Mehdi Challenges Graham Platner On His Tattoo And More

TITLE: Mehdi CHALLENGES Graham Platner on His Tattoo and More CHANNEL: Zeteo DATE: 2026-04-26 ---TRANSCRIPT--- How would you describe the US relationship with Israel?

Shameful. What has happened in Gaza? It’s the moral question of our time and we failed it miserably. We need to get money out of politics. The cost of war is something I have seen up front. I have seen friends die. How do you avoid the John Federman vibes? That man is the bane of my existence. Like it was something that’s been fascinating for me in this entire experience is realizing just how many people who run for office don’t actually have any deeper political beliefs. When exactly did you find out that the tattoo on your chest could be a Nazi tattoo or seen as one? I had it for 17 years. I went through two security clearances. Never came up. Is there other stuff out there that’s going to come out now? Graham Platner came out of nowhere. An oyster farmer from Maine running to unseat veteran Republican Senator Susan Collins in the midterm elections this fall. Platner, who formerly served with the Marines and the Army with deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, is running a very progressive anti-war campaign, opposing Trump’s war in Iran, and speaking out about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He’s leading in the polls against his bigname Democratic opponent in the June 9th primary, Governor Janet Mills. But Platner’s campaign is not without controversy. He joins me now to unpack it all. Welcome to May the unfiltered, Graham Platner. Thank you very much, Manny. It’s a pleasure to be here. Gra uh Graham, one of the central debates around your candidacy is the word, and you’ve heard it a lot, especially from the media, electability. Uh the establishment view is that you are not electable. You are someone who is unorthodox. You have no experience. You have a lot of baggage. And that Janet Mills, the governor, who people know she’s the safe bet. What’s your take on electability? Uh well, I think that that is a take that comes from people who are really trying to protect their interests and protect the system that they’re working within. In their version of politics, sure, but their version of politics has been losing for quite some time. I mean, the zeitgeist here in Maine is pretty clear. People do not want establishment politicians. People do not want to continue doing the exact same thing we’ve done for years. And people don’t want to run the exact same kind of playbook that is lost to Susan Collins over and over and over again. We are doing something entirely different. And it is ironic to me that the people who are crowing about electability are the same folks who tend to take polls seriously. But we are at now something like 12 or 13 consecutive polls that have me winning the primary by substantial margins and winning the general by significantly higher margins than the than the uh sitting governor would against Susan Collins. And so I think it’s just it there has just been a shift in what politics is in this country and a lot of the people in places of political power, the people who think that they have experience, the ground has shifted beneath them and they don’t really know how to react. That is a very fair point about the polls. Um your critics though would say, well look, we have a Republican president who was elected in 2016 with zero executive or legislative experience. He didn’t know anything about government. He had never been in public life. He was a guy from reality TV and Home Alone 2. Why should Democrats follow that path? You are an oyster fisherman, a marine vet, which is great. But what do you know about legislating? What do you know about foreign policy? They might say. Well, I would say one, it’s not the same path because I have an immense amount of experience dealing with American foreign policy firsthand. Yes, I have amount of experience uh with the challenges of returning home from the failures of that foreign policy. But I also have a lot of experience in re-engaging with my community and building a small business and being successful materially down here in the real world. I think that one of our problems is we have a lot of people who think that experience comes from being part of the political system that has brought us to this moment. But that politics that brought us here, that’s the problem. Having experience in building the system that allows billionaires to consolidate the wealth that they’ve consolidated, that’s allowed for a system that has created essentially unlivable conditions for a lot of working people in this country where things like housing and health care and general affordability of goods and services goes through the roof. I have experience with that with the exact or I I don’t have experience with that. I have experience with the outcomes of that kind of politics. And I think what we really need are people from the normal world who understand that policy begets real material things for people. And that is an experience that we have lost in many places in the halls of power. And I think it’s one of