Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner first said he was sorry for having a chest tattoo that looked like a notorious Nazi symbol.
Now he is saying it was never a Nazi symbol in the first place.
Platner is running in the Democratic primary for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat, currently held by Republican Susan Collins, who has occupied the position for three decades.
The first-time candidate, an oyster farmer and combat veteran, set off a wave of controversy last October when a shirtless video of him surfaced online.
The video, originally shared with the podcast “Pod Save America,” showed a tattoo on Platner’s chest that bore a striking resemblance to the Totenkopf — a skull emblem historically associated with Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, the paramilitary force responsible for the systematic murder of millions of Jews and others across Europe during World War II.
Platner said he received the tattoo in 2007 during a night of heavy drinking while on military leave in Split, Croatia, alongside fellow Marines.
“We got very inebriated and we did what Marines on liberty do and we decided to go get a tattoo,” Platner told “Pod Save America.”
When controversy erupted in October, Platner initially said he only learned of the tattoo’s Nazi associations “a few days ago.”
His campaign announced plans for removal, but he ultimately chose to cover it with a new tattoo — a Celtic knot with a dog design — citing limited laser removal options in rural Maine.
“Going to a tattoo removal place is going to take a while,” Platner said at the time. “I wanted this thing off my body.”
Platner’s position then shifted significantly. In a more recent interview with the news publication Zeteo, he walked back his earlier framing and pushed back on the characterization of the tattoo as Nazi-related, calling it instead a straightforward skull-and-crossbones and describing it as an “eminently reasonable thing.”
“I had a meeting in New York not that long ago with a number of Jewish leaders, we started talking about it, and when we started, somebody was like, ‘Wait a second. We thought you had a swastika,’” Platner said. “When I explain the actual story, pretty much everybody’s like, again, ‘That seems like an eminently reasonable thing.’”
Platner went further in defending his decision to get the tattoo in the first place.
“I’ll just be upfront: The more they talk about it, the more I get to talk about the fact that I got that because I was a combat Marine. That’s why I had that,” he said.
“It was the fighting I took part in, in Iraq, that resulted in me and other machine gunners getting a skull-and-crossbones tattoo. If we want to continue talking about my military service, I’m more than happy to.”
During that same Zeteo interview, Platner recommended the 1985 war film “Come and See,” a depiction of Nazi atrocities that repeatedly shows Totenkopf symbols displayed on Nazi uniforms throughout the film.
An anonymous former acquaintance, speaking to Jewish Insider, disputed Platner’s claimed ignorance of the symbol’s meaning.
The source alleged that during a 2012 conversation at a Washington, D.C. bar, Platner referred to the tattoo as a Totenkopf in a “cutesy little way,” saying, “Oh, this is my Totenkopf.”
That account stands in direct conflict with Platner’s claim that he only became aware of the Nazi connection during his Senate campaign.
Reddit posts reportedly made by Platner in 2019, first reported by the Daily Mail, added further scrutiny. According to that report, Platner participated in online discussions specifically about the Totenkopf symbol, raising additional questions about his stated timeline of awareness.
An Anti-Defamation League spokesperson stated that the tattoo “appears” to be a Nazi Totenkopf, describing it as “troubling.”
The ADL added that while some people do get tattoos without understanding their hateful connections, those individuals should be asked whether they repudiate the meaning.
Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, told The New York Times that the Totenkopf was, after the swastika, one of the most recognizable symbols from World War II, and said it struck her as “disingenuous” that Platner would be unaware of the symbol’s Nazi associations given his military background.
The tattoo controversy has unfolded alongside separate scrutiny of Platner’s now-deleted Reddit posts, in which he dismissed military sexual assaults, questioned tipping habits of Black restaurant patrons, and directed criticism at police officers and rural Americans.
Platner apologized for those posts as well, attributing them to a period of undiagnosed PTSD following his military service.
Despite calls from some Democratic rivals to withdraw from the race, Platner has refused to exit and continues to hold the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
