The co-hosts of ABC’s The View blasted Democrat Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner on Thursday over what co-host Joy Behar called a “Nazi tattoo.” Co-host Sara Haines said his anti-police rhetoric “is not just a whoopsie.”
“Although everyone has a past, not everyone can whip up an anti-Semitism or racist tattoo that they accidentally got on spring break [because] they ‘were drinking,’” Sara Haines said during Thursday’s episode of The View. “The level of what you’re bringing up is not just a whoopsie, it was a repeated offender,” she said, referring to Platner also facing backlash for his past purported Reddit posts.
In old Reddit posts, the Senate candidate is accused of referring to himself as a “communist,” calling police “bastards,” and saying sexual assault victims should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so messed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.”
“So, this is where I say there are just so many fish in the sea. In fact, there are 1.5 million people in Maine. I’m sure there is someone else that they can get,” Haines asserted.
Co-host Joy Behar then chimed in, bizarrely using the moment to attack the entire county — while appearing unaware that only residents of Maine can run for Senate in the state — adding, “There are 340 million people in this country, they can’t find one without a Nazi tattoo?”
Whoopi Goldberg, meanwhile, asked, “Doesn’t anybody recognize that if you’re going to run for office, your stuff’s going to come up?” adding, “Perhaps you want to bring it up before everybody else does, because now it just sounds like you’re making excuses.”
“I can’t tell you that when I used to get drunk, I didn’t do stupid stuff, but what I can tell you is that I know I drank and did stupid stuff and I took responsibility for it,” Goldberg added. “That’s what I’m saying before it’s uncovered by other people, and don’t think I don’t think y’all wouldn’t be looking for something.”
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The View co-host Sunny Hostin pointed out that several Democrats were defending Platner in an effort to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), but agreed with Haines that he should have addressed his past behavior with something more than than an “Oops.”
“When you get to the point where you’re denying on a podcast that you’re a Nazi, I think it’s over,” Hostin said.
The backlash began on Monday, after Platner tried to get ahead of opposition research by disclosing he had a skull tattoo that resembles Nazi imagery — specifically, the “Totenkopf,” a symbol of the SS, or Schutzstaffel, under Adolf Hitler.
Platner tried explaining the tattoo away during Monday’s episode of the Pod Save America podcast, telling Tommy Vietor that he and some fellow Marines “got very inebriated” in 2006, and “decided to go get a tattoo.”
“We went to a tattoo parlor in Split, Croatia, and we chose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall, because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military military thing,” Platner said.
The Maine Senate candidate further insisted that after getting the tattoo, he went on to live life “like a regular person,” which he noted included “taking my shirt off, performing Miley Cyrus songs in front of my extended family — and just taking my shirt off at the beach.”
“I went to college, I went to the gym, I did all the things, and at no point in this entire experience of my life did anybody ever once say, ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi,’” Platner added, before suggesting that he realized his tattoo could be an issue after he found out “opposition research” was looking into it.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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