Graham Platner says he's covered up tattoo recognized as Nazi symbol
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Photo: Graham Platner for U.S. Senate
Graham Platner, the Maine Democratic Senate candidate backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, said that he has covered up a tattoo that has been widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.
The big picture: Platner's campaign has been marred by controversy, between his tattoo and resurfaced social media posts that include racial stereotypes and crude comments about sexual assault victims.
Driving the news: Platner told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he's covered up the tattoo, which has been criticized as Nazi imagery. Exactly when isn't clear, but Platner had indicated future plans to "remove" it as recently as Tuesday.
- Platner said that he got the tattoo — which in photos appears to be the "Totenkopf" logo used by SS units overseeing concentration camps in Nazi Germany — during a night of drinking in 2007 while on leave from the Marine Corps in Croatia.
- He said that he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazis, per the Associated Press.
Platner initially said he would remove the tattoo but chose to cover it up with another image, citing the limited options in rural Maine.
- "Going to a tattoo removal place is going to take a while," he told the Associated Press. "I wanted this thing off my body."
Platner told Vanity Fair on Wednesday that the tattoo has "been covered up with some kind of Celtic knot with a dog on it, because that's far more in line with my opinions now than my connection to the violence that I partook in when I was a young man."
Context: Platner vehemently denied any knowledge of the tattoo's connotations this week, saying on the podcast "Pod Save America" that he is "not a secret Nazi."
- Jewish Insider reported, however, that Platner has previously acknowledged that the tattoo was a Totenkopf, according to a person who socialized with Platner in Washington, D.C.
Zoom out: An ADL spokesperson said in a statement provided to Axios this week that it "appears" to be a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo, which they described as "troubling," if true.
- But they added, "[w]e do understand that sometimes people get tattoos without understanding their hateful association. In those cases, the bearer should be asked whether they repudiate its hateful meaning."
What we're watching: Some Democrats had praised Platner's apologies after his social media posts.
