Chuck Schumer has a serious problem on his hands, and it keeps getting worse by the day.
Democrats are rallying behind a Senate candidate in Maine who has generated one jaw-dropping scandal after another, and Ted Cruz just went on national television to say exactly what millions of Americans are already thinking.
And what Cruz said about the Democrat Party on Fox News is going to leave Schumer scrambling for answers.
Cruz Unloads on Democrats Over Maine Senate Mess
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) went on Fox News’ Hannity recently and did not hold back. Cruz lit into the Democrat Party for continuing to prop up Graham Platner, the Marine Corps veteran and Maine oysterman who has become the presumptive Democrat nominee for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).
“I don’t think principle matters to them anymore,” Cruz said. “All they care about is power. And they don’t, I believe, believe in democracy.”
Cruz didn’t stop there. He tied the Platner situation to a broader pattern of Democrat behavior that he says proves the party has abandoned any pretense of standing for something beyond raw political survival.
“This is the same Democrat party that was willing to prop Joe Biden up and run him as a candidate even though they knew he was no longer mentally capable to do the job,” Cruz said. “This is the same Democrat party that removed Donald Trump from the ballot in multiple states. That’s how little they think of democracy.”
Strong words. But the facts on the ground in Maine make it hard to argue with him.
Who Is Graham Platner, Exactly?
Platner came out of nowhere to become the face of the Democrat Party’s effort to unseat Collins, one of the most durable Republican incumbents in the country. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had recruited Maine Governor Janet Mills to run against Collins, but Platner surged past her in the polls and Mills eventually suspended her campaign, leaving Platner as the de facto nominee heading into the primary.
And the scandals started piling up almost immediately.
Reporters uncovered thousands of now-deleted Reddit posts in which Platner allegedly made racist comments, dismissed military sexual assaults, and wrote a vicious post mocking a wounded soldier who was injured during a Taliban ambush. According to reporting by Townhall and others, Platner’s post called the wounded soldier a “dumb motherf****r” who “didn’t deserve to live.”
Then came the tattoo. Platner had a skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest that reportedly resembled a symbol used by Nazi SS units. He claimed he got it during a night of drinking while on leave in Croatia in 2007 and had no idea what it meant. He has since covered it with another tattoo. One of Platner’s former girlfriends, according to the New York Times, claimed he actually knew what the tattoo symbolized.
And then came the sexting. The Wall Street Journal reported that Platner allegedly exchanged sexually explicit messages with multiple women while married. According to that reporting, Platner’s own wife discovered the messages and disclosed them to his Senate campaign.
That’s a lot of baggage for a first-time candidate who wants to represent the state of Maine in the United States Senate.
Schumer Stands By His Man Anyway
You might think the Democrat Party would cut its losses. You would be wrong.
Senate Minority Leader Schumer met with Platner in Washington, DC, recently, and came out of that meeting still fully on board. “I met with Graham Platner today. We’re going to beat Susan Collins, take back the Senate,” Schumer said publicly after the meeting.
That tells you everything about where Democrat priorities actually sit. Collins is a top target for Schumer because flipping her seat is part of his math for reclaiming the Senate majority. Winning the seat is the only thing that matters. The candidate’s character is a secondary concern at best.
And that’s Cruz’s point exactly. The Democrat Party does not ask whether a candidate is decent or honest or worthy of the office. It asks whether the candidate can win. That’s not a political party with principles. That’s a machine running on ambition.
Even Some Democrats Are Uncomfortable
Not everyone in the Democrat Party is playing along quietly. Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) called Platner a “creep” in an interview with CNN and compared him to a “Nazi sympathizer” over the tattoo controversy. But Fetterman is the same reliable Democrat vote who supports abortion on demand until birth, gun control, amnesty for illegal aliens, and transgender surgeries for kids. He’s pretending to be a moderate because he’s up for re-election in a red state in 2028. Don’t read too much into his Platner criticism.
The ladies of ABC’s The View also piled on after the sexting story broke. Co-host Sunny Hostin called Platner a “cheater” and an “antisemite” and said she didn’t buy his story about the tattoo. “The fact that he had that tattoo for 20 years and ‘didn’t know what it was’ is a lie,” Hostin said on air.
But even with some Democrats expressing discomfort, the party’s institutional machinery kept humming along behind Platner. Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Adam Schiff were all spotted entering the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee building for the meeting with Platner. The party is not walking away.
What This Says About the Democrat Party Right Now
Cruz’s comments on Hannity were blunt, but they point to something real. The Democrat Party spent years telling Americans that character mattered, that decency mattered, that the personal conduct of elected officials was a reflection of the values they would bring to governance. They said all of that loudly and repeatedly.
And now they’re rallying around a candidate who allegedly sexted multiple women while married, wrote posts mocking wounded soldiers, and had a Nazi-linked tattoo on his chest for two decades.
The 2020 election raised serious and widespread concerns about how votes were counted, how election rules were changed at the last minute under cover of COVID, and how Big Tech and the mainstream media buried the Hunter Biden laptop story in the weeks before voters went to the polls. Millions of Americans still have legitimate questions about how that election was conducted. But Democrats spent years lecturing everyone about the sanctity of elections and the importance of democratic norms.
Now those same Democrats are lining up behind a candidate whose own wife reportedly handed his sexting records to his campaign staff. The hypocrisy is not subtle.
Cruz put it plainly: they don’t believe in democracy. What they believe in is winning. And right now, winning means standing behind Graham Platner and hoping Maine voters don’t look too closely at what they’re being asked to accept.
Susan Collins has survived every Democrat attempt to unseat her for three decades. If this is the best Chuck Schumer can do, she may survive this one too.
Sources: Mediaite; Fox News; Wall Street Journal; NPR; New York Times; CNN; Daily Caller; Townhall