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June 14, 2026
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
- The Maine Senate election is not a referendum on Graham Platner. It is a choice between Platner and Susan Collins, between a Democratic Senate and a Republican Senate.
- Many concerns about Platner are based on misinformation. To the extent they have any merit, supporting Platner despite his flaws is not the same as supporting Trump despite his flaws. Trump won because his flaws were features, not bugs, in the eyes of many GOP voters, and Trump was running for president, not to be one of 100 senators. The biggest impact of Trump winning was that Trump won. The biggest impact of Platner winning would be a Democratic Senate.
- Platner addressed questions about the totenkopf tattoo, the New York Times allegations, Israel, and antisemitism on a Zoom call I participated in last week that I've drawn on for today's discussion of those topics.
- Might there be revelations about Platner yet to come? Yes. That's true of any candidate. We should make decisions based on what we know and, if appropriate, change our minds based on new information. The question is whether, based on what we know, the country would be better off with Graham Platner or Susan Collins in the Senate. That means considering Collin's record and whether we want her continuing to rubber-stamp Trump and vote to confirm anti-choice judges in a sixth term.
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Friends,
On Tuesday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Graham Platner (D-ME) won their Senate primaries. Collins was unopposed. Platner received more votes than any Democratic Senate candidate in Maine history, winning with 72% of the vote. The November election is not an up/down referendum on Platner. It is a choice between Collins and Platner, between Republican or Democratic control of the Senate.
I know that I could be more persuasive if I adopted the prevailing national narrative about Platner, conceding that all his alleged faults are true, and arguing that nevertheless, with all that is at stake, we have to swallow hard and support an unsavory candidate because that's all we got. But I'd be lying to myself and to you if I took that approach. Instead, I'll tell you what I think is true, and you can decide for yourself.
The Republican Senate, including Susan "Trump learned his lesson" Collins, has done nothing to check Donald Trump's authoritarian ambitions, his corruption, his abuses of power, or his harmful policies. In 2025, Collins voted to confirm every Trump cabinet and cabinet-rank appointment except Pete Hegseth.
Doesn't supporting Platner for what we think is a greater good make us the same as Republicans who overlooked Trump's flaws for what they thought was a greater good? No, it doesn't. First, Trump was running for President of the United States, the most powerful office in the world. The damage he can do to our country is far greater than anything one of 100 senators can do. Voting for Platner is voting to enable the Senate to fulfill its constitutional duty to act as a check on, not a rubber stamp for, the Executive Branch. Voting for Platner is not voting to give him the power to send our military anywhere in the world, to appoint judges, deploy ICE, impose tariffs, and do what a derelict Republican Senate allows Trump to do.
Second, Trump's past is his present. He has never apologized for his misogyny, antisemitism, xenophobia, insensitivity, crudity, cruelty, or bigotry. Nothing in Platner's record, real or imagined, comes close to the depths of alleged depravity about Trump in the Epstein Files.
Equating Platner with Trump is a false equivalence that reflects an inability to draw moral distinctions. It is not inconsistent to oppose Trump and support Platner. Democrats fell over themselves to drive Al Franken out of the Senate for fear that Republicans would otherwise label them hypocrites, a decision that at least seven Democratic senators later regretted. Let's not make the same mistake again. Republicans have no moral authority here.
I believe in redemption and teshuva. The Graham Platner running for Senate today is not the same Graham Platner who made the offensive comments we've read about.
On June 7, I participated with about 50 others in a Zoom organized by Amb. Suzi LeVine. Platner did not blame his past comments on PTSD, although he did suffer from PTSD following his military service (he was deployed as a Marine to Al-Anbar Province, Iraq in January of 2005 where the battalion served primarily in the area east of Fallujah and then in 2006, he was deployed to Ramadi, Iraq and served as machine gun section leader. He was deployed again in 2007, left to go to school on the GI Bill, and then in 2009, joined the Maryland Army National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan the following year, where he served as a rifle team leader).
