Video footage shows Democrat Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner refusing to offer an apology to a Purple Heart recipient whom he denigrated online.
A Fox News reporter confronted Platner outside a market near his home recently and asked him if he regretted the post about the veteran who was identified as Pfc. Ted Daniels, the outlet reported Sunday.
Daniels was shot four times during a firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2012.
The Fox reporter also asked the Democrat what he would say to voters who found his comments upsetting.
“I did four tours in the infantry, any attempt to say that I disrespect veterans is slanderous and offensive,” Platner told the reporter, who then asked if he thought he owed him an apology.
“Do you know how many of my friends have Purple Hearts, do you know how many of my friends got wounded? Yeah, a lot of them, thank you,” Platner said before getting into his truck:
In the June 2019 Reddit post that referred to the video of Daniels in the fight with the Taliban, Platner wrote, “Dumb motherfucker didn’t deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban’s part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home, he managed to make every possible shit decision possible when it comes to small unit combat.”
The Fox article noted Platner, who is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, has pointed to his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a reason for his previous social media posts.
Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) recently said, “there is kind of a small Communist takeover in Maine” with Platner moving towards winning the party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate, Breitbart News reported May 2.
Fetterman continued:
Platner, he’s already announced that he’s an avowed Communist. He’s made that statement, and he put that online. Now, he’s going to be the Democratic nominee. So there is a [resurgence of] socialism, and that’s become more and more a part of it. And now there’s more — it’s like a marriage of the Palestinian, the anti-ICE, the abolish ICE, and now turning it into like an orgy of socialism here, and that’s sad. Because it’s supposed to be about labor, like unions. I am absolutely a proud pro-union Democrat, but the kinds of mess that are you see showing up in many of them, that is the worst impulses that our party continues, we just [can’t seem to] resist those things.
Platner has been endorsed by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), according to Breitbart News.