It was a month ago that CNN's Andrew Kaczynski revealed that Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner had referred to himself as a communist and a socialist on Reddit. At the time, Platner said he regretted those comments and denied he was a socialist.
In one now-deleted Reddit comment from 2021, Platner responded to a thread about people becoming more conservative as they age by saying: “I got older and became a communist.” The comment was made on a subreddit called r/Antiwork, a far-left forum “for those who want to end work.”
In another Reddit post that year, Platner reflected on his life after his military service, saying he was “a vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist these days."...
In his interview with CNN, Platner wanted to assure voters: “I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I own a small business. I’m a Marine Corps veteran.”
There's plenty of evidence that Platner really was a socialist and that it went beyond just the things he said on Reddit. For instance, he identified himself as a member of the Socialist Rifle Association and encouraged others to join a local chapter.
But even now, a month after his denial, his message still sounds a lot like socialism. Last week he posted a video from one of his town hall events in Maine in which he discussed billionaires.
“Nobody works hard enough to justify $1 billion,” the military veteran and oyster farmer told potential voters at the event. “Not in a world where I know people that have three jobs and can’t even afford their rent.”
With audience members nodding their heads in agreement, Platner continued by saying, “I refuse to believe that in a state like Maine, where people work as hard as we do here, that it is merely hard work that gets you that kind of success. We all know it isn’t. We all know it’s the structures. It’s the tax code. That is what allows that money to get accrued.”...
“The world that we live in today,” he explained, “is not organic. It is not natural. The political and economic world we have did not happen because it had to. It happened because politicians in Washington and the billionaires who write the policies that they pushed made this happen. They changed the laws, and they made it legal to accrue as much wealth and power as they have now.”
The solution? “We need to make it illegal again to do that,” says Platner.
Here's the video:
No one works hard enough to justify being a billionaire. pic.twitter.com/Ezvf5fPLfv
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) November 14, 2025
It's "the structures"? What does that mean? What structures does he think are responsible for people becoming billionaires? Unless the structure in question is capitalism itself.
He mentions the tax code but taxes only take a portion of what you earned after the fact. Higher taxes on billionaires would take more of their money but it would only take what they earn, not what they own. Most billionaires are rich because they own some company that is worth a lot of money, not because they make a huge salary.
He bypasses this difference between income taxes, which tax money people take as salary, and wealth taxes, which take a portion of what people own. So, for instance, if you wanted to tax Jeff Bezos wealth, you'd need to force him to hand over part of his ownership of Amazon to the government, which is literally seizing the means of production. The government wouldn't pay him for those shares of stock, they would just demand them in the form of a wealth tax. Is that what Platner has in mind?
He says he wants to make it "illegal again" to accrue that much wealth, but when was it illegal before? The answer is never. He's just making stuff up.
And of course, he's right that the capitalist system isn't organic in the sense that it just happens. It requires laws and international cooperation to make sure people get paid for their work rather than just having it get stolen from them. To stick with Jeff Bezos, there are structures that make it possible for Amazon to exist and collect money in various countries for services they offter. So it's fair to say a world where those structures don't exist is one where Amazon doesn't exist and Jeff Bezos is not a billionaire.
So here's the question someone should ask Graham Platner: Would you rather live in a world where Amazon can't exist so that billionaires like Jeff Bezos don't exist? Maybe Platner would but I don't think the millions of people who use Amazon every day would prefer that it not exist. I suspect Graham Platner is one of those people. He's bought things on Amazon before. Someone should ask him about these contradictions and see if he can explain them.
Platner wrapped up his thoughts on billionaires saying, "It’s up to us to organize, use our immense power as the working class, and win the world we deserve." In other words, workers of the world unite. He still sounds like a socialist to me.
Platner is also making news for other comments he's made recently at town hall events. He suggested packing the Supreme Court and impeaching two sitting justices.
"We're going to have to start treating the Supreme Court like the political action wing that it has become of conservatism," Platner said Saturday during a Somerset County Democrats meeting in the central Maine town of Skowhegan. "It is not functioning as a constitutional body."
"I'm a supporter of stacking the Court," he continued. "I'm also a supporter of, I mean, the Senate can write its own rules. ... I firmly believe if we held Supreme Court justices to the same standard that we hold other federal judges, there's a compelling case for the impeachment and removal of at least two justices."...
The remarks are Platner's most aggressive to date when it comes to the High Court. Platner's campaign site lists a number of left-wing policy priorities, but does not include a section on the Supreme Court. And while Platner has criticized the Court's conservative justices on X, he has not called to expand the Court or impeach any of its members.
Here's audio of his comments on the court.
Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner is calling on Democrats to pack the Supreme Court and impeach “at least two” of its sitting justices, the Free Beacon‘s @JessicaCostescu reports from the campaign trail.
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) November 17, 2025
Addressing the Somerset County Democrats on Saturday, Platner said the… pic.twitter.com/G3FaszrmDd
Even Bernie Sanders doesn't support packing the Supreme Court (though his solution is arguably almost as bad). Platner is running to the left of Sanders and Sanders is a self-described socialist. So the idea that Platner is not a socialist doesn't really hold up to any scrutiny at this point.
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