Because Democrats want a “fighter” who they believe will take on President Donald Trump, many are bucking the conventional wisdom of backing the supposedly “safe” candidates in the 2026 congressional primaries. Instead, several, for instance, are supporting newcomer and current primary frontrunner Graham Platner over Schumer-backed Maine Gov. Janet Mills in the Maine Senate race.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was the first major Democrat in the Senate to endorse Platner, and three others have followed: Sens. Ruben Gallego (AZ), Martin Heinrich (NM), and now Elizabeth Warren (MA).
Here’s the statement she issued Thursday:
Graham Platner is going to flip Maine and then actually deliver change for working people in the Senate. He’s a combat veteran, an oyster farmer, and has inspired people with his populist agenda for a government on the side of working families––not the billionaires and giant corporations. Graham will fight every single day to make life better for the people of Maine in the United States Senate. I’m proud to endorse him.
In her video announcement, Warren suggested Platner was “the real deal” and claimed he had “the fighting spirit that the Democratic Party needs now more than ever”:
“Graham Platner is the real deal. He’s a fighter, and he’s ready to take that fight to Washington,” the progressive from Massachusetts said in her endorsement video. “Graham Platner has the grit to go against the grain and to fight for what is right. And the people in Maine are fired up and excited for change. You know what? That’s the energy, that’s the fighting spirit that the Democratic Party needs now more than ever.”
Watch:
Platner is a scandal-plagued candidate who faced backlash in October over a series of Reddit posts dating back to as early as 2013 in which he urged the use of violence to resolve political disagreements, made disparaging remarks about black people and the police, and came off as a rape apologist.
More infamously, however, was the Nazi tattoo scandal, where it was revealed that he had the Hitlerian “Totenkopf” emblem tattooed on his chest some 20 years ago. Platner claimed he got it when he was drunk and on shore leave in Croatia with fellow Marine buddies, and didn’t know what it meant.
But one senior campaign official who quit over it and the Reddit posts said otherwise:
Interestingly, Warren tried to use a Christian tattoo Pete Hegseth had to derail his Secretary of Defense nomination, calling it a symbol of “right-wing extremism.”
Despite religious scholars later countering that the Deus Vult is often considered a common Christian symbol, Warren contended that the fact that his superiors [in the Biden administration] were concerned about the tattoo raises questions about whether he could be the Pentagon chief.“You were also removed from President Biden’s inauguration because of concerns that you were an insider threat after reports that your ‘Deus Vult’ tattoo ‘was a Christian expression associated with right-wing extremism,’” she wrote to Hegseth.“We cannot have a Defense Secretary whose fellow servicemembers feel concerned enough about to report as a potential insider threat.”
There is also this:
Interestingly, the same week Warren decided to endorse Platner – and claimed she believed his apology for the tattoo was genuine, he appeared to walk back his previous apology about his now-altered Nazi tattoo:
But in an interview this week with news blog Zeteo, Platner pushed back, defending the tattoo as merely a ‘skull-and-crossbones’ and ‘an eminently reasonable thing’.
During the interview he also recommended the war movie Come and See, which prominently and repeatedly shows the similar ‘Totenkopf’ on Nazi uniforms.
‘Everybody should watch Come and See,’ he said.
The fact that the 1985 film is one of his favorites may undermine his claims that he didn’t know the association of the symbol with Nazis.
Reactions on X to Warren’s endorsement were pretty brutal:
There was also this observation:
Yeah. I mean, endorsing a guy with a Nazi tattoo to take the fight to the man your party keeps comparing to Hitler? Make it make sense.
– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –
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