive Senate nominee in Maine after two-term Gov. Janet Mills dropped out last month due to weak polling and fundraising.
Susan Collins has to be watching this unfold with quiet satisfaction. As PJ Media previously reported, political analyst Mark Halperin heard from an NRSC source that the opposition research they haven’t even leaked yet is so damaging that “he won’t just lose the race, he’ll have to leave Maine.”
I suspect the worst stuff about Platner has yet to come out. And I’m guessing he’ll apologize for none of it.
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