Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for Maine's U.S. Senate seat, faces a second former girlfriend publicly contradicting his claim that he had no idea the skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest was a Third Reich symbol. The unnamed woman told the New York Post that Platner not only recognized the tattoo as a Totenkopf, the "Death's Head" insignia of the SS, but told her he kept it deliberately as a reminder that "the United States was the evil, bad guy overseas."
That account directly contradicts the story Platner has told voters for months. And it arrives at the worst possible moment for a campaign already battered by allegations of infidelity and dishonesty.
Platner has maintained a consistent public narrative: he got the tattoo in 2007 while drunk in Croatia, picked a skull-and-crossbones design off a wall, and did not realize it carried Nazi associations until the image became public last October. His campaign spokesperson repeated the line to the Post.
"Graham's repeatedly said he picked a skull-and-crossbones tattoo off a wall in Croatia to commemorate surviving Ramadi and his friends who were killed there."
The spokesperson added that Platner "has also since covered up the tattoo, and answered countless questions about it." He has since inked over the Totenkopf with a Celtic knot featuring dogs.
Platner also stressed publicly that he passed a full background check, including screening for hate symbols, when he joined the Ambassador to Afghanistan's security detail. The implication was clear: if the government didn't flag it, how could he have known?
But the women who dated him tell a different story.
The unnamed woman, described as a left-wing streamer, said she met Platner on Tinder and began talking with him in February 2021. She moved to Maine for work and dated him until mid-July of that year. The Post confirmed she had multiple social media posts from that period alluding to a relationship with someone named "Graham," and reviewed a screenshot dated June 15, 2021, showing Platner on a boat with oysters in Bar Harbor, Maine, not far from his hometown.
She spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity. Her account of the tattoo conversation was specific.
"As a person who is a leftist, I immediately looked at him and asked him, 'Is that a Totenkopf?' and he told me a whole, 'he will hold this weight forever' bravado sob story about how it was, but he decided to keep it as a reminder that the United States was the evil, bad guy overseas."
She said Platner told her that someone in his military leadership, described as a military history buff, suggested the crew get the skull-and-crossbones tattoo. That detail matters. It is not the story of a man who blindly pointed at a wall in a Croatian tattoo parlor. It is the story of a man who knew the symbol's lineage.
The woman also offered a candid assessment of why Platner framed the tattoo that way to her specifically.
"It seems like he tailored his answer to me, knowing my politics, since that's one of the reasons we matched on Tinder in the first place."
In other words, she believes Platner told a left-leaning woman what a left-leaning woman would want to hear, that the tattoo was an anti-American statement, not a fascist one. Either way, her account places Platner's knowledge of the Totenkopf's origin years before he says he learned about it.
Lyndsey Fifield, another former girlfriend, told the New York Times earlier this month that Platner was lying when he claimed ignorance of the tattoo's Nazi association. Fifield said Platner would openly call the tattoo "my Totenkopf" and joke about its Nazi origins.
"I would never have known what that was. He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo."
The Times reviewed messages from Fifield last summer in which she told friends Platner "has a Nazi tattoo on his chest." That predates Platner's public claim that he only discovered the connection last fall.
When pressed on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes" about how Fifield knew the tattoo was a Nazi symbol in August of last year if he himself did not know, Platner offered a thin deflection.
"Well, she certainly didn't send that text to me. I certainly didn't know. They didn't tell me that."
Two women. Two separate time periods. The same basic claim: Graham Platner knew exactly what was on his chest.
The tattoo is not the only credibility crisis stalking Platner's campaign. The unnamed woman also alleged that Platner cheated on his then-fiancée during their 2021 relationship. She further alleged he cheated on a second partner before marrying his current wife, Amy Gertner, in 2023.
Last month, a separate story broke alleging Platner cheated on Gertner via sexting. The Post reviewed messages the unnamed woman sent to her mother on September 26, 2025, in which she wrote: "Better not take a peek at the Nazi tattoo on his chest."
She also posted on X last October, when the tattoo first became public, that "Graham Platner's a piece of s*** but not because he's a communist."
The pattern is not subtle. A candidate who asks voters to trust him on policy cannot seem to keep his story straight on anything personal, not the tattoo, not his relationships, not what he knew or when he knew it.
Phil Proschko, a Marine who served alongside Platner and attended one of his town halls, offered Zeteo a partial defense. Proschko said the group "did not purposely get hateful f***ing s*** because we're racist people" but rather "got matching tattoos because we were in our 20s, drunk in Croatia."
That tracks with Platner's public version, young Marines, alcohol, bad judgment. But it does not address the central question raised by both women: whether Platner later learned the symbol's meaning and chose to keep it for years anyway, telling different people different reasons why.
Proschko's account and Platner's official line focus on the moment the needle hit skin. The women's accounts focus on every year after, the years Platner allegedly knew what the Totenkopf was and wore it anyway.
Rather than address the growing pile of contradictions head-on, Platner's campaign pivoted to attacking his general-election opponent. The spokesperson took a shot at Senator Susan Collins, claiming she "refuses to take questions on her disastrous vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, gut rural hospitals, and supported every foreign war of the last thirty years."
That is a familiar move, change the subject when the subject is uncomfortable. But voters deciding whether to trust a Senate candidate tend to notice when the candidate's own story keeps shifting while the people closest to him keep saying the opposite.
Several questions hang over the Platner campaign. When exactly did he cover up the tattoo? If he truly did not know its meaning until last October, why do two women from different periods of his life say otherwise? Did anyone in the Democratic primary vetting process ask about the tattoo before he clinched the nomination? And does the Maine Democratic establishment plan to stand behind a nominee whose credibility erodes with each new account?
Platner passed a government background check. That is a fact he has leaned on heavily. But background checks screen for security risks, not for whether a candidate is being honest with voters about what he knew and when. Those are different questions, and right now, the answers coming from the people who knew Platner best are not the answers his campaign wants.
When one ex-girlfriend says you knew, that's a he-said-she-said. When two of them say it, and your own fellow Marine confirms the group got matching Totenkopf tattoos, the "I had no idea" defense starts to look less like an explanation and more like a habit of telling each audience exactly what it wants to hear.
Maine voters deserve a Senate candidate whose word holds up past the first follow-up question.
