by: Eliana Jonshon May 21 2026 -------------------: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nuOX!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F11f060e9-c097-4815-93e8-a9f9c08a0cc0_2048x1365.jpeg Graham Platner (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner called the U.S. Army an “awful” organization and disparaged its soldiers as “fat, lazy trash who would rather not be in uniform,” the Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman reports. “The Army does things differently, and as a whole, they do things much worse,” Platner posted to Reddit in March 2019 under the username “P-Hustle,” which he deleted prior to launching his Senate campaign. “As an organization it’s awful. Full of fat, lazy trash who would rather not be in uniform.” One month later, in April 2019, Platner wrote that “as a whole,” the Army “is absolute trash,” “absolutely lacking in the warrior ethos,” and “generally attracts a lower standard of person.” https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NcJn!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a43fbca-ab7f-45ac-9735-99aec37f5060_2020x652.png Platner, the de facto Democratic nominee to face Republican senator Susan Collins in November, served in the Marines before reenlisting in the Maryland Army National Guard. He “has struck inconsistent notes about his military service,” Goodman writes. “On the one hand, he has made it a central part of his Senate campaign, touting his status as a ‘Marine and U.S. Army veteran’ who enlisted in the Marines and later served as an Army ‘rifle team leader.’ At the same time, he has said he ‘didn’t do anything good for America’ when he was ‘in uniform’ and attacked prominent U.S. veterans.” Platner, for example, called U.S. military officers “gay” and disparaged an Army soldier who was wounded by Taliban machine gun fire in Afghanistan and received a Purple Heart. “Dumb motherf—er didn’t deserve to live,” Platner wrote in response to helmet camera footage showing the soldier’s firefight. “At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban’s part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home.” Platner also wrote of wanting to “beat up” Republican senator and combat veteran Tom Cotton and called Rep. Seth Moulton and former Rep. Peter Meijer, both of whom served in the Iraq war, “asshats.” READ MORE: Graham Platner Disparaged Army Soldiers in Deleted Reddit Posts: ‘Full of Fat, Lazy Trash Who Would Rather Not Be in Uniform’ Elsewhere: Federal prosecutors in Florida charged former Cuban president Raúl Castro, the brother of the late Marxist dictator Fidel Castro, with murder and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals in relation to the Cuban military’s downing of two U.S. civilian airplanes in 1996. It marks “an escalation in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the Cuban government,” CBS News reported. Harvard University faculty members voted to cap the number of As given to undergraduate students in a bid to crack down on grade inflation, adopting a policy that was in place in Princeton until 2014, when the Ivy League school scrapped it “after finding it added a lot of stress to students,” the Washington Post reported. Two-thirds of grades awarded at Harvard were As in the 2024-25 academic year compared with a third in 2012-13. House Democrats Josh Gottheimer and Jared Moskowitz are pledging to expel Texas Democrat Maureen Galindo, who has called to turn an ICE facility in the state into “a prison for American Zionists” and said Jews “worship Satan,” if she’s elected to represent Texas’s 35th Congressional District, where she advanced to a Democratic primary runoff in March. Check out our full Thursday lineup below. Zohran Mamdani Paid Multiple Visits to Holocaust-Denying Sheikh Who Claimed Jewish Death Toll ‘Was Exaggerated’ and ‘Done By Zionists,’ Called for More ‘Study’ Graham Platner Disparaged Army Soldiers in Deleted Reddit Posts: ‘Full of Fat, Lazy Trash Who Would Rather Not Be in Uniform’ New Fed Chair Has Chance to Right-Size ‘Disaster’ of Bloated Staff 5 Things We Learned from This Week’s Primary Elections Colorado Dem Uses State Capitol for Campaign Video in Apparent Violation of State Law Thanks for reading the Washington Free Beacon! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.