Blog #50 Marine Vet Platner: Uses PTSD as Excuse for Past Mistakes
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‘Bullshit Glory Story’: Graham Platner Accused Navy SEAL ‘Lone Survivor’ Author of ‘Lying’ and Promoting ‘War Porn’
Plus, far-left foundations and foreign governments pay for New York Times to demonize Israel
Jun 9, 2026
Maine Democrat Graham Platner characterized the heroics described by former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell in his bestselling memoir, Lone Survivor, as a “bullshit glory story.” The memoir recounts Operation Red Wings, a failed SEAL mission to capture a Taliban leader during which three of Luttrell’s fellow SEALs lost their lives and he himself narrowly evaded Taliban capture with the help of a local Pashtun. According to Platner, Luttrell, who was played by Mark Wahlberg in the 2013 feature film based on his book, was “lying” and promoting “war porn.”
“It’s the latest example of the far-left Senate hopeful smearing his fellow combat veterans, and of his particular antipathy to Special Forces,” the Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross writes. Platner asserted in a series of deleted Reddit posts authored under his alias “P-Hustle” that “Luttrell didn’t write the damn book” and suggested he colluded with the Navy to lie and depict the operation in a positive light.
“Terrible planning, improperly trained and equipped unit, and then a whole bunch of lying on the part of Luttrell and the Navy to turn a total failure into some bullshit glory story,” Platner fumed.
“Platner, who served in the Marine Corps and the Army, has a penchant for smearing his fellow soldiers in arms,” writes Ross. “In a 2013 post, he mocked Army private Teddy Daniels, who was seen on video being shot by Taliban fighters, calling Daniels a ‘dumb motherf—er [who] didn’t deserve to live.’ Daniels, who survived, responded late last month, calling the self-styled working-class oysterman ‘a typical elitist.’ Platner also accused the late Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL author of American Sniper (who was played by Bradley Cooper in the 2014 Clint Eastwood film) of murdering innocent civilians during the Iraq war in order to inflate his kill numbers.”
Screengrabs from the New York Times piece "produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center."
A New York Times “interactive” project published Monday used text and photos floating on a black background to accuse Israel of starving Gazans, bombing hospitals, and killing children. So what else is new? The Times discloses in fine print that the interactive project “was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center”—a credible-sounding nonprofit that is in fact a left-wing outfit bankrolled by billionaires like Pierre Omidyar and George Soros, our Ira Stoll reports. The Times does not disclose that information. Stoll writes:
The 6,000 word Times project discloses online in faint or small type, “This project was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center” and “This project was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center.” Nowhere does the Times say what the Pulitzer Center is or who funds it. Because it has the word “Pulitzer” in it, it appears vaguely reputable, like the similarly named Columbia University-affiliated journalism awards that used to honor journalistic and literary excellence before they were hijacked by anti-Israel activists intent on piling prizes on pieces and pictures that advance the anti-Israel narrative. Yet the Pulitzer Center is a far-left nonprofit whose other activities include “The 1619 Project Curriculum,” aimed at bringing into classrooms the New York Times effort “to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation’s foundational date.” Its funders include left-leaning foundations such as the left-wing tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s wife Pam Omidyar’s “Humanity United,” which put in $200,000 in 2024, and George and Alexander Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which gave a three-year, $900,000 grant in 2023. The Pulitzer Center also gets money from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
The funding might be less of a concern if the journalism were less tendentious. Yet under the headline “The Cost of Survival in Gaza,” the Times breathlessly writes up the not-exactly-earth-shattering news that some guy in London has sent his relatives in Gaza “more than $250,000” to help them. It’s fairly common for better-situated relatives to help out other relatives facing challenges. Plenty of Americans have sent money to help their Israeli Jewish relatives facing Iranian missile attacks, temporary dislocations, and business and domestic disruptions related to extended reserve duty or wartime casualties. And U.S.-based workers and immigrants send remittances to relatives facing war or natural-disaster-related suffering in the Caribbean and Latin America, too.
The double standards are staggering. The Times describes the London-based Arab as wanting to help his relatives leave Gaza: “More than anything, Saleh was focused on figuring out how to help his family escape … the border didn’t reopen, and Hala halted its evacuation business.” Not mentioned by the Times was the plan by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu for voluntary relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for a “Riviera of the Middle East.” When Trump proposed it, the Times news columns condemned it as “a violation of international law” that “would surely require many thousands of U.S. troops and possibly trigger more violent conflict.” When it’s an Arab in London trying to get Gazans out of Gaza, the Times finds it sympathetic. When Trump or Netanyahu embrace the idea, it becomes “outrageous — and not at all presidential.”
READ MORE: Far-Left Foundations, Foreign Governments Pay For New York Times to Demonize Israel
The 27-year-old left-wing strategist behind Graham Platner once proclaimed that sexual misconduct by a Democratic candidate would justify endorsing his Republican opponent. But that was yesterday. Now Morris Katz is sticking by Platner as he faces similar accusations, the Free Beacon’s Jon Levine reports.
Before he helped make Platner the presumptive Democratic nominee against Republican incumbent Susan Collins, Katz worked for North Carolina state lawmaker Erica D. Smith’s 2022 Senate campaign. Two years prior, Smith backed Republican attorney Sammy Webb for state House over the incumbent Democrat, Toby Fitch, citing Fitch’s lack of “integrity and character”—a reference to sexual harassment accusations that Smith herself leveled against him. When news of Smith’s support for a Republican resurfaced during her Senate campaign, Katz, who was paid over $45,000 to serve as the campaign’s “senior advisor,” jumped in to defend her.
“The only republican she ever supported was running against a man who’d physically assaulted her and sexually harassed her as well as many others!” Katz said. “These are coordinated attacks made in bad faith to take down a strong black woman.” He added that it was “ridiculous” to attack Smith for the endorsement because she was “standing up for herself and other victims of sexual harassment and assault.”
Katz has taken a different approach as Platner faces criticism for sending sexually explicit material to multiple women shortly after tying the knot and for roughing up an ex-girlfriend. He threatened a former Platner campaign aide who spoke to the New York Times about disclosing Platner’s racy extramarital text messaging, saying he would accuse her of sharing “explicit falsehoods to sabotage the campaign.” Later, when a report indicated that the “knives are fully out for the firm chiefly behind Graham Platner’s rise,” Katz responded, “Best not miss.”