Graham Platner, a U.S. military veteran and oyster farmer running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Maine, is distancing himself from controversial online posts where, among many things, he called himself a “communist” and suggested that some political resistance should include firearms in a series of now-deleted posts dating back to 2010.
cnn first reported in publications made on the Reddit platform. In an interview with ABC News, Platner confirmed that the account, posted under the username P-Hustle, was his.
In a since-deleted post from 2018, Platner wrote that if people “hope to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they should read some history,” according to a Politico report.
Graham Platner enters the race to challenge Senator Susan Collins of Maine.
Courtesy of Graham for Maine
During a phone interview with ABC News on Friday, Platner apologized for his language and said it doesn’t reflect who he is now.
He attributed much of his caustic language to his feelings of post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from combat in the Middle East, saying he felt disconnected from any community and disturbed by his experiences abroad.
“I don’t remember doing most of these things. You know, I was fucking around on the Internet for a long time,” Platner said, adding that “I had immense feelings of betrayal, because of the wars I fought in, and I became completely disillusioned. And I struggled for a while about where I fit in, about feeling very alienated from society. And like I think a lot of people, I went on the Internet looking for answers and I did what a lot of people do, which is just posts on the Internet and get into fights and arguments and say stupid things.”
Platner said he is embarrassed by the posts, which contain “language I haven’t used in years.”
Platner added that some crude humor was “meat and potatoes” in his infantry units. “It was just part of your existence,” he said.
In at least one post, Platner alluded to the military’s role in covering up hypothetical cases of sexual assault, according to a Washington Post report.
He walked back those comments in the ABC News interview, saying that the infantry can be an “intensely misogynistic space” and that he rarely served alongside women.
“I talked about it like I knew what I was talking about when I clearly didn’t,” Platner said. “I said things like the military wouldn’t cover up sexual assault. Of course it would. It did. It has for a long time. I just hadn’t had that experience in my time in the service.”
In 2021, according to CNN, Platner responded to a thread about people becoming more conservative as they get older by writing, “I got older and became a communist.”
Platner said Friday that he is not a communist and instead sees himself as a working-class populist. He said he was shamelessly leaning into the label to mock those who would call him that anyway because of his populist politics.
“I’m a small business owner and a Marine Corps veteran. I’m the harbormaster…I’m not a communist,” he said. “There’s an element where I’m obviously not like that, but they’re going to call me that anyway.”
