PORTLAND, Maine — At a rally for Senate candidate Graham Platner on Sunday, a female supporter dismissed concerns about his past tattoo linked to Nazi imagery but stated that if he sported an Israeli flag tattoo, it would be unacceptable to her.
During the crowded event, a reporter from the New York Sun inquired whether an Israeli tattoo on her preferred Democratic candidate—who once notoriously had a tattoo associated with the Nazi SS—would lead her to withdraw her support.
“Yes, because I oppose genocide,” she replied, referencing Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip.
“He feels the same way,” she added about Platner. “An Israeli tattoo would contradict his stance, and he has consistently maintained his position on this matter.”
The woman seemed unfazed by the controversy surrounding the skull and crossbones tattoo that once adorned Platner’s chest, bearing a resemblance to the “Totenkopf” or “death’s head” symbol used by the Nazi SS.
Details of the tattoo surfaced last year, prompting Platner to cover it up. The oyster farmer explained that he got the tattoo while intoxicated in Croatia in 2007, unaware of its Nazi associations.
Last week, an ex-girlfriend told the New York Times that Platner boasted about having a Nazi tattoo.
But the female Platner supporter at Sunday’s rally dismissed all the hoopla.
“Somebody said that they talked to somebody who had seen one of those or wore one of those, and it was silver, and it didn’t even occur to him that it was the same thing,” she said.
“I think people are making as much of it as they can because they don’t have a lot of substance around anything else, and if they did, we’d hear about it,” the woman said.
“Believe me, they are trolling for dirt.”
Platner has faced a myriad of other controversies as well, including his past treatment of women, alleged extramarital sexting and reputed fantasizing about raping home intruders.
Last week, the New York Times published a bombshell piece detailing some of the unsettling accusations from numerous women who dated him.
One of them, Lyndsey Fifield, a GOP operative, recounted how Platner was rough with her, at one point allegedly pulling her out of a cab by the wrists and at another point twisting her arm behind her back before locking her in a room.
Platner has denied the accusations of being physical.
“I think a lot of the fabricated, but there’s an element of truth in it,” the Platner backer told the New York Sun. “He’s a flawed candidate.”
But “he’s what we want because he’s honest about it.”
“That redemption thing, it’s more valuable to us than a lot of people who say something insincerely, and you know, when you, when you’re around the block for a while, like us, you can kind of sniff out insincerity,” she said.
Despite the scandals, Platner appears poised to win the Democratic nomination to take on incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in the fall.
