Poor Graham Platner, right?
No, not really. He deserves everything that he’s getting right now. No one should be grieving about him or for him. Frankly, the best thing for him now would be to return to his old life in obscurity. Something tells me that he won’t, though. He’s tasted fame and notoriety. He may not get to build a tower shaped in honor of himself that looks like a post-apocalyptic trash can, as Barack Obama has, but he’ll find a way to remain a thorn in the side of the Democrat Party.
But perhaps the biggest question about Platner comes from Greg Gutfeld, who asked Friday night on The Five how someone who was an unknown not so long ago suddenly became the most important person in the party for a while.
"It's incredible how somebody so obscure can all of a sudden become the most important variable for one major political party," Gutfeld said. "It just tells you that these things happen in places that you ignore, spaces that are unoccupied, and you're too busy doing something else."
He added, "But it blows my mind that this guy was an obscurity and now he's everywhere.”
The New York Times ran a piece describing women mourning Platner's political implosion, a framing Gutfeld found absurd given how the same media treated other left-wing candidates who fell short. "They never coddled a voting bloc like this," he said. "I mean, we painted them as rubes falling for a charlatan."
He pointed to Bernie Sanders as the clearest example of the double standard. "Even with Bernie Sanders, they didn't show any sympathy for the voters," Gutfeld said. "They cheated when they tossed him aside in two elections."
That comparison led Gutfeld to a broader point about how Democrats and their allies in the press treat claims of a rigged process. "This is why it kills me," he said. "When they laugh at Republicans or conservatives who think 2020 was rigged against Trump, it's like, ‘You guys rigged two elections against your own guy. Why wouldn't we think that you did it to Sanders?”
Gutfeld then turned to the substance of Platner's far-left platform, arguing that the folksy image built around him was designed to distract from it rather than from his personal baggage. "They kept saying this guy was relatable, a normal guy, but I think this was all camouflage, not for his sexual escapades, but for his policies," he said.
He rattled off the specifics reporters glossed over. "By focusing on the mustache and the truck driving, you didn't talk about free Medicaid, trans, defunding police, BLM, Antifa," Gutfeld said. "There's nothing folksy about his beliefs; it's pure chaos."
ICYMI: The Platner Campaign Is Telling Some Real Whoppers Now
"He has all the stuff of that campus town coffee shop where the coffee mugs don't match," he said. "And all the flyers on the wall are for No Kings rallies and bail funds and rent strikes." He added that Platner is "a walking billboard for decolonization and free Palestine rallies," and insisted "that is not a normal guy just because he wears a sweatshirt."
Gutfeld's sharpest point came when he contrasted Platner with Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican far removed from MAGA politics. "They keep portraying this guy as far worse, evil than voting for Susan Collins," he said. "That was their apocalypse, an elderly, benign liberal Republican who's about as MAGA as Sally Field."
Gutfeld closed by pointing out just how far the goalposts had moved. "And yet that choice, oh, not her, drove women in Maine to grieve, grieve over a guy with a Nazi tattoo who may or may not have raped a few women," he said. "They grieve over him."
"This was all camouflage, not for his sexual escapades, but for his POLICIES... it is pure radicalism"@greggutfeld slams Graham Platner after he officially withdraws from Maine Senate race. pic.twitter.com/P3Wagnoiyp
— The Five (@TheFive) July 10, 2026
That pretty much says it all.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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