House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday dodged key questions about scandal-scarred Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner, saying the fellow Dem and horny oyster farmer has to answer for himself.
Platner, who is married and faces a primary-election race Tuesday, was hit early on with revelations of a Nazi-linked tattoo and cheating-by-sext. Then last week came allegations of deeply disturbing behavior toward female partners and him harboring fantasies about raping home intruders.
“I haven’t followed these allegations closely, but what I have said is that violence against women in any way, shape or form is unacceptable,” Jeffries (D-NY) told Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing,” referring to some of the explosive accusations against Platner that grabbed national headlines.
“It’s a red line, and nobody should cross that,” Jeffries said. “Any accuser who comes forward has to be treated with dignity and respect.”
Pressed on the host of Platner’s other scandals, the Brooklyn Dem demurred.
“He’s going to have to speak for himself, and that’s what any candidate, particularly in a high-profile race, is going to be called upon to do,” Jeffries said.
The New York Times detailed last week’s disturbing accusations from several former girlfriends that Platner was very toxic toward them during their time together, with one alleging his twisted rape threats.
Ex-gal pal Lyndsey Fifield claimed that the Dem pol yanked her out of a cab during an argument and later “twisted her arm behind her back” before locking her in a bedroom for a night.
Fifield, 40, also alleged that Platner boasted how he would rape anyone who broke into his home.
“He said this a lot: ‘If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,’ ” said Fifield, who dated the Maine candidate from 2013 to 2015.
“He was like, ‘I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant,’ ” she told the Times, adding that Platner would clarify that he wouldn’t be raping the hypothetical intruders in “a sexual way, not in a gay way.”
He would make the statements while watching television and sharpening an ax, according to the ex.
Platner has also faced controversy over the tattoo he once had on his chest that resembled a Totenkopf or “death’s head” symbol used by the Nazi SS. The Marine veteran claims he got that while drunk in Croatia, didn’t know of its Nazi ties and has since inked over it with a “Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs.”
The Times reviewed private messages from Fifield in August where she talked to friends about how Platner “has a Nazi tattoo on his chest.
“I would never have known what that was,” she told the outlet — but Platner would refer to it as “my Totenkopf” and “joke about it being a Nazi tattoo.”
Platner has also faced a torrent of other controversies.
On Reddit, he blasted “all” police officers as “bastards,” said rural white Americans “actually are” racist and stupid, said a Purple Heart veteran deserved to die and defended urinating on dead Taliban bodies.
Jeffries at least stressed the importance of combating anti-semitism in the US when pressed about Platner’s recent suggestion that his foe, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) “is bought and paid for by [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu.”
“Listen, the effort to crush anti-Semitism in America shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” Jeffries said when grilled about Platner’s railing against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.
“It can’t be a red or blue issue. It’s a red, white and blue issue.
“It’s an American issue, and we should all be committed to crushing anti-Semitism and all other forms of hatred into the ground, bury it and make sure it can never rise again,” Jeffries said.
Platner has a 7.4 percentage point lead over Collins in the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, although Collins has a history of outperforming the polls.