the reasons why this campaign is so successful is many Americans certainly many mayors believe that that’s exactly the kind of experience that’s going to get us into a better future. That’s undeniably true that politics and and Congress does not reflect the real world or real people and working people. And clearly you’ve been popular because of that. Um it I’m not going to pretend I don’t show your politics. I do. Everyone knows that. My uh when I when I watch your race though, uh forgive me, I cannot think uh I cannot forget the John Federman race. John Federman was someone I supported in his primary. Uh I supported him in the general when he was being attacked by Republicans after his health issues, after his stroke. I defended him. And now you look at John Federman and he is a genocidal, wararmongering, Trumploving Senate Democrat. Uh, refuses to go against the filibuster and all sorts of other things. He promised to be a vote on. And of course, he wasn’t just popular because he was a progressive. He was seen as an ordinary person, too. He was, you know, he wore a hoodie. I noticed you’re wearing a hoodie right now. He wears a hoodie. Yeah. So, you must get this Graham Platner. Like, how do you avoid the John Federman vibes? People say, “I like Graham Platinum, but I hope he doesn’t turn into John Federman once he’s liking this video.” Then don’t just watch, hit like, share, and subscribe. And tap the bell so you never miss a video or live show. But if you want early access to exclusive content, then you have to head to zateo.com and subscribe now. You’ll be supporting Fearless Independent Journalism. Elected. Uh, I will just say that man is the bane of my existence. I get asked I get asked about this and everything. I will say this. I’m going to wear a suit on the Senate floor. Okay, one say that’s how you can be on the Senate floor and if you want to be effective in the Senate, you have to be on the floor. Otherwise, I don’t know what’s the point. The other thing is, and I think this is really important, you know, much of the story around John Federman was a bit of a story. You know, he had been trying to get into politics for quite some time. Yes. When you look at his background, for for many, it was clear he had political ambitions. You know, I really was just an oyster farmer and the extent of my political ambitions was being the harbor master in my town of a thousand people. The reason I’m doing this is I do have a theory of power in which the US Senate has a extremely important function. I think because it’s a uniquely it was built to be a place of power for elites to hold back workingclass power, but that actually makes it a unique target to build workingass power because the bang for your buck with Senate seats is pretty spectacular when it comes to power versus the funds and the kind of apparatus necessary to win. and and I think you know standing up against the Trump administration uh building a better future we need loud voices in the Senate who are willing to build power and wield it. Federman, you know, really doesn’t come from that kind of, I think, uh, one structural critique and certainly didn’t have, when you look closer, a long track record of being very specific or or very, um, what’s the word I’m looking for here? Consistent on his policies. For instance, on Israel, you know, long before that happened, he’s he’s been outspoken and supporting uh, in supporting the Israeli government. Yes. And you know, I’ve you can find op-eds I wrote in my local paper long before I ever thought about running for US Senate condemning the genocide in Gaza. So there are there are elements of me that I think are much more legitimate when it comes to some from the normal world. Um and yeah, I want to delve into Israel in just a moment. Just one other name that’s associated with you when you when people talk about your candidacy. Uh some people call you the white Mani. I don’t know if you’ve heard that phrase which made me uh chuckle. What do you make of the comparisons with Zoran Mandani? Here is a proud Democratic socialist who ran a very populist leftist anti-establishment primary campaign and then general election campaign and won. Uh what do you make of the comparisons between you and Zoran Mamani? I think the comparisons are at this point primarily just because anybody who’s doing something outside of the normal realm of politics with any kind of populist message for workingclass people, we’re all going to get lumped together. I mean, I think uh the mayor and I’s backgrounds are intensely different. Yes. Uh assume that my gun safe looks a little bit different than his. And I there are elements, I think, of where we come from in our worlds and our politics that are different. One thing that I think you can absolutely make a comparison about is our focus on organizing as a political tool. Focusing on building power in communities to have that be part of your electoral strategy. We’re very much doing that here in Maine. It’s why we are succeeding at the rate that we are. And if you look at where the mayor won, it was because he had a lot of people who turned out and organized the oldfashioned way. I