(José Niño, Headline USA) Graham Platner, the progressive favorite seeking Maine’s Senate seat, is grappling with newly surfaced Reddit posts containing graphic sexual admissions about portable toilets and glowing descriptions of obscene military bathroom artwork, according to Fox News.
A March 2017 entry on Reddit’s r/Military forum captured Platner responding to a thread about memorable military smells. “I still have to jerk off every time I sit in a portas—-er… that blue water smell conditioned me,” he wrote.
The posts originated from “P-Hustle,” a deleted Reddit account that Platner has previously confirmed belonged to him.
A separate March 2021 post on Reddit’s r/USMC forum showed Platner waxing poetic about a crude penis illustration inside a portable toilet during an overseas assignment. In a thread celebrating so called “GWOT Dick Art,” Platner launched into lavish praise for the drawing, describing it as “beautiful,” “engorged and veiny,” and moving “towards its penetrative glory.”
“Oh s—!!!,” Platner exclaimed. “You’ve got the Hot Rod C— from Manas!”
Manas served as a critical U.S. military transit point in Kyrgyzstan throughout the Afghanistan conflict. Platner joined the Marines in 2003 and deployed three times to Iraq before transferring to the Maryland Army National Guard in 2010 for a fourth combat tour in Afghanistan. He went back to Afghanistan eight years later working as a security contractor.
“I sat there in sheer awe,” Platner recounted about the illustration. “The soul filling joy to be allowed to witness such glory.”
When confronted about his controversial posts previously, Platner insisted he was not being serious. “You should read the comments in context. It’s very clear I’m joking,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s called s—posting. It’s when you argue with people on the internet and try to bother them. So, yeah, no, it’s very obviously not true.”
These disclosures represent the latest in a string of inflammatory online comments that critics say cast doubt on Platner’s fitness for office. He clinched the Democratic nomination after two term Governor Janet Mills abandoned her campaign last month amid weak polling and fundraising. Platner carries endorsements from progressive heavyweights Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Republican strategist Mehek Cooke told Fox News Digital that voters will care about the posts because they are “deciding whether Graham Platner has the judgment, temperament, and basic decency to represent Maine in the Senate.”
“His campaign has been built around authenticity and moral seriousness. These posts undercut both,” Cooke observed. “Platner is not a truth-teller. He is someone whose instincts appear crude, reckless, and deeply unserious. And by the way, if they were really ‘jokes,’ why delete the posts? That sounds less like humor and more like a CYA cleanup operation.”
Platner has also drawn fire over a New York Times interview concerning a 2013 post in which he suggested people worried about rape should not “get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” Further scrutiny has followed posts where he called himself a “communist” and “socialist,” along with alleged homophobic slurs and expressions of admiration for Hamas military tactics.
Cooke maintained that “one tasteless post” might be excused as “immaturity” but a “years-long trail of vulgar, sexually degrading, and slur-filled commentary is a character issue.”
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
