Graham Platner, a U.S. military veteran and oyster farmer who is running for the Democratic nomination for the 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 series of now-deleted posts that stretch back to 2010.
CNN first reported on the posts made on the Reddit platform. In an interview with ABC News, Platner confirmed the account, posting under the username P-Hustle, was his.
In one since-deleted post in 2018, Platner wrote that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history,” according to a Politico report.
Graham Platner enters race to challenge Sen. 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 that they do not 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 unmoored from any community and disturbed by his experiences overseas.
“l don’t remember making most of these things. You know, I f—– around the internet for a long time,” Platner said, adding that he “had immense feelings of betrayal, because the wars that I fought, and I’d become completely disillusioned about. 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 did what a lot of folks do, which is just post on the internet and get in fights and arguments and say stupid stuff.”
Platner said he’s embarrassed by the posts, which contain “language that I have not used in years.”
Platner added that certain 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 sexual assault cases, according to a Washington Post report.
He renounced those comments in the ABC News interview, saying the infantry can be an “intensely misogynistic space” and said he rarely served alongside women.
“I was speaking on it like I knew what I was talking about when I so very clearly didn’t,” said Platner. “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 he is not a communist and instead sees himself as a working-class populist. He said he was cheekily leaning into the label to poke fun at 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 of, like, I am obviously not that, but they’re going to call me that anyways.”