think that’s a fair comparison. Do you consider yourself to be a socialist? I know in the past online you’ve been you’ve written that you were a communist at one point. Uh no, I don’t. And it’s if you read those comments, it’s very clear that I’m being very sarcastic. Fair. uh we have a political world in which any kind of populism that’s good for working people gets framed as either socialism or communism. I do think we need to tax the rich. I think we need to invest in social programs. I think we need to do all of that. The joke is that I’m certainly not that at all. But we have this kind of vapid political narrative that uh that always has us using these words even though that frankly the words are not being ever used in like a real context. I think Harry Truman famously said, “You can call me socialist all you want. I’m just going to do what I’m going to do.” Um, let’s talk about Israel and the war. Uh, you are a military veteran. You spent the better part of a decade in the military. You served in Iraq, Afghanistan. Uh, is that what made you anti-war? It’s part of it. I I mean, I even when I enlisted, I I was skeptical of American foreign policy. Um, I I will say once I got in it and became like it became my profession and it became very much part of who I was and what I was doing, I then kind of threw myself into the work. When I left after my fourth deployment, that was when I really began to look back and recognize that everything and and it was on my fourth deployment to Afghanistan, there was a moment where I was like, we are not doing what we say we’re doing. We’re not going to win this war. I don’t even know what winning this war looks like. I don’t think anybody knows that’s running this war knows what winning it looks like. And at that point, I began to wonder, if we’re not doing the thing that we claim we’re, if we’re not bringing democracy, if we’re not trying to make the world safer, what are we doing? And when I began to look closer, I really began to fully buy into the fact that these wars just make people wealthy. And these wars are good for people in political power. They use them as electoral tools. They use them at ways in ways to display like their quote unquote strength as leaders and none of them take into account the human cost. And for me, the human cost is not a it’s not a it’s not a theory and it’s not something to be thought about in this sort of non-material way. The cost of war is something I have seen up front. I have seen friends die. I have seen what happens when high explosives interact with children. It’s an awful thing and and I fundamentally believe that it should not be the core of how we use our foreign policy. Do you believe that Donald Trump and the Trump family and Jared Kushner uh that part of this Iran war is about them making money? Yes, of course. I mean, essentially everything the Trump administration does at some point you boil it down to them, their family members or their inner circle making money off of it. That is certainly part of it. How would you describe the US relationship with Israel? I mean, at this point, I would just say shameful. You know, this is what has happened in Gaza is going it’s the moral question of our time and we failed it miserably. We continue to fail. You know, there there is a genocide that has been committed in Gaza, and we continue to not only not stand up against it, but allow it to happen, run political cover for it, run diplomatic cover for it. You know, down the road, history is not going to remember the leaders uh of this nation who of both parties, by the way, who allowed this to happen. It’s not going to remember them well. And it it is it brings me an immense amount of shame and I think it brings a lot of shame to a lot of Americans that even now we’re continuing to have this relationship and to support the mass killing of innocent civilians. So on that note, what would a Senator Graham Platner of Maine do in the United States Congress to prevent us from carrying on our complicit relationship with a genocidal nation? Well, I certainly would have voted with the 40 Democrats who yesterday voted to stop sending money and arms to the Israeli government. I would support that wholeheartedly. Uh I and down the road I’m we if it is a relationship that is going to be repaired, we need to be looking at an entirely different government and an entirely different structure than what exists now. You know, we are not it’s not as simple for me as like the genocide just stops and then we turn the bombs and the money back on, right? Like it it we need to see a hell of a lot more than that to justify American support for an ally who is Are you saying you would want to see Israel make actual changes to the way it runs itself, controls the Palestinians, for example, its apartheite policies? That would be an issue for you. Yes, absolutely. And illegal settlements need to end. In fact, they need to be rolled back. I mean, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to repair this relationship. Would you follow in the footsteps of Congresswoman Okasio Cortez, who has said she opposes all US military aid to Israel, including for the