Free Republic

Graham Platner is looking toward the general election in Maine’s Senate race. He’s the presumptive Democratic nominee to face incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. The Democrats believe they've found their candidate, an oyster farmer with Nazi tattoos who has a habit of masturbating in porta-potties and trolling on Reddit. It’s bad, and reportedly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Platner posted about how PTSD is a “bullshit” excuse for bad behavior, while telling another veteran who was shot multiple times that he didn’t deserve to live. That is something we should revisit, since in 2020, The Atlantic, which is...

In late April 2026, Maine Governor Janet Mills suspended her campaign for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, effectively handing the race to Graham Platner, a 41-year-old Marine veteran and purported oyster farmer.Platner now stands as the presumptive Democrat nominee against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.The development itself is unremarkable in the rough-and-tumble of primary politics.What demands scrutiny is not the candidate’s past, but the cognitive mechanism by which that past has been processed, reframed, and ultimately laundered by his party. Platner acquired a prominent chest tattoo in 2007 while on leave in Croatia with fellow Marines. The image, a skull...

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is leading Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in the race for her seat by 7 points, according to a new poll. In the Pan Atlantic Research poll, 48 percent of likely voters said they back Platner in a hypothetical matchup, while 41 percent said they support Collins. Eleven percent were undecided. When broken down by gender, 53 percent of women respondents backed Platner and 34 percent supported Collins. Men surveyed, meanwhile, said they support Collins over Platner, with 47 percent backing the incumbent and 44 percent supporting her potential challenger. The Democratic Party establishment was...

SNIP Exhibit A: Graham Platner, the Dems’ hard-left Senate candidate in Maine who cosplays a rugged working-class oyster farmer. He has been given the superstar treatment by the likes of the New York Times and Time in airbrushed cover stories praising him as a “rough-hewn, gravelly voiced … flawed everyman” whose numerous scandals — sporting a Nazi tattoo for 18 years, excusing rape, masturbating in porta-potties, mocking a Purple Heart recipient — are proof of his authenticity and “redemption arc.” SNIP Platner wears his hyper masculinity like a fat suit. It’s hiding something he doesn’t want us to see. Everything...

Portland Press Herald Maine official recommends transgender athlete referendum be invalidated Chief Deputy Secretary of State Katherine McBrien says that supporters fell roughly 500 valid signatures short of qualifying for the November ballot. May 21, 2026 Billy Kobin, Staff Writer A Maine official is recommending that a proposed referendum seeking to ban transgender athletes from competing in a way that aligns with their gender identity not appear on the November ballot. The rebuke Thursday came from Chief Deputy Secretary of State Katherine McBrien, the designated hearing officer in a case that has pitted supporters of the referendum against opponents. McBrien...

Seven years ago, Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner cruelly mocked an American soldier who was caught on camera taking fire from the Taliban in Afghanistan. The viral helmet footage showed how Pfc. Ted Daniels moved into the open as a diversion tactic to help his squad mates get to safety. But Platner saw him as a “dumb motherf—er” who “didn’t deserve to live.” “This video never gets old. Dumb mother—er didn’t deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt,” Platner, then a 34-year-old, chided...

Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who is already facing criticism over past Reddit posts, made graphic sexual comments on his now-deleted account about masturbating in portable toilets and explicit graffiti found in military restrooms. In one March 2017 post on Reddit’s r/Military forum, Platner responded to a discussion about nostalgic military smells by writing: "I still have to jerk off every time I sit in a portas----er… that blue water smell conditioned me." The archived posts were made under "P-Hustle," a now-deleted Reddit account that Platner previously acknowledged was his. In another post from March 2021 on Reddit’s r/USMC...

INTRODUCTION On April 29, 2026, Sen. Bernie Sanders convened a 75-minute panel in the US Capitol on “the existential threat of AI.” Two of the four panelists were Chinese government affiliates: Zeng Yi, Dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor who chairs China’s national AI governance expert committee and serves as a Counsellor of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. From a US Senate platform, Xue called the US-China AI race “an inaccurate narrative” and argued for “safe zones” of cooperation on AI safety. The event was...

Authorities are investigating after a fiery explosion Friday at a lumber mill in Searsmont, Maine. Officials have not yet released the number of injuries or fatalities. Camden Fire & Rescue confirmed it has a crew providing assistance. "Our thoughts are with the injured, medical professionals providing care and first responders working to control the situation," the department wrote in a statement on Facebook. "We anticipate having personnel committed to helping for several days." Ben Hamel, the mill's purchasing manager, told the Bangor Daily News that the fire started in an area where wood shavings are packaged. The fire then spread...

