Graham Platner Blasts ‘My Totenkopf’ Nazi Tattoo Quote in New Interview

Embattled Senate candidate Graham Platner (D-ME) told MS NOW host Chris Hayes that he believes Lyndsey Fifield, the woman at the heart of a new bombshell report, fabricated a quote about his Nazi-linked tattoo.

Platner has weathered a blizzard of controversy over past comments and a tattoo that he claims he did not know had Nazi connotations when he got it, and has since covered.

On the heels of a story containing allegations of sexually explicit texts sent early in his marriage, Platner now faces a bombshell New York Times report alleging misconduct with women. Fifield — a longtime GOP operative and co-founder of the group “Ladies for Kavanaugh” — is the central accuser in that story.

Fifield also brought up the tattoo in that report:

Mr. Platner, she said, knew when they were dating years ago that the tattoo was a Nazi symbol, and that he called it “my Totenkopf.”

“I would never have known what that was,” she said. “He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo.”

…

In a private chat group last summer, months before Mr. Platner acknowledged the tattoo himself, Ms. Fifield told friends that her ex-boyfriend-turned-Senate candidate “has a Nazi tattoo on his chest.”

“It’s a Totenkopf,” she told them on Aug. 20, according to a screenshot she shared with The Times. “An actual one.”

On Thursday night’s edition of MS NOW’s All In with Chris Hayes, Platner sat for a marathon grilling on the controversies roiling his campaign.

In one exchange, Hayes confronted Platner over Fifield’s contribution to the tattoo story, and Platner suggested she was the same source who circulated the “My Totenkopf” quote — which he denies — in the first place:

HAYES: You mentioned the tattoo, so I want to talk about that because I think this was troubling to a lot of people. And I think, again, your account of it assuaged some of that, that fear, clearly in Maine voters, as reflected, again, by reporting and polling. She says, same person, that you referred to the tattoo as my Totenkopf, which is the German word for this particular Nazi symbol. There is other reporting in Jewish Insider in October, in which an anonymous acquaintance says you used that same phrase.

Did you know what this tattoo was about before last October when you said you first became aware of it?

PLATNER: No, I did not. And I also think it’s important to note that it’s very likely, and I think that she is that same source. She’s the person who’s been telling people this from the beginning. And it’s a — so I feel like, you know, we’re kind of rehashing the thing we’ve been through. I had that tattoo for 17 years. It’s a skull and crossbones. I got it with other Marines, who I served with in Iraq, in Croatia. And in the time that I had it, I got a security clearance with the State Department. I re-enlisted in the United States Army where I was screened for gang and hate tattoos, and I took my shirt off in front of my family, many of whom are Jewish.

We even released as a campaign a video, which you’re putting up on the screen right now, of me dancing at my brother’s wedding to his wife, who is Jewish, and her fully extended Jewish family. And I would not have taken my shirt off in that context if I had known. And so any statement saying that I did know is — is, again, totally false.

HAYES: I — I do want to follow up one place on this, and I don’t want to get too forensic, but, you know, The Times reported that they — they saw texts of hers, including a text in August, I believe, August 3rd of last year, this would be before October of last year, in which she basically said that you had a, quote, Nazi tattoo, and she joked about how she was going to go volunteer for Collins.

Now, again, this is a text that got sent so like we can place the time, right? This is in August. How does she know it’s a Nazi tattoo in August of last year and you don’t know it’s a Nazi tattoo in August of last year?

PLATNER: Well, she certainly didn’t send that text to me. So whoever she sent it to and was talking to, that’s — I — I can’t say why, but I will say that I certainly didn’t know. And — and the text messages she sending to friends who may have recognized it, that’s — they didn’t tell me that, so.

Watch above via MS NOW’s All In With Chris Hayes.

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