The Marine veteran-turned-oyster-farmer — a rising Democratic Senate candidate in Maine — once called himself a “communist,” dismissed “all” police as “bastards,” and said rural white Americans “actually are” racist and stupid.
Senate wannabee Graham Platner’s archived social-media history was unearthed by CNN, no conservative outlet that.
Most of the posts were made five years ago under Platner’s then-Reddit handle P-Hustle.
They were deleted ahead of his campaign launch in August.
The posts in some ways underscore Platner’s reputation as an anti-establishment outsider with unapologetically left-wing views.
But the labels and tone used in his writings could also prove costly in a state known for electing political moderates.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Platner disavowed his posts, saying they came from a time when he felt disillusioned and angry and expressed those emotions online.
He said his criticisms of rural white Americans and the police, and his political comments, do not reflect who he is and what he stands for today.
“That was very much me f**king around the internet,” he told CNN. “I don’t want people to see me for who I was in my worst Internet comment – or even frankly who I was in my best Internet comment … I don’t think any of that is indicative of who I am today, really.”
He said he deleted the posts recently because he no longer wanted to be associated with his online comments from a darker time in his life.
In one now-deleted Reddit comment from 2021, Platner responded to a thread about people becoming more conservative as they age by saying: “I got older and became a communist.”
The comment was made on a subreddit called r/Antiwork, a far-left forum “for those who want to end work.”
Platner on Thursday, meanwhile, reported receiving an endorsement from a group calling itself Common Defense, allegedly the nation’s largest grassroots membership organization of veterans and military families.
