MS NOW’s Elise Jordan Presses Graham Platner on His ‘Nazi Tattoo’: ‘I’ve Been Taking My Shirt Off for 17 Years… It’s Never Once Came Up!’

MS NOW’s Elise Jordan pressed Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner on the “Nazi tattoo” he had on his chest during an interview on The Weekend: Primetime on Saturday night. Platner said the tattoo never seemed to bother anyone when he went shirtless until recent reports pointed it out.

Jordan asked Platner to address an October report from CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski that said Platner was aware the skull and crossbones tattoo — which looked like a symbol used by SS officers called the Totenkopf — had Nazi ties, despite his claims to the contrary.

Jordan told Platner that the symbol was “pretty notorious” and linked to the unit that ran concentration camps.

“You know, like if you’re going to have a Nazi tattoo, it’s like basically the worst one you could have,” Jordan told him. “But you said you didn’t know what it was, but then they have all of this documentation of you on Reddit talking about what it is and somehow justifying it.”

She added CNN talked to acquaintances who also said Platner knew about its Nazi origin. Jordan then asked him to explain the discrepancy in his story and what CNN reported.

“That’s just fundamentally not true,” Platner said. “I’ve read through my posts, at no point did I discuss it and talk about it as something I knew about.”

He said he got the tattoo years ago with other Marines while in Croatia.

“We wanted to get a skull and crossbones together to represent our time in the Marine Corps. That’s what we got,” he said.

Platner said it was absurd to think it was a Nazi tattoo because he was checked for “hate and gang-related tattoos” while protecting the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. He said no one thought he had a Nazi tattoo until reports about it were published last fall.

“I’ve been taking my shirt off for 17 years — in front of my family, in front of friends at the gym — it’s never once came up,” Platner said. “Not until this.”

Platner previously addressed the tattoo on MS NOW back in October. He acknowledged his tattoo “looked quite similar” to the Nazi symbol and that he had decided to get it covered up.

“I don’t want something like that on my body, that is going to make people think I have any kind of ideological similarity to something that is essentially so antithetical to my politics,” Platner said. “So I was more than happy to get it covered up.”

Following his initial answer on Saturday, Jordan followed up by asking Platner about his comments on Reddit. She pointed out he commented on a thread about Totenkopfs and posted they were a “culture marker” and not necessarily “an expression of White supremacy.”

Platner said he was “not really sure how [he] wound up on that thread,” but that he was merely commenting on something that was once a “popular motif” among other Marines.

Watch the segment above via MS NOW.

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