“Democrats have to take over the Senate. They have to take over the House.”
The View co-host Sunny Hostin said she would “hold her nose” and vote for Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who has faced a series of scandals, ranging from sexually explicit messages to having a Nazi symbol previously tattooed on his chest.
Hostin made the comments during a Tuesday discussion on The View about Platner’s candidacy and the allegations surrounding him.
“Yesterday, I was sort of on the fence,” Hostin said. “I’m like, ‘Character matters, morals matter. I can’t believe that this is the person in Maine to take on Susan Collins.’ I’m now convinced that we are really in a bad place in this country. Democrats have to take over the Senate. They have to take over the House. They have to bring some semblance of normalcy back to this government.”
“If I lived in Maine, I would hold my nose and I would pull that lever and vote for him,” she concluded. “That’s it.”
“I vehemently and strongly disagree with this,” co-host Sara Haines replied.
“We have too many crappy people with no character, no integrity in D.C. And if we are going to say ‘Donald Trump is a problem. Look at this person, look at this person, look who he surrounds himself with’ — we can’t plug our nose and send someone there that’s an antisemitic person, racist, bigoted, sexist, you name it,” Haines continued.
“His marriage is the least of my problems,” Haines added. “In fact, that reminds me of just a church-going regular person. It’s everything else that is problematic to me that I would never be able to endorse. This is where it becomes so partisan, because it’s all about what jersey are you wearing?”
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin then chimed in, arguing the Democratic Party is unable to field a better candidate than Platner.
“I’m just so deeply uncomfortable with the fact that it feels like we have Nazis to the right of me and Nazis to the left of me,” Griffin said. “I feel like we can’t let that out of our sight.
Platner has faced a slew of scandals while running for the Senate. The main controversy centered around a tattoo he had on his chest that was the same symbol as one used by Nazi SS soldiers. He recently covered it up after sporting it for years. Most recently, he has faced allegations of sending sexually explicit messages to multiple women while married.
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg attempted to downplay Platter’s Nazi tattoo by arguing there are problems on “both sides” of the political aisle. “All I’m saying is, I think we at some point should think about doing better on both sides,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg also tried to claim that Platner was not aware of the tattoo’s meaning before having it covered, a claim that has been refuted by Platner’s own ex-campaign political director.
“I’ll vote for the guy who says ‘I didn’t know,” Goldberg said.
“You criticized other folks for doing this,” Griffin refuted.
