00:00Democratic Maine Governor Janet Mills announced she was suspending her campaign for the U.S.
00:05Senate, clearing the way for far-left candidate Graham Plattner to face five-term Republican
00:10incumbent Susan Collins in November.
00:13And while Chuck Schumer immediately embraced Plattner despite having backed Mills, at least
00:18one Democratic senator is publicly airing his grievances regarding the development.
00:23In an interview with Notices' Igor Bobik, John Fetterman tore into the Maine oyster
00:27farmer's ascension, saying Democrats really, really like Plattner in Maine, but the Republicans
00:33f***ing love him.
00:34If Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him.
00:39Betterman's comments come after 78-year-old Mills, a two-term governor and former state
00:43lawmaker and attorney general, had been considered a top Democratic recruit when she announced
00:48her challenge to Collins last year.
00:51However, polls consistently showed Mills trailing far behind Plattner, ahead of the June 9 Democratic
00:56primary, despite several weeks of controversy over the 41-year-old Marine veteran's prominent
01:01display of a skull and crossbones tattoo resembling the Totenkampff emblem of the Nazi SS.
01:08Plattner, the head of a Maine oyster farming operation and grandson of modernist architect
01:13Warren Plattner, has claimed he got the tattoo during a drunken 2007 outing while on leave
01:18in Croatia and had no knowledge of its fascist links.
01:22In November last year, Plattner had the death's head concealed with a tattoo of a Celtic knot,
01:27with a dog jumping out of the image.
01:29Plattner has also come under fire for past comments calling cops bastards and referring
01:34to rural white Americans as racist, and recently faced another storm of criticism after blaming
01:39his bad decisions on military culture in an interview with CBS News in April.
01:45I mean, when I left the military, I came out of a hyper-masculine, hyper-violent place.
01:50We certainly have a, I would say, narrow view of a lot of topics, and that colored my opinions
01:58and my beliefs. Some of that was not because of my combat service, but much of it was because
02:05of the culture I had come out of.
02:07However, the controversies don't seem to have hurt Plattner when it comes to his standing
02:11with the populist Democratic left wing, where he's backed by senators including Bernie Sanders
02:16and Elizabeth Warren. Democrats are eyeing the main Senate seat as their easiest potential
02:21pickup in the November midterms. Collins is currently the only Republican to represent
02:26in any of the six New England states in the House or the Senate.
Comments