Graham Platner has once again come under fire for a social media post that has been deleted.
The Democratic U.S. Senate candidate’s campaign shared a post on the social media platform X from Stew Peters, a far-right personality who has espoused antisemitic and white nationalist views online.
Peters’ post came with a video of President Donald Trump touting U.S. military strength and efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear power program during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.
“War with Iran is the only thing republicans and democrats have both given a standing ovation for. Let that sink in,” Peters posted along with the video.
The Platner campaign shared the post with its own comment: “As always, there’s one thing that brings Republican and Democratic politicians together: sending other people’s children to die in stupid wars in the Middle East.”
In an email to the Press Herald, a campaign spokesperson said the post was quickly taken down once they realized it was from Peters.
“We were reposting a C-Span clip of Trump speaking about the potential war with Iran and didn’t realize that the video had been posted by a despicable account,” the spokesperson said. “When we learned who the poster was we immediately deleted the post.”
Platner’s campaign was nearly derailed by backlash on old social media posts and a Nazi-linked tattoo late last year.
Platner has disavowed the series of highly criticized posts, which included topics like sexual assault in the military, police and a comment that white rural Americans “actually are” racist and stupid.
It was also revealed that the candidate had a tattoo of a Nazi symbol, which he has since covered up.
A University of New Hampshire poll released Tuesday shows Platner with a handy lead over fellow Democratic primary candidate Gov. Janet Mills in the race for the Democratic nomination to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November.
The poll gives Platner a 38-point lead over the two-term governor. The responses of 462 likely primary voters were gathered from Feb. 12-16 and the poll has a margin of error of 4.6%.