quote unquote defensive Iron Dome? Yes. I mean, look, we we have laws on the books in this country that say that regimes, governments committing war crimes do not get American aid. But we’re just all we are asking is that we follow our own laws here. It’s not that complicated. Um, your opponent Janet Mills was recently asked if she denies that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. She kind of threw up her hands and just started talking about genocides in Sudan and weirdly in Somalia. She also mentioned the Rwanda genocide from over 30 years ago. Uh, she wouldn’t say Israel is committing a genocide. She just dodged that point. Uh, what do you think’s driving that kind of answer and behavior from her? You know, I I very much think she just comes from a uh an era of establishment politicians that are just fundamentally wrong on this issue and who think that these sort of mealymouthed politically uh politically incoherent responses are going to be acceptable to to uh to the American people. And they’re not. People don’t want to hear like a 10-minute rambling winding explanation invoking genocides from 30 years ago and about how concerning it all is. People don’t want concern. People want it to stop and they want politicians and leaders who are going to call it for what it is, for what the entire world sees it for being. And I I mean it’s I just think that there are a lot of establishment politicians who just cannot come to grips with this this shift. Ju just on that note, uh just grabbing something you just said a moment ago, do you think the reason for your success so far in the polls is that you do speak like a normal person? Like is that a problem that has plagued the Democratic party that everyone talks like a consultant, speaks in talking points, and actually Donald Trump showed us that the American public not only don’t care if you don’t talk like a politician, they actually prefer it if you don’t. Oh, by 100%. I mean, something that’s been fascinating for me in this entire experience is realizing just how many people who run for office don’t actually have any deeper political beliefs. Like for me, being able to explain my positions is relatively easy. I have a I feel like I’ve got a very strong political foundation. I know what I believe. I know why I believe it. And it’s easy for me to talk about it because this is stuff that I believe. It’s not I don’t have these like pre-memorized uh you know focus group tested talking points that I have to rolodex through in my brain. This is this I’m running on my politics. And what I have found is that when you run on your politics, people just find that accessible and understandable. And when you go out into communities like we’ve been doing, we I mean we hold town halls almost daily. When you do that and you talk about what you believe, why you believe it, and what policies you want to enact to make those beliefs a reality, people just they understand it and they connect with it. And I think that very much has to do with why we’ve succeeded in the polls thus far. So on that note, a perfect segue into what I want to talk about next, which I’m sure you’re fed up about talking about, but is all the controversies associated with you and your especially your online comments from the past. Uh, and since you said you, you know, you’re comfortable explaining yourself, let’s talk very plainly about some of this stuff because I know you’ve spoken about this before, but it’s the first time you and I speaking about any of this. The biggest single controversy of your campaign, which is not going to go away if Susan Collins has OA, is a tattoo you got in 2007 that you’ve since had covered up of a skull and crossbones that resembles a very infamous Nazi symbol. You said you had no idea about the connection, saying, quote, “I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that.” When exactly did you find out that the tattoo on your chest could be a Nazi tattoo or seen as one? Oh, about three or four days before I had it covered up? I So I I got that tattoo with some other Marines when we were on shore leave in Croatia 2007. And then I had it for 17 years. I went through two security clearances. I reinlisted in the United States Army, got screened for gang and hate tattoos, and then I went to work for the State Department on the ambassador security team in Kbble, where I got a top secret clearance and also got screened. Never came up. I took my shirt off in front of my extended Jewish family the entire time. I would not have done that uh if I thought I had some obviously recognizable white supremacist or Nazi symbol. So, so Graham, why then, and that all sounds perfectly reasonable, especially the the security checks. So why then did a former top official on your campaign, Genevieve McDonald, your former political director, tell the Guardian last year, while he may not have known what his tattoo meant when he selected the image, it’s not plausible he remained ignorant of its meaning all these years. I I don’t know why she said that. Uh she was only on the campaign for a little over a month and would not have known my anything about things I would have known. uh