Senate Dem candidate who wrote he 'became a communist' now says he was joking

Platner, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to unseat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine., in 2026, published the now-deleted Reddit posts between 2020 and 2021. In one of the posts, he wrote, "I got older and became a communist," but he now claims it was merely "internet s---posting."

He went on to explain away other posts he made at the time in which he described rural White voters as "stupid and racist."

"I did get in a fight with somebody and say that some rural White voters were stupid and racist," he told the outlet. "I myself am a rural White voter in eastern Maine. These are my neighbors and my friends. I actually rise to their defense often and continue to do so."

"It is amusing for me to watch the campaign described in the media as collapsing or falling apart - when internally, we frankly have not felt this strong since the beginning," Platner told NBC News. "It hasn't sunk my campaign. In fact it seems, in many ways, it's strengthened us."

"I want to talk about my evolution as a human being," he said. "A lot of Americans also want to have hope that you can change and that you can evolve, and that we can have a society that gives grace and forgiveness to people. Because if we can't, if we think that people are just ossified into who they are right now, and can never be something different, then what's the point?"

"We find ourselves now in a significantly stronger position, team-wise," he said. "While we lost some people, we've kept almost everybody, and people that have stayed are galvanized and committed."