Combat Vets In Congress Blast Democrat Candidate Who Called Soldiers ‘Fat, Lazy Trash’

As the nation honored the men and women who sacrificed everything in service to their country, one US Senate hopeful in Maine spent Memorial Day facing intense criticism over his history of speaking ill about America’s men and women in uniform.

Graham Platner, himself a military veteran, nevertheless expressed an array of objectionable thoughts about specific servicemembers and entire branches of the military, according to reports.

And in addition to countless veterans across the US, several lawmakers who served also shared their outrage over the remarks from someone who is now seeking to become a peer on Capitol Hill.

According to Fox News:

Veterans are ripping Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner after resurfaced posts showed him calling the Army “full of fat, lazy trash” and mocking a soldier who was shot multiple times in combat before receiving a Purple Heart.

“I am a decorated veteran, and people need to understand what serving in the Army cost me: congestive heart failure, bilateral hearing loss, COPD, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, hypothyroidism and PTSD,” Holland “Ricky” White, a Vietnam War veteran who served in the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade, told Fox News Digital.

The critiques also poured in from those with whom Platner hopes to serve in the upcoming legislative session:

“As a combat veteran, I’ve seen the cost of war up close. I’ve watched brave Americans come home with wounds, visible and invisible, that they’ll carry for the rest of their lives,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital. “Mocking servicemembers for getting wounded or killed is absolutely despicable. These are our brothers and sisters, people who volunteered to put everything on the line for this country.”

Ernst served 23 years in the Army Reserve and Iowa Army National Guard, including as a company commander in Kuwait during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and retired as a lieutenant colonel.

“Platner’s comments about American servicemembers are disgraceful, but it’s what we should expect from a communist with a Nazi tattoo,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told Fox News Digital.

Cotton served as an Army infantry officer with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Let’s see the courageous Democrat vets defend this one … can’t wait to hear it,” Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., a retired Navy SEAL, said of Platner’s remarks. 

Unsurprisingly, Platner refused to apologize when given the opportunity by a reporter recently:

Graham Platner refuses to apologize for calling a Purple Heart recipient — who was shot by the Taliban four times — “a dumb motherfucker who didn’t deserve to live."

Total disgrace.pic.twitter.com/gzbotm9QJr

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 24, 2026

Some in his own party are starting to distance themselves from his campaign, but Democratic leaders haven’t pulled their support yet:

All the top Democrats including Hakeem Jeffries, Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer, and more all REFUSE to resend their endorsements of US Senate candidate Graham Plattner in Maine pic.twitter.com/JooeXrOJ3B

— The Mad Hatter (@GeraldAvery17) May 24, 2026

And a number of those directly targeted in his rhetoric are also speaking out:

"Nothing says, I want attention more than disparaging a national hero who's also dead."

Taya Kyle is unloading on Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner after he accused her late husband, 'American Sniper' Chris Kyle, of inflating his kill count by shooting innocent civilians.… pic.twitter.com/Ry9YkDJLLX

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 25, 2026

As the New York Post reported:

The heroic, Purple Heart-winning Army veteran, who US Senate hopeful Graham Platner sneered in a screed on his burner Reddit account didn’t deserve to live, tore into the