If you want to know how far some liberals are willing to go to register their fear and loathing of President Trump, just read the recent opinion piece by Frank Bruni in the New York Times. (...) Platner has said he is a communist. He said cops are bastards. He called people who post online “retarded.” He said war was “the most enjoyable experience of my life.” Working as a bartender, he wondered “Why don’t black people tip?” And speaking about women who are concerned about sexual assault, he wrote that “Rape is a real thing. If you’re so worried...

Republicans’ support for President Donald Trump's war on Iran fractured on Wednesday. Senate Democrats have tried to splinter off Republicans from their near-unified backing of Operation Epic Fury for months with a campaign of attrition, putting war powers resolution after war powers resolution on the floor ever since fighting began. And after two months of trying, they finally got some in the GOP to flip on Trump with Sen. Jeff Merkley's, D-Ore., latest attempt. Still, it wasn’t enough to terminate ongoing operations in the Middle East. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has consistently...

With the recusal of ancient Governor Janet Mills—she was just too normal to compete in today's slippery-slope-to-totalitarianism Donkey Party—Maine’s Democrats are about to nominate a guy who generates more punchlines than a Don Rickles roast. He’s really got it all. He’s stupid, offensive, a spoiled rich kid, a commie, and so much more. His schtick is that he’s just a working-class oysterman, a stubble-bearded blue-collar guy who’s going to give all those billionaires who are oppressing Mainers what for. But when anybody thinks of him, they’re thinking of him as Herr Oberstoysterfuhrer. ... That’s Excuse Number One, that he’s a...

Since retiring in early 2025, Mitt Romney avoided national politics — until his old friend Susan Collins needed help.Former Sen. Mitt Romney has made his first foray back into national politics since leaving the Senate, hosting a fundraiser on Wednesday for his former colleague Sen. Susan Collins.It was the first time the former Utah senator directly reengaged with Washington politics since leaving office at the beginning of 2025. And it shows how seriously the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and sharp critic of President Donald Trump — who has prized privacy in his retirement — wishes to preserve a group of...

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president last cycle, opted to fly to Maine to stump for Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who is running for Senate and who has a Nazi tattoo. Several members of Congress responded. “Don’t forget to ask him about his Nazi tattoo,” stated Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas). “Can you let him know there’s ways to remove the Nazi tattoos from his chest?” asked Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). “In case it wasn’t clear before why Kamala Harris selected Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro. This is who they are,” the Republican Jewish Coalition stated....

Sen. John Fetterman sounded the alarm Friday about the leftward drift of his own party, warning that a “small Communist takeover” is underway in Maine as Graham Platner closes in on the Democratic Senate nomination. Appearing on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said the rise of Mr. Platner — an oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran who wrote in a 2021 Reddit post, “I got older and became a communist” — exemplified the Democratic Party’s inability to resist its worst impulses. “There is kind of a small Communist takeover in Maine,” Mr. Fetterman said. “Platner, he’s already...

Platner told MS NOW he wants Trump officials hauled before committees 'day after day after day' Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner unveiled a plan during an interview on Thursday to "shut this White House down" so that the Trump administration is not able to function. "Something we’re going to have to do if we’re in the majority [is] we need to use the power we get to shut this White House down," Platner told MS NOW host Jen Psaki during "The Briefing." "We do that, I think one of the best ways is through committee hearings and investigations. I want...

..... Bangor City Councilor Wayne Mallar, 81, discussed a proposed budget increase for multilingual services in schools at a Board of Ethics meeting on March 31. 'The school department's asking for a 10 percent increase. As far as I'm concerned, they get no increase,' he said - seemingly unaware his comments were being picked up by a microphone. A Maine city councilor will face an ethics board review after he was heard complaining about 'illegals' in his community. Bangor City Councilor Wayne Mallar, 81, discussed a proposed budget increase for multilingual services in schools at a Board of Ethics meeting...

It is difficult to determine whether the bizarro worldview of the current Democrat-media nexus can simply be attributed to its generic Trump Derangement Syndrome — but the crazy world of the left increasingly bears scant resemblance to reality. In this alternate universe, Eric Swalwell was a liberal icon and invaluable asset for years, though admittedly a bit randy and occasionally a serial sexual predator. Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner was, at last, the left’s “real thing,” the white working-class liberal stiff who could win back the hoi polloi — although he can’t get his story straight on whether his Nazi...

We have an update on the Maine Senate Democrat primary, and it's not good news for Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Newcomer Graham Platner and the state's governor, Janet Mills, were the top two candidates in the race, with Platner being endorsed by twice-failed presidential candidate and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as a humble, purported working-class guy who would buck Schumer and the Democrat establishment and would be a "fighter" against President Trump's America First agenda. Mills had the backing of Schumer and the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), with the belief that her popularity in the state and...

Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday she was suspending her campaign for the US Senate — clearing the way for far-left candidate Graham Platner to face five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November. “While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else –the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said in a statement. “That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate.” The 78-year-old Mills,...