she she quit uh in rather spectacular fashion and then spent some time Yeah. saying deprecating things about the campaign and about myself. Okay. And why did why did CNN report that they spoke to an acquaintance of yours for more than a decade ago who said you talked to him about your tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol? Well, I believe they actually reported on a Jewish insider uh investigation which had spoken to one anonymous person uh who when they claimed they knew me, it was years they said they knew me from when I worked at a bar from years I didn’t even work at that bar. Okay. And you’re you’re denying that allegation just to be clear. Oh yeah, absolutely. It also came out after the story broke. So, you know, it’s um just on the bigger picture, um I can understand what you’re saying and I’m hearing your denials and and the point about your extended Jewish family. It makes sense and you’re a progressive, so people are giving you a lot of leeway because they like your policy platform. But surely you would admit if you were a Republican who would be found with that tattoo on your chest, people, progressives, Democrats would be losing their mind, wouldn’t they not? Well, I think if if I had that too that tattoo and had displayed at any point in my life any affinity for uh fascism or bigotry uh or you know racism then that would absolutely be something to connect thing is and all of my Reddit posts if you read through them they’ve been out there since October every single one of them uh it’s fairly clear that I have been long an opponent of fascism bigotry and racism sometimes with language that uh people say is too extreme, even though I don’t know, fighting fascism seems like something we should all be dedicated to. On the language front though, this has caught up with you now. We talked a moment ago about how popular you’ve become because you speak like a normal person, but that comes with its own challenges in the political world, which is you’ve used the word which I saw you apologize for this week. Uh you’ve made comments about women that both Janet Mills and Susan Collins have attacked you for. Uh there’s the tattoo. Do you at least accept that going into the general election, this is going to be an issue for you because the Republican party are not going to let this slide. They’re going to use this against you. You know the word baggage. Do you at least accept that from a perceptional point of view, regardless of your individual justifications for all of it? Do you accept politically it is a big challenge for you going into general election with all of this quote unquote baggage? I I will say I don’t really think so because in my experience thus far going around Maine a lot of people look at that and say like okay so he’s a guy that never wanted to run for office. He’s not of the system at all and he very clearly just comes from the normal world and has existed in the normal world coming with all of the things that come with that. I mean I’ve I was in the Marine Corps infantry and I have worked on a boat on the ocean for the past decade. it salty language that kind of stuff is it is it is a thing that I am constantly working to improve. Um but I but it also very much is because of the place that I come from and the world that I come from and I am working very hard to always be improving and to always be being a better version of myself. I think for a lot of people that’s what they’re working on too and it is a way that we can sort of demonstrate that you can change you can improve yourself. you can take accountability for things that you have said or done in the past. And while the of course the Republican party is going to try to hammer me into the ground on this stuff, but truthfully as I go around Maine, people in Maine don’t care about that. People in Maine care about the fact that the hospitals are closing. Yes, you do have a you do have a 27point lead over Janet Mills. So clearly you’re right about that. I think in the general it’s slightly different, right? Because the Republican party, as you know, and Susan Collins is no fool. She’s held that seat for a while. They’re doing their oppo research on you. Uh, I got to ask the question, Graham. Is there other stuff out there that’s going to come out now between now and November? Is there another chat forum we don’t know about? Another tattoo we haven’t seen? No. The uh, everybody’s seen all my tattoos now and everybody’s read all my internet comments and like and we released everything. We put it all out back in October. Time will tell. Time will tell. And and look, the Republican party is absolutely going to lie. You know, at some point that’s coming. They, you know, said they swift voted John Kerry. They said Barack Obama wasn’t wasn’t an American. So like the when it comes to the Republican party, God only knows what they’re going to come up with. Uh that isn’t true. They just ran an AI generated ridiculous. So like there the dirty tricks that’s all going to happen. Um but but one last question on this before we move on. What do you say to supporters of Janet Mills establishment say, “Look, it’s just not worth the