Platner told us that in the violent, dangerous, all-male hypermasculine military culture he spent so much time in, crude humor and crass language was the norm. But at George Washington University, he quickly learned from exposure to a more diverse population, including female veterans, that this kind of humor and language was unacceptable. Platner said it never reflected who he was or is. He did not defend any of that language.
What about the totenkopf? I am by no means an expert on Nazi Germany, but I consider myself fairly well-educated, including on antisemitic symbols and tropes. I have to confess: I never heard of a totenkopf until Platner's tattoo became an issue. Did you? Take a look at it. Would you have suspected that it was a Nazi symbol? Do you expect a bunch of drunken Marines to know it was a Nazi symbol?
Platner said on the call that he and some other soldiers were drunk and decided to get tattoos. They chose a tattoo with a skull and crossbones, a traditional symbol among militaries for centuries.
A marine who served with Platner said of that night, “No, we did not purposely get hateful f***ing sh*t because we’re racist people. We got matching tattoos because we were in our 20s, drunk in Croatia, and that’s it. That’s all that f***ing happened.”
Platner noted that half his family is Jewish (his wife is Jewish) and that when he danced with his shirt off at a wedding, no one took exception to his tattoo. He said, and has previously said, that the tattoo was there when he enlisted in the Army, which requires an examination for tattoos of hate symbols, and he passed a full background check to receive a security clearance to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan's security detail. (As Pete Hegseth knows, tattoos can be flagged as threats.)
When he found out what it was, he had it covered up. Platner has never been a Nazi. He denied that he knew what it was prior to that. Why did it take 18 years? Well, how would he have known unless someone told him that he chose a version of a skull and crossbones that the Nazis used? Do you think people who play Richard Wagner at wedding processionals are Nazis?
I don't know if Platner is telling the truth about when he found out it was a totenkopf. Neither do you. What is beyond dispute is that he covered it up. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegesth has not covered up his tattoo. He seems proud of it. As far as I know, Deputy Assistant to the President and the Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council Sebastian Gorka has not thrown away his Nazi-connected medals. That's a huge difference. Or is it okay for Republicans because the bar is so low for them?
Amb. Dana Shell Smith, a former career diplomat, told me that if Platner “were a Nazi, he’d be running in the party that has embraced Nazis. If he hated women, he’d be running in the party that has literally taken rights and health care away from women.” But he's not. He's running as a Democrat.
What about that New York Times story? The most significant allegations, both about sexual misconduct and Platner's knowledge of the totenkopf, come from the same source. What Platner told us on the call matched what he told Chris Hayes.
In Trump's first term, Collins paved the way for overturning Roe v. Wade by voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh (despite credible sexual assault allegations) and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. She voted against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have restored Roe v. Wade as the law of the land, and she continues to vote to confirm anti-choice judges.
Amb. Shell Smith told me that “as a woman, I am outraged at what Susan Collins has done to harm women at the national/institutional level. I am not at all impacted by allegations the New York Times admitted could not be corroborated from a GOP operative who worked with Collins to start 'Ladies for Kavanaugh.' But I am very impacted by the testimony of Platner's wife and the other six ex-girlfriends interviewed by the New York Times who had no problem with him.”
What about Israel and antisemitism? I asked Platner about his positions on Israel, including arms sales. Platner said that he believes everyone in Israel should have the same rights, including the right to safety. He noted that his Jewish step-brother lives in Jerusalem with his family and that he is concerned for their safety.
He believes that we should not provide arms to countries that violate international or U.S. law, but if Israel's government changes its policies, he would change his views on providing arms to Israel accordingly.
Platner told us that he is a lifelong opponent of antisemitism, noting that conflating the actions of the Israeli government with Jews generally does not help in the fight against antisemitism.
Regarding AIPAC, he said, "Let's be very clear: This is not about the behavior of Jews but organizations such as AIPAC," a particular organization that is wrong and whose spending is doing harm.
The bottom line: Frank Bruni, arguing that we should support Platner, writes that we "can’t recognize the profound moral offense and extreme danger of Trump and then sit out the election or cast a vote that potentially helps his party, which has abetted or ignored his authoritarian designs, win either chamber of Congress. That would be irresponsible, nonsensical and perilous."
