Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner on Tuesday said he would not mourn the loss of former Vice President Dick Cheney, citing qualms with the leader as a proponent of the Iraq War.
“Usually when a former vice president passes, we all take some time to mourn. As a veteran of the Iraq war, I’m going to say no, not this time,” he said in a video posted to the social platform X.
“Over the next couple days, I’m sure there are going to be thousands of think pieces written about his legacy, but the only legacy that we have to remember is that he wasted thousands of young American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and trillions of dollars for absolutely nothing,” he added.
Cheney helped lead the country’s “war on terror,” urging the United States to enter the Iraq War following the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration sent troops to invade Iraq in 2003 over false claims the country possessed weapons of mass destruction, earning fierce criticism from many, including one of Maine’s most vocal candidates vying to become the state’s Democratic nominee for Senate.
Platner’s background as a Marine and in the Army National Guard has been brought to the forefront of his campaign, as both an asset and a liability.
Polling showed voters disengaged from Platner after learning he obtained a tattoo resembling a Nazi totenkopf while serving overseas in the Marines. He also took flak for past Reddit posts diminishing service members who are victims of sexual assault, declaring himself as a “communist” and describing white rural Americans as racist and stupid following his return from several tours of duty.
In spite of controversies, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has clamped down on his support of Platner, lauding him as the best candidate for working class voters.
“This is a guy who will tell you, who has served four tours of duty with the United States military, he was in the middle of some heavy-duty combat. He was a machine gunner, he mowed down people, you know?” he told Axios.
“He went through some very difficult experiences in the military as a machine gunner seeing his friends killed, came out of the military, he will acknowledge — I’m not telling you what he doesn’t say — he had PTSD. He went to the VA and, by the way, he says they rebuilt his life,” Sanders added.
Platner has accused the Democratic Party of trying to “ruin” his life by bringing up past mistakes. However, he has refused to step aside from the race to become the Pine Tree State’s Democratic nominee for Senate.
He used Cheney’s death as another opportunity to harp on the need to unseat incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who’s running for a sixth term.
“If we take anything away from this, it should be that we need to build a politics that keeps the politicians like Susan Collins, who support illegal foreign wars like the one in Iraq, accountable and get them out of office,” he said in the Tuesday clip.
