‘I got older and became a communist’: Deleted posts show Maine Senate hopeful’s raw views on politics, war, and police
Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck
CNN
October 16, 2025
Graham Platner, a Marine veteran turned oyster farmer who is now a rising Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, once called himself a “communist,” dismissed “all” police as bastards, and said rural White Americans “actually are” racist and stupid, according to deleted social media posts reviewed by CNN’s KFile.
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In one now-deleted Reddit comment from 2021, Platner responded to a thread about people becoming more conservative as they age by saying: “I got older and became a communist.” The comment was made on a subreddit called r/Antiwork, a far-left forum “for those who want to end work.”
In another Reddit post that year, Platner reflected on his life after his military service, saying he was “a vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist these days. After the war, I’ve pretty much stopped believing in any of the patriotic nonsense that got me there in the first place, and am a firm believer that the best thing a person can do is help their neighbors and live a loving life.”
“Still got the guns though,” he added. “I don’t trust the fascists to act politely.”
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In one deleted comment, in a thread about a Black army lieutenant who was held at gunpoint and pepper-sprayed by police during a traffic stop, one Reddit user wrote, “Bastards. Cops are bastards.” Platner replied, “All of them, in fact.”
Platner also frequently weighed in on police violence, arguing that misconduct was “a problem that extends deep into the profession as a whole” and rejecting claims of accidental shootings after incidents such as the killing of Minneapolis Black man Daunte Wright, writing, “F**k these cops.”
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In another since-removed post from 2020, Platner responded to a thread titled “White people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks” by writing, “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are.”
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In one Reddit post in 2021 about Maine’s vote to block a power-transmission project between the US and Canada, Platner responded sharply to a commenter from Canada questioning the result.
“I have to ask, and I do mean this is the most charitable of ways, but are you retarded?” Platner wrote. “We shouldn’t have the eat the pain because you c*nts and Massachusetts couldn’t act like adults. F**k off and die, leave Maine out of your capitalist fantasies.”
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Platner repeatedly used the word “retarded” to insult other Reddit users, including in one deleted comment that began, “I don’t want to be excessively insulting here … but are you retarded?”
‘Traitors,’ ‘f**king morons,’ a ‘worthless p*ssy’
In other comments, Platner voiced frustration over his military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. He spoke candidly about how his combat experience reshaped his politics. Writing in 2021 on the subreddit r/SocialistRA — a self-described “anti-capitalist left” firearms-education forum that says it is unaffiliated with the Socialist Rifle Association — he wrote that his years in uniform had left him disillusioned with America’s wars and the country itself.
“My time in America’s imperial wars definitely radicalized me further, and I’m significantly more left today than I was back then. It is difficult to see all that horror, as well as all the grift and corruption, and not find the entire thing utterly bankrupt,” Platner wrote. “I did used to love America, or at least the idea of it. These days I’m pretty disgusted by it all.”
“It becomes increasingly clear the wars were a waste of our time and dead friends/violence we committed was all for naught,” he added.
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Read more here.
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