Graham Platner, a candidate vying for the Democratic nomination for the Maine U.S. Senate race, disclosed Tuesday that he has a tattoo associated with Nazis.
Platner says he didn't know about the affiliation when he got the tattoo as an 23-year-old rifleman in the Marines.
The extraordinary disclosure came on the Pod Save America podcast and as Platner's campaign seeks to weather a barrage of potentially damaging revelations about his past that have come since Gov. Janet Mills entered the race.
Platner, a combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he was inebriated and on leave in Croatia in 2007 when he and fellow Marines got the tattoo.
"We chose a terrifying looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are pretty standard military thing,” he said.
The tattoo — known as a Totenkopf or "skull" in German — is visible in a video that Platner shared with the podcast in which he's dancing shirtless at a family wedding. The Totenkopf was adopted as a symbol of one branch of the Nazi SS. Platner shared the video because he says Democrats are telling national journalists that he is a "secret Nazi."
He said those claims are at odds with numerous social media posts in which he describes himself as an antifascist and against racism.
Platner said he was unaware of the symbols affiliation with the Nazis until he ran for Senate.
“It never came up until we got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo,” he told Pod Save America. “I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I’ve not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years.”
