Thursday on MS NOW’s “All In,” Democrat Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner said the new allegations made in The New York Times regarding abusive physical behavior and his knowledge of a Nazi-linked tattoo were “not true” and “politically motivated
Partial transcript as follows:
CHRIS HAYES: There’s some serious stuff I want to go through with you, and I think voters have a right to know about it. And I want to, with what Ms. Fifield says about being “rough,” is the term in the . And I’m going to just read you the account so you have it. This is from the Times. ‘Mr. Platner could be rough with her, Ms. Fifield said, particularly when they were drinking, leaving her shaken and sometimes afraid. In the interviews, Ms. Fifield grappled with how to process her experiences. She was quick to note that he never hit me, he never punched me, she said. But she said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car. During one argument, she recalled, he twisted 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. Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning. It hurt,’ she said. But she added, It didn’t cause an injury, it didn’t break my arm.’ Did that happen?
PLATNER: No, it did not. There are some allegations in this piece that I just want to be kind of unequivocal about, are simply not true. Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of someone who’s politically motivated. In this piece, there’s a lot about my struggling not being a good boyfriend, certainly self-medicating with alcohol. And I’ve been very up front since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service. And that’s what that combat– that’s what that kind of life looks like. And so there are things in this that I absolutely will take responsibility for and have been speaking about openly for months now. But those serious allegations are just not true.
HAYES: You did not grab her by the wrist. You did not put your hands on her shoulders. You did not push her into a room that you closed the door on. She’s lying about that is what you’re saying?
PLATNER: Yes. That is not true.
HAYES: You mentioned the tattoo, so I want I want to talk about that because, I think that was troubling to a lot of people. And I think, again, your account of it assuaged some of that fear, clearly in Maine voters, as as reflected again by reporting and polling, she says same person that you referred to the tattoo as Mein Totenkopf which is the German word for this particular Nazi symbol. There’s other reporting in Jewish Insider, in October, in which an anonymous acquaintance says you used that same phrase. Did you know what this tattoo was about before last October, when you said you first became aware of it?”
PLATNER: No, I did not. And I also think it’s important to note that it’s very likely. And I think that she has that same source. She’s the person who’s been telling people this from the beginning. And it’s a so I feel like you know, we’re kind of rehashing the thing we’ve been through. I had that tattoo for 17 years. It’s a skull and crossbones. I got it with other Marines who I served with in Iraq. In Croatia. And in the time that I had it, I got a security clearance with the State Department. I re-enlist in the United States Army, where I was screened for gang and hate tattoos. And I took my shirt off in front of my family, many of whom are Jewish. We even released as a campaign a video which you’re putting up on the screen right now of me dancing at my brother’s wedding to his wife, who is Jewish and her fully extended Jewish family. And I would not have taken my shirt off in that context if I had known. And so any statement saying that I did know is, this, again, totally false.
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