risk. Why put up someone with all of this stuff who has to explain away Nazyl looking tattoos? Why not just put up the governor of the state who’s already won statewide as a Democrat and doesn’t have a tattoo of a skull and bones on her? Because the governor consistently loses in the polls, okay, to Susan and the governor is very much close to the political establishment. The governor was was the DS candidate chosen by Washington DC. I’ll tell you that’s far more risky right now. People don’t want establishment politics. People want real people in politics who are going to fight for the material needs of real people. On that note, let’s do a quick rapid fire to see where you stand on some real issues. Uh would you vote in favor of a $20 minimum wage? Yes. Would you vote to get rid of the Senate filibuster? Yes. Would you vote to convict Donald Trump in an impeachment trial? Yes. Do you support statehood for DC and Puerto Rico? Yes. Do you support Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader? No. Do you support Hakee Jeff for House Speaker in 2027? No. Would you support a ban on assault weapons? No. If you go on to win your Senate seat in Maine, will you run for president in 2028? No. All right. So, those answers, I think a lot of people will be nodding along. apart from probably the assault weapons ban questioned which I think as you know a lot of progressives will disagree with you on and say it’s a major issue that helps prevent mass shootings. What would you say to them? I think in a country that’s already a wash in guns, we have 20 to 30 million AR-15s in America. We don’t actually know how many. Restricting access to people with a violent history or people who are going to commit a violent act. That is where we’re going to see the most effect. and I support universal background checks and I support red flag laws like the one that Maine passed by ballot measure overwhelmingly last November. I think that those combined with expanding mental health services across the board as part of a much more substantial health care system and using the power of the federal government to elevate people out of poverty. I think holistically when we think about gun violence, that’s where we’re going to get the most reduction. You said uh earlier this week that you think Chuck Schumer will back your candidacy if you’re the general election official Democratic candidate going into the fall against Susan Collins. You’re not worried that they might, you know, all Zoran Mandani, sorry to go back to Mandani, there might be a sense where actually they just refuse to endorse and back you. Who the mayor of New York is does not control who is the majority in the Senate. And if Democrats in the Senate want anything else or they don’t want anything else more than getting the majority, any road to a blue Senate goes through the state of Maine, beating Susan Collins, who we have been unable to unseat for 30 years. That is a goal that the Democratic Party wants to accomplish. And I firmly believe that when I’m the nominee, the Democratic party is going to understand that and they are going to want to beat Susan Collins far more than they may have some disdain for me. I do hope you’re right because Susan Collins is one of the chief enablers of Trump in our lifetime. Uh last question, Grand Partner. Josh Keefe, a reporter at the main monitor I believe you went to high school with. He wrote an article recently and he pointed out that you were voted most likely to start a revolution back in high school. What would a grand platinum revolution in Washington DC look like if you get there? I mean, I I very much subscribe to Bernie Sanders’s uh uh concept that we need a political revolution and it would be a revolution not just in policy but also in structure. You know, we need to bring democracy back. We need to get money out of politics. If I had my way, elections would be publicly funded. They’d last about two months. I think that we need to look at the structures we have that are supposed to be democratic and understand that they have not resulted in an actual representative democracy. We need to change many of those structures and I think a lot of it is going to come down to a 21st century economic bill of rights. 1944 FDR put out an economic bill of rights. He thought that while we had democratized our politics, we had not democratized our economy. And in a system in which consolidated wealth eventually equals consolidated political power, that is a project we need to be engaged in. And I am very much an advocate for that exact for finishing that project and I would say bringing to fruition the actual goal of New Deal programs. Instead, they got stymied and we’ve been seeing them get cut ever since. We need to finish that project. Well said, Graham Platner, Democratic primary candidate in Maine. Thank you so much for joining me on May the Unfiltered. Appreciate it. Hey, thanks a lot, M. I appreciate it. Did you like this video? Don’t forget to subscribe to this YouTube channel and turn on notifications. For exclusive content and to support our independent, unfiltered journalism, head over to zateo.com. Your support matters.