Overview
- Reporting published May 19–21 and archived by the Maine Monitor attributes roughly 2,000 deleted posts from a Reddit account Platner has acknowledged owning to the candidate.
- Those posts include a March 2017 admission of masturbating in porta‑potties, vivid praise for phallic graffiti seen in military restrooms, and a June 2019 entry that appears to mock Purple Heart recipient Pfc. Ted Daniels.
- Platner has defended the entries as joking “s---posting” and urged readers to see them in context, while veterans and Republican strategists have publicly condemned the remarks.
- Republican groups, including a super PAC aligned with Sen. Susan Collins, have moved quickly to buy ad time highlighting the posts and the campaign fallout, and top House and Senate Democratic leaders have so far declined to criticize Platner directly.
- The revelations add to an existing pattern of controversies for Platner — including a Nazi‑linked chest tattoo and prior inflammatory posts — and one additional claim about using a Taliban‑compromised Afghan network for phone calls has been reported by a single outlet and remains less corroborated than the Maine Monitor archive.