An alleged former girlfriend of Maine Democrat Senate nominee Graham Platner claimed that he cheated on his fiancée with her and that he defended his Nazi tattoo as a reminder that the “U.S. was the evil bad guy overseas.”
The ex-girlfriend told the New York Post that Platner knew about the Nazi origins of his Totenkopf skull and crossbones tattoo, adding that he hurt her reputation by cheating on his fiancée with her.
“As a person who is a leftist, I immediately looked at him and asked him, ‘Is that a Totenkopf?’ and he told me a whole, ‘he will hold this weight forever’ bravado sob story about how it was, but he decided to keep it as a reminder that the United States was the evil, bad guy overseas,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told the New York Post.
The woman shared screenshots of text messages to her mother and a friend in September of last year discussing his Nazi tattoo.
“Better not take a peek at the Nazi tattoo on his chest,” she wrote in one message.
“Graham’s repeatedly said he picked a skull-and-crossbones tattoo off a wall in Croatia to commemorate surviving Ramadi and his friends who were killed there,” a spokesperson from the Platner campaign told the Post. “Graham has also since covered up the tattoo, and answered countless questions about it.”
“Unlike Susan Collins, who refuses to take questions on her disastrous vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, gut rural hospitals, and supported every foreign war of the last thirty years,” the spokesperson added.
Platner’s ex-girlfriend, however, stressed that he never became violent with her.
The Maine Democrat secured his nomination to face off with Susan Collins less than a week after several women said he engaged in “unsettling” and controversial behavior while they were dating. The New York Times profiled several women who shared a romantic past with Platner, further piling onto the controversies that have plagued the candidate since discussions about his Nazi tattoo. In one interview, conservative commentator Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner between 2013 and 2015, said that he would often be rough with her while discussing violence, clarifying that he never physically assaulted her.
“He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” Fifield told the outlet.
She also alleged that Platner once handled an argument between them by twisting “her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was ‘calm.’”
Regarding his Nazi tattoo, Fifield also expressed doubt as to Platner’s claims of being ignorant of its meaning, saying that he would sometimes describe it as “my Totenkopf.” Jewish Insider previously reported that a former acquaintance described him using that term.
At least two other women who dated Platner said he would engage in “patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing.” Maine Democrat Jenny Raciot, for instance, described his behavior as “reckless” and “unsettling” during their relationship between 2019 and 2021.
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