As The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg wrote in January, “For the last decade there’s been a debate, among people who don’t like Donald Trump, about whether he’s a fascist.”
The “debate” isn’t a debate in the normal sense of the word. That is, it wasn’t a good faith disagreement between two sides weighing evidence. It was a decade-long screaming fest from half the country who insisted that anyone they disagreed with politically was Hitler. Of course now more than ever we know that it was simply their way of trying to retain power and keep it out of the hands of Republicans, because when presented with an actual Nazi, Democrats have suddenly lost an appetite for “debate.” In fact, Goldberg herself emphatically declared: “Graham Platner is no Nazi.”
Platner is the Democrat candidate for Senate from Maine. Platner spent 18 years bearing a Nazi tattoo and only had it removed a few months ago. He also said women worried about rape should not “get blacked out, f*cked up around people” they aren’t “comfortable” with. He also allegedly said that if someone ever broke into his home, he would “rape them … [but] not in a sexual way, not in a gay way.”
In other words, Platner is everything the left insisted Republicans were.
The Washington Post told us in 2023 that Trump’s rhetoric was comparable to “Hitler.”
An MSNBC op-ed said “Donald Trump has truly earned comparisons to Adolf Hitler.”
The New Republic ran a cover of Trump portrayed as Hitler and said this is what “American fascism” “would look like.”
The examples are so numerous that compiling all of them would require an article the size of a phone book.
Yet when Democrats finally encountered a politician with an actual Nazi emblem tattooed on his chest, the conversation was remarkably different. Platner is the caricature the left created of Republicans. For years we have been told that Republicans and Trump were extremists, Hitler, Nazi sympathizers, authoritarians, radicals, you name it. Then along comes Platner, a man who spent nearly two decades with a Nazi tattoo, made horrific remarks about the victims of rape, and is facing sexual misconduct allegations. In other words, Platner isn’t just a flawed candidate, he is the embodiment of the left’s stereotype of Republicans. It’s why so many have now rushed to explain away these problems or dismiss them or outright ignore them entirely. Because to acknowledge Platner for what he is would be to admit that their warnings about “fascism” and “Nazism” were never actually about those things, because if they were, Platner would be a five alarm fire.
Perhaps nowhere is the double standard more clear than in the coverage of Platner’s actual Nazi tattoo compared to the coverage of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s Jerusalem Cross.
In November of 2024, Democracy Now wrote: “Trump’s Pick to Lead U.S. Military Has Tattoos Linked to White Supremacists and Nazis.” The tattoo in question was the Jerusalem Cross, a Christian symbol. But according to Democracy Now, it’s tied to “white supremacist[s] and neo-Nazi[s].”
When describing Platner’s actual Nazi tattoo, Democracy Now said it was a “controversy” and that the tattoo merely “resembled a Nazi symbol” (it was not a resemblance, it was the actual Nazi symbol). Platner “has since apologized for and covered up” the tattoo,” Democracy Now wrote before moving on from the tattoo and its meaning.
The New York Times’ linked Hegseth’s Jerusalem Cross tattoo to white supremacists as well and cited an unidentified “fellow service member” who flagged Hegseth as a “potential ‘insider threat'” because of the tattoo. When covering Platner’s Nazi tattoo, The Times published things like Goldberg’s op-ed titled “Graham Platner Is No Nazi.” To save you the time reading it the argument goes: even though Platner had a Nazi tattoo for 18 years, he probably didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol and therefore the man with the Nazi emblem isn’t really a Nazi. It doesn’t pass the smell test for anyone capable of critical thinking, but we’re talking about Goldberg here.
Who can forget the hysteria from the left when Trump nominated Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general? Gaetz was accused of “salacious allegations involving child sex trafficking,” as The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway explained in these pages. But the “two central witnesses had serious credibility issues” and the DOJ dropped their investigation into Gaetz during the Biden years.
Nonetheless, his nomination was framed as evidence of a moral collapse within the evil Republican Party.
“Trump’s Cabinet picks, and the morality problem,” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake wrote in November of 2024. “A number of Trump’s selections have major personal skeletons, including troubled sexual histories, but does the GOP care?” Blake goes on to list the “morality” problems with Trump’s picks, like Gaetz.
Yet when Blake wrote about Platner, the emphasis was notably different.
“It’s fair to say ugly personal problems don’t matter the way they once did,” Blake wrote. Even when discussing the allegations against Platner, Blake largely framed the race around broader considerations (even claiming that a recent New York Times report about Platner’s alleged sexual harassment “could make people believe he’s anti-woman” rather than Platner’s own words and actions.)
Blake ultimately arrived at the question that seems to compel most of the media’s coverage of Platner: “The question likely comes down to what voters think is more important: potentially disqualifying behavior or having an additional check on Trump.”
Or take how Bret Stephens described the allegations against Gaetz versus Platner. When discussing Gaetz, Stephens wrote that “He is the proverbial tip of the spear in a larger effort to define deviancy down.” For Platner? “The Good That Can Come From Platner’s Candidacy,” Stephens headlined his piece.
“The first is absolution — not only for Platner, but for every nominee or candidate, Republican or Democratic, with a blemished personal history — on the grounds that we elect or install people in high office to achieve the results we desire, not to serve as paragons of moral rectitude. If nothing else, this could make our politics less repellent to talented if imperfect people who now steer clear of public service because they don’t want to put themselves or their families through the inevitable media inquisition that comes with every campaign,” Stephens wrote.
It’s an interesting argument since conservatives spent years being told that being a Nazi — or in the case of Republicans, falsely being accused of being a Nazi — was disqualifying.
Which brings us back to Platner. He’s not just a Democrat with some flaws. He is literally everything the left told us Republicans are: Nazi’s, fascists, threats to America.
The left strained to find Nazi symbolism in Republicans. It accused everyone of being a Nazi. And yet when presented with Platner, they emphatically tell you he is no Nazi.
