In a 1,150–word article about U.S. Senate hopeful and strident anti-Israel Graham Platner of Maine, NBC News spent just 50 words referencing Platner’s “controversial Reddit posts,” laundering his now-covered Totenkopf (Nazi symbol) tattoo, and mentioning “offensive posts” which included minimizing sexual assault. In “Graham Platner seizes on voter backlash to the Iran war to propel his Maine Senate campaign,” NBC reporters Sahil Kapur and Jackie Montalvo boosted Platner’s views on the current war in the Middle East but failed to adequately cover his record on the region.
Readers had to go on a hyperlink scavenger hunt for elucidation on the “Reddit posts” and “offensive posts.” Nowhere in the article itself nor in the hyperlinked sources could readers find anything about his pro-Hamas comments, vilification of Israel or his proximity to Jew-haters.
For the Reddit posts, those who bothered to click a hyperlink were taken to a November 2025 article that hyperlinked to a second (October 2025) article, which finally revealed that Platner had called himself a communist and a socialist who takes psychedelics soon after leaving the military in 2012. They also revealed he said all cops were “bastards” and that white people were racist and/or stupid in 2020 and 2021.
The vague mention of “offensive posts” included four words about Platner’s minimizing of sexual assault. Readers who clicked on the hyperlinked article learned Platner encouraged people not to use substances so as to avoid being raped – quite the admonition from someone who fancied psychedelics for himself.
Of the Totenkopf, the skull and cross-bones symbol the Nazi SS concentration guards adopted, Kapur and Montalvo merely said Platner recently covered a tattoo “that resembled a Nazi symbol.” Once again, the authors hyperlinked to a different October 2025 article where they reported on the podcast appearance when Platner was asked about the tattoo. In it, Platner denied he was a Nazi and explained that while drunk, he chose a skull and crossbones tattoo because that was a “standard military thing” – never thinking to ask himself if he was one of “the baddies.” He told Politico that he realized it “resembled” a Nazi symbol only in the fall of 2025 when reporters started asking him about it. But the Jewish Insider reported that a former acquaintance of Platner’s said the Senate candidate knew his tattoo was a Nazi symbol, calling it “my Totenkopf” in 2012.
Platner covered up the Nazi tattoo and Kapur and Montalvo covered up the rest of Platner’s antisemitism. The authors omitted mention of Platner’s retweet of neo-Nazi Stew Peters (before deleting it) and his appearance on a YouTube podcast hosted by a different antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Nate Cornacchia, to whom Platner told he was a “longtime fan.” They also failed to report how in October 2025, Platner said he agreed with the Irish President-Elect’s characterization of Israel as a terrorist state. His hatred of Israel seems to have grown through the years. As reported by Maine media, while in high school, the now 41-year-old Platner co-wrote an op-ed calling Israel “semi-oppressive.” In the same op-ed, he and his co-authors lambasted the media for not describing the motivations of the 9/11 terrorists. They wrote, “In post 9-11 America, every terrorist is portrayed as evil,” endorsing the adage, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
As reported by Jewish Insider, Cornacchia has suggested “huge links” between Israel and Charlie Kirk’s killing. Cornacchia’s other Jew-obsessed ideas include his agreements with Holocaust denier Jake Shields’ theory that President Kennedy had been assassinated in a joint CIA–Mossad covert venture. Cornacchia also agreed with Shields’ beliefs that the world’s war on terror is fought on Israel’s behalf and that Israel would benefit from another 9/11-style terror attack during New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s term. A prospective U.S. Senator’s positive views of such a person is relevant and newsworthy, but not for NBC journalists.
And it gets worse. On Apr. 15, 2026, Marc Rod of Jewish Insider reported how Platner praised Hamas terrorists’ tactics when they killed five Israeli soldiers during a 2014 raid into Israel. He suggested, in Reddit comments, that the terror group’s actions and tactics were reasonable. He deemed it a “damn fine looking and successful raid” on Hamas’ part and concluded the comment by writing, “I dig it.” Perhaps Platner thought Hamas, too, were “freedom fighters.” NBC did not ask.
The man with a pro-Holocaust tattoo apparently did not dig the war waged by Israel in Gaza, though. His campaign website’s platform section mentions only one place in the world outside of the United States: Gaza. In that section, he restates the popular, progressive, modern-day blood libels—that both starvation and genocide occurred in Gaza.
Screenshot from Graham Platner’s campaign website
The omission of these facts and tattoo-laundering raises an important question: does NBC want to see Platner win?
Kapur and Montalvo used little ink to inform NBC’s audience exactly what Platner believes and which Jew-haters he admires. Platner used more ink than they did to cover up his Nazi tattoo.