Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, a Democrat vying to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins, issued a prolonged apology video Friday after inflammatory Reddit posts he’s made in recent times got here to mild.
“As I learn by way of them, I learn issues that I completely don’t agree with. I learn by way of and I see issues that phrases and statements that I abhor,” Platner, who served in america Marine Corps and the Maryland Military Nationwide Guard, mentioned within the video posted to social media.
Platner’s apology comes a day after CNN confronted him about his feedback on the discussion board, the place he referred to as himself a “communist” and mentioned he’d turn out to be “a vegetable rising, psychedelics taking socialist” who’d “just about stopped believing in any of the patriotic nonsense” since being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
However extra troubling feedback had been uncovered Friday by The Washington Submit. In these posts, Platner dismissed issues about sexual assault within the army, claiming that “each whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a characteristic size movie” and that “anybody who truly thinks the army is purposefully overlaying up rape” is an “fool.”
In one other remark, he mentioned people who find themselves “so fearful” about rape shouldn’t over-consume alcohol.
Platner appeared to deal with these feedback in his apology video, although he didn’t tackle them immediately. He described the impact that being within the “very male-dominated,” “very masculine world” of the army had on him, even after he’d left the service in 2012.
“Once I acquired out, I nonetheless had the crude humor, the darkish, darkish emotions, the offensive language that basically was a trademark of the infantry,” he mentioned.
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“It’s essential to know that this was a time in my life the place I used to be struggling deeply,” Platner continued. “I acquired out of the Military in 2012. I had PTSD, I had despair, I had all the issues that include serving in a conflict ― two wars ―that I ultimately started to not imagine in in any respect. It left me feeling very unmoored. It left me feeling very disillusioned, very alienated and really remoted.”
Platner, an oyster farmer with a giant endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), additionally apologized in feedback to the Submit and requested for grace from his potential constituents.
“I don’t need individuals to guage me off the dumbest factor I mentioned on the web 12 years in the past,” he mentioned. “I would really like individuals to have interaction with who I’m right now.”