Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Planter is once again at the center of a political firestorm after a newly released podcast video showed him casually describing how he got a Nazi-associated skull and crossbones tattoo while stationed overseas with the Marines.
Planter told hosts of “Pod Save America” that he and fellow Marines were drunk in Split, Croatia, when they chose “a terrifying looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are pretty standard military.” He added that he’s lived his entire adult life with the tattoo and claimed “nobody ever once said you’re a Nazi.”
The tattoo’s resemblance to an infamous Nazi SS symbol has drawn immediate condemnation, fueling fresh doubts about Platner’s judgment and political viability.
Croatia’s Ustacha nationalists collaborated with the Germans during WWII, which could explain how the sample art appeared on a wall in a Split tattoo parlor.
The latest controversy follows the abrupt resignation of his political director, former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, after reports surfaced of offensive and extremist remarks made under Planter’s Reddit account, including racist, xenophobic and anti-police comments.
Regarding Platner’s latest, tattoo art-inspired imbroglio, McDonald wrote on Tuesday that while he may not have known what it was when he got it, he is a military history buff and had time to figure it out and “have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”
To make matters even worse, the Jewish Insider’s editor-in-chief Josh Kraushaar on Tuesday reported that a former acquaintance of Platner’s has gone on record as saying the candidate once called the tattoo “my Totenkopf,” in apparent reference to emblem of the Nazi unit stationed at death camps.
Platner’s campaign has already been staggering under the weight of its own scandals. With each new revelation, pressure is mounting on party leaders to either distance themselves or risk owning the damage.
What was once a long-shot candidacy now looks like a political free fall. Gov. Janet Mills (D) jumped into the race last week and immediately became the front-runner for the Democrat nomination.
