House

Rep. Dingell says she’s ‘very upset’ by Platner’s past comments on sexual assault

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by Sarah Davis - 05/02/26 11:08 PM ET

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by Sarah Davis - 05/02/26 11:08 PM ET

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Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said she was troubled by social media posts that the leading Democrat in Maine’s Senate race made more than a decade ago about sexual assault.

Last year, The Washington Post uncovered online comments that Graham Platner posted in 2013, in which the Democratic candidate downplayed the difficulties service members face when reporting sexual assault.

“I was very upset as a woman who has dealt with domestic violence, grew up in a home and other sexual violence. Very upset by what his previous comments were,” Dingell said on Saturday when asked by CNN about these posts.

Platner is now the frontrunner in the state’s Democratic primary after Maine Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign on Thursday due to deficient campaign funds.

The Marine Corps veteran disavowed his past comments in an interview with the Post, saying he made them while battling with post-traumatic stress disorder upon his return from a fourth deployment to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

“I don’t want people to judge me off the dumbest thing I said on the internet 12 years ago,” he told the outlet. “I would like people to engage with who I am today.”

Additionally, he has faced a barrage of scrutiny over his other previous posts on Reddit, in which he criticized police officers, called himself a “communist” and repeatedly used anti-gay slurs. He has since apologized for the antigay posts, calling them “indefensible.”

The candidate has also faced controversy for his tattoo that resembles a Totenkopf, a symbol worn by Nazi troops. Platner said he has since covered up the ink and that he had not known it resembled the Nazi symbol.

The Maine race has thrown into question Democratic leadership’s strategies heading into the midterm elections. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) quickly endorsed Platner after Mills dropped out of the race on Thursday.

“I am very concerned about remembering in all of our elections that we’ve got to win the general elections, but I think people are so angry right now that they want to see people stand up, be heard, not afraid to speak out,” Dingell told CNN on Saturday. “I also want to hold people accountable for things that they have said, and one area that I can never, ever forget is violence against women.”

Dingell, a top party leader who was first elected to Congress in 2014, was pressed by CNN’s Jessica Dean about whether she is OK with having Platner as the Democratic candidate, considering his past controversial comments.

“We’re going to have to see what happens in November,” Dingell responded. “I do think that, quite frankly, people want to make sure that there is somebody stopping the president in both houses of Congress, a system of checks and balances.”

Dingell added that she is “very concerned” about the Senate race in Michigan “after what’s becoming a very raucous primary” there.

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