{"id":845794,"date":"2026-06-05T09:19:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/845794\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:19:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:19:18","slug":"platner-denies-hurting-ex-girlfriend-and-says-he-will-not-quit-senate-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/845794\/","title":{"rendered":"Platner Denies Hurting Ex-Girlfriend and Says He Will Not Quit Senate Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, appeared Thursday night in his first interview since a New York Times report<\/a> about his treatment of several women he had dated, denying one woman\u2019s account that he had physically harmed her and saying he would not drop out of the race.<\/p>\n

In a nearly 25-minute appearance on MS Now\u2019s \u201cAll In With Chris Hayes,\u201d Mr. Platner said that he would \u201cabsolutely\u201d take responsibility for elements of his personal history. He described a history of self-medicating, and a pattern of \u201cnot exactly acting with the best behavior\u201d after his service in the military.<\/p>\n

But he reiterated that any allegations that he had behaved violently toward a girlfriend were \u201csimply not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this piece, there\u2019s a lot about my struggling, not being a good boyfriend, certainly self-medicating with alcohol,\u201d Mr. Platner said. \u201cAnd I have been very upfront since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Mr. Platner, whose primary is just five days away, said he had \u201cnot once\u201d considered leaving the campaign in Maine, which is considered key to Democrats\u2019 efforts to win back the Senate in the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Hours earlier, The Times reported that Lyndsey Fifield, a 40-year-old Virginia conservative who has worked for Republican campaigns and right-leaning groups and dated Mr. Platner roughly from 2013 to 2015, recalled that he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders. She said he once twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she could not get out, telling her to remain there until she calmed down. He never hit or punched her, she said.<\/p>\n

The Times also reported that two other women who had dated Mr. Platner recalled him drinking heavily and womanizing. One of the women, Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, said his behavior was \u201cunsettling\u201d and \u201creckless,\u201d and she described him as someone who \u201cdoes not respect women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Fifield said that Mr. Platner had lied by saying he had learned from news media inquiries<\/a> during the campaign that a tattoo on his chest resembled a Nazi symbol called a Totenkopf. She said that Mr. Platner knew it was a Nazi symbol years ago, and that he had called it \u201cmy Totenkopf\u201d at the time.<\/p>\n

And she provided The Times with screenshots of a private group chat in which she told her friends that Mr. Platner had an \u201cactual\u201d Nazi symbol on his chest. The message was dated Aug. 20 \u2014 months before Mr. Platner acknowledged knowing that the tattoo resembled the symbol.<\/p>\n

In the interview with Mr. Hayes, Mr. Platner denied that he had known of the symbolism until recently. He said he had once taken his shirt off, exposing the tattoo, during a wedding attended by Jewish members of his extended family. \u201cI would not have taken my shirt off in that context if I had known,\u201d said Mr. Platner, who has since covered up the tattoo.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hayes asked him to reconcile his assertions that he did not know about the symbol with Ms. Fifield\u2019s messages to friends from August.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d Mr. Platner said, \u201cshe certainly didn\u2019t send that text to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, appeared Thursday night in his first interview since…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":845795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[62919,51,2741,239993,50,313800,52,186278],"class_list":["post-845794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-graham","tag-headlines","tag-maine","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-news","tag-platner","tag-top-stories","tag-women-and-girls"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116696762075162237","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}