For the first few months of his U.S. Senate campaign, Graham Platner looked like just the kind of candidate that many Democrats say they want right now. The party has been bleeding working-class men for decades, including in the two elections it lost to Donald Trump. Donors are desperately searching for a “Joe Rogan of the left” who will help liberals reach disaffected, internet-poisoned men in their 20s and 30s. Platner seemed like he could help the party reach those men, and others who feel disappointed, disillusioned, or left out in the current political and economic landscape. He served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine and Army infantryman; now he’s a 41-year-old oysterman living in Sullivan, Maine. His voice is a gravelly baritone, which he uses to vent frustrations about how working people are being swindled.

After announcing his candidacy in August, Platner was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and received praise (and at least one donation) from other senators. He won the backing of three labor unions, filled town halls, and raised millions of dollars from small donors in his effort to defeat Republican incumbent Susan Collins.

Last week, though, CNN released a report revealing Platner’s Reddit history under the username “P-Hustle.” In 2021, he referred to himself as “a communist,” and said that all cops are bastards. Other news outlets soon found additional posts: Platner suggested in 2018 that semiautomatic rifles are necessary to “fight fascism,” and in various posts from 2013, made insensitive remarks about sexual assault and asked, “Why don’t black people tip?” Then, on Monday, to get ahead of opposition research, Platner’s campaign released a video showing that he had a tattoo on his chest resembling the “Totenkopf” skull associated with the Nazis—a connection that Platner said he wasn’t aware of when he got the tattoo in 2007, and that he only recently learned about. “I am not,” he said, “a secret Nazi.” By Wednesday morning, he’d gotten the tattoo covered up by a Celtic knot with a dog motif.

I’m not a political reporter, but I live in Maine, so I took special interest in this story. I spoke with Platner about his past, first in a roughly 90-minute-long video call on Sunday, and then in a shorter phone conversation on Tuesday, after the tattoo story broke. In our initial interview, he seemed eager to explain his old Reddit posts, some of which he said he regrets, some of which he said he wanted to contextualize, and some of which he did not apologize for. “I am still angry at the government,” he said. “And I’m very, very angry at the political establishment that, honestly, sent me to fight in these goddamn wars. And it’s still the same political establishment. Many of the people that I’m kind of up against at the moment are the people who voted to send me to Iraq in the first place.” Some of Platner’s allies, includin g Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, have said that they view the timing of the release of the Reddit posts as a strategic move from the Washington establishment to keep Platner out.

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Platner has received extensive criticism for the revelations.