Amb. Suzi LeVine sets the record straight on misconceptions about Platner, describing him as a "sheep in wolf's clothing" who is worthy of our support. Please read her most recent newsletter for more details about the Zoom conversation and more insights about Platner.
If you want to take a less charitable view of Platner, fine. Resolve all reasonable doubts against him. The question you have to ask yourself is still the same: On the issues you care most about, is our country better off with a Democratic Senate comprising Platner as one of 100 senators, or is our country better off with a Republican Senate and Susan Collins serving her sixth term in the Senate?
Remember how mad we were at those Democrats who chose to stay home instead of voting for Kamala Harris because she didn't align with them on Gaza? How pure they were. Their issues were as important to them as ours are to us, and they let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Consider whether by sitting Maine out because we might not like either candidate and risking Republican control of the Senate during Trump's remaining presidency, we might be making the same mistake they made.
And yet...Is there no line? What if Platner refused to apologize for anything and said he was proud of his tattoo? What if he were a Nazi? Maybe that would have been a bridge too far for Democratic primary voters, but what if it wasn't? By the logic I've presented above, wouldn't it still make sense to support Platner over Collins?
Interesting questions. If that were the case, he probably would have lost his primary. If he were guilty of sexual assault, I would hope that he'd be arrested and tried in court, and if not, it would be incumbent upon all of us to force him out (we pushed Franken out for far less). After all, we are not Republicans.
But none of that is the case. We have enough to worry about without having to worry about hypotheticals. We don't have to know exactly where the line is to know whether we are on the right side of the line. We keep saying that the stakes in the midterms could not be higher. You have to decide whether you really believe it.
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. In last week's newsletter, I mistakenly identified Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) as a representative.
In Case You Missed It:
- If you are concerned about anti-Zionism and the future of Israel, if you wonder why 24% of Jewish Americans (and nearly 50%of younger Jewish Americans) now favor a binational state, this brilliant article by Rob Eshman is for you.
- Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) introduced the Jewish American Security Act (H.R. 9211), which would strengthen federal efforts to counter antisemitism in the United States and protect the Jewish community. Please support it.
- New polling shows a sharp decline among Jewish Israelis who think that Israel's security is a central concern of Trump.
- The Rob Eshman piece I wrote about in the first bullet point deserves to be shared more widely than Sam Harris's viral post, but Harris told us what we wanted to hear, whereas Eshman told us what we need to hear. It's no surprise which went viral. Eshman's piece was not written as a response to Harris, but it should be read by anyone who thought Harris's piece made sense. If you want a direct response to Harris from a different perspective than Eshman's, watch or read Peter Beinart's response (my perspective is closer to Eshman's than Beinart's but Beinart makes some good points). I'll admit that I like Harris's last paragraph, which applies to critics of this newsletter too. More on Harris from Eric Levitz.
- This is hard reading, but if you want to understand where certain criticism of Israel is coming from, you should read about the stark gap between Israel's (and our) collective memory and what actually happened in 1967. We might not know this, but Palestinians know it, and it explains some of the disconnect.
- Preliminary results from an external audit show that the Palestinian Authority’s reform of its welfare program is being properly implemented to ensure recipients are no longer being awarded based on whether their relatives carried out an attack against Israel.
Jewish Insider Fail of the Week. On June 12, JI's Daily Kickoff reported unironically that the State Department's first-ever Symposium on Islamist Ideology and Antisemitism was hosted by Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, and Seb Gorka, the administration’s counterterrorism czar. The links are mine. Click on them and ask yourself if maybe, just maybe, JI could have provided a bit more background.
Social Media of the Week. Hunter Biden, David Sirota, Matt Oswalt, and Alex (Larry David loved Alex's tweet).
Video Clips of the Week. James Carville and 30 years of broken promises.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. Bob Dylan on Letterman (1984).
The Fine Print. Read the fine print before you reply or send me anything.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, your luck continues. You can subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday for free. Just click here.
Be sure to read my posts on distinguishing anti-Zionism from antisemitism, understanding the words Zionism, apartheid, and genocide, how to heal the generational rift on Israel and antisemitism, and the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
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