Democrats keep trying to tie President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. They are now rallying around a man who spent nearly two decades with a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest.
Graham Platner is the presumptive Democrat nominee to challenge Sen. Susan Collins for Maine’s Senate seat. It’s a seat Democrats desperately want to win, as Maine is generally a blue state. Despite being a political newbie, Platner garnered major support after entering the race last August, including from Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Former Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, recently dropped out of the race. The Senate Majority PAC, which is connected to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, then said it would back Platner. The DNC is helping him, too.
None of that is particularly unusual. But this sure is: In 2007, Platner had a Nazi symbol, a Totenkopf, tattooed on his chest. A branch of Hitler’s SS used the Totenkopf, which is German for “death’s head,” as a symbol. That part of the SS guarded concentration camps.
For his part, Platner claimed ignorance of the tattoo’s meaning. He said he got the tattoo in Croatia while serving in the Marines. After the ink became a political headache, he covered it with a new tattoo.
Platner’s denial didn’t ring true to his former political director Genevieve McDonald. She resigned last October over Platner’s old Reddit posts.
“Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest,” she wrote on Facebook. “He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”
Now, Democrats have spent years trying to link Trump to Nazi Germany. Last May, Minnesota Gov. and former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz called ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” In September, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, called Trump a “wannabe Hitler.” In late 2023, President Joe Biden’s doomed re-election campaign attacked Trump for “parrot(ing) Adolf Hitler.”
Aided by the propaganda press, in January 2025, Democrats even viciously attacked Elon Musk for an awkward hand gesture during a speech. They labeled it a Nazi salute. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was one of the many who ripped into Musk. “In this country, we hate Nazis. Kind of like a foundational, defining thing,” she said.
Apparently not. Ocasio-Cortez has complimented how Platner’s campaign has connected with voters.
Yes, politics is often shameless. But the disconnect here is striking.
I asked the offices of the Southern Nevada congressional delegation if it was appropriate to support a candidate who had a Nazi tattoo on his chest for two decades. Sen. Jacky Rosen didn’t respond. Neither did Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Rep. Susie Lee or Rep. Steven Horsford.
Rep. Dina Titus said she hasn’t met Platner but said, “I am against antisemitism and political violence, regardless of the source.”
Good for Titus. Opposing antisemitism should be a bipartisan priority.
But one suspects it won’t be for a man who had a Nazi-linked tattoo on his chest for nearly 20 years — and the political party that now embraces him.
Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow
@victorjoecks on X.
