A maverick Democrat running for the U.S. Senate insists that what he said online a few years ago is not what he means now.
Graham Platner is an oyster farmer who is challenging Gov. Janet Mills for the Democratic nomination to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the 2026 midterm elections.
As noted by New York magazine, his campaign has been fawned over by progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, which has helped him amass a $4 million war chest 13 months before the election.
Then came a report from CNN that mined the depths of Platner’s Reddit posts from 2020 and 2021, all of which had been deleted before he announced his candidacy.
For example, a 2021 Reddit snippet noted, “I got older and became a communist.”
His antagonism to the police came through when he wrote, “Bastards. Cops are bastards. All of them, in fact.”
Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat running for Senate as a rugged, independent-minded “oyster man,” just had his Reddit posts exposed by @KFILE.
He called himself a Communist, who owns guns bc he doesn’t trust “fascists,” called cops “bastards,” and said rural Whites are stupid. pic.twitter.com/gOX17vXK3g
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) October 16, 2025
He said police misconduct is “a problem that extends deep into the profession as a whole.”
Rural America came in for criticism when he responded to a post saying, “White people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks” by writing, “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are.”
The Marine veteran shared his disillusionment with his service.
“My time in America’s imperial wars definitely radicalized me further, and I’m significantly more left today than I was back then. It is difficult to see all that horror, as well as all the grift and corruption, and not find the entire thing utterly bankrupt,” he wrote. “I did used to love America, or at least the idea of it. These days I’m pretty disgusted by it all.”
But now he says all that was just a mixed-up guy venting.
“That was very much me f***ing around the internet,” he said to 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.”
The 41-year-old said he is not what his years-old comments might imply.
“I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I own a small business. I’m a Marine Corps veteran,” he said.
As for trashing police officers, he now says, “I have an immense amount of friends who are police officers. They’re not all bastards because they’re literally buddies of mine.”
One thing has not changed — his condemnation of the Jan. 6, 2021, protesters and rioters who participated in what he called “a coup attempt.”
Mills was asked about the comments, according to WMTW-TV.
“I haven’t read the report, I haven’t seen it,” Mills said. “Obviously, I would strongly disagree with those comments.”
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