Graham Platner, the winner of Maine’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, has responded to being called a “thug” and a “pig” by President Donald Trump.
Trump made the comments about Platner while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Platner, an oyster farmer and military veteran, had received more than 152,000 votes with 96% of the votes counted as of Friday morning. That vote total is more than any Democratic Senate candidate in Maine’s history. His campaign, however, has not come without controversies, including the discovery of controversial Reddit posts that had been deleted, a chest tattoo that was recognized as a Nazi symbol and has since been covered up with another design, reports alleging that he exchanged sexually explicit text messages with multiple women after he got married, and a New York Times report that featured accounts from several of his ex-girlfriends who called Platner’s behavior “unsettling” and described their relationship with him as toxic or volatile.
“I watched that thug that’s up in Maine. He’s a thug, and they’re trying to make excuses for him. I mean, he’s worse than any human being that’s ever run for office, probably,” Trump said of Platner. “This guy’s a thug. He’s a low-level thug and he’s running to be a senator.
“He’s a cheap, no-good person,” Trump added. “I’ve never seen a person like that run for office.”
Trump went on to say that Platner is “an outright pig.”
“He’s like a pig. That’s what he reminds me of,” Trump said. “I come up with good names for people. I don’t want to stick him with that one, although I think pigs would be very upset about it.”
On Friday, Platner shared a video on his social media pages that showed him laughing as he watched video of Trump insulting him.
Platner then addressed the comments, saying that being called a thug and the worst person to ever run for office by Trump might be the highest compliment he has ever received.
“He’s also right. There might not be a lot of other people like me who have run for office. You know, people that actually serve their country, have fought in this nation’s wars, came home, started a business, lived down here in the real world, have spent years and years being involved at the local level in the community, and then one day decide to go run for U.S. Senate,” Platner said. “Maybe he’s right about that.”
Platner added that the reason Trump is coming after him personally is because he is scared.
“He knows that we’re coming after him. He knows that when we win this election and we take this kind of politics down to Washington, when we retake this seat for working class Mainers, when we retake the Senate with fighting Democrats who actually want to hold Trump and his cronies and all their corruption accountable, he knows that’s coming. And it’s got him shaking in his boots,” Platner said. “And he should be because we are coming. Because we’re building something here in Maine, the likes of which has not been seen before. We are really building a true, broad-based, working class coalition to build power the old-fashioned way. Organizing people and taking it. Taking it to fight for a better future. Taking it to make sure that the Epstein class — that Donald Trump and all of his depraved billionaire friends who think that they can get away with disgusting acts, think that because of their money and their power and their wealth and their influence that they’re above the law — they’re about to find out that they’re not. And it’s got them terrified, and they should be.”
Being called a thug and the worst person ever to run for office by Donald Trump might be the highest compliment I have ever received. pic.twitter.com/okfiSaQsgz
Trump also said he will support incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in Maine’s Senate race. The president called Collins, a Republican seeking her sixth term in the Senate, “a sane woman.” Trump also commended her for never missing a roll-call vote in her three decades in Washington. Collins recently extended that streak to 10,000 consecutive votes.
“She’s not my best friend at all. … But she’s a sane person,” Trump said. “She’s a respected person. Maybe a little different ideology than me, but [Platner is] a thug. He’s a fake thug. He’s a phony. I’ve made a lot of money picking out phonies. He’s a real phony. He’s a bad person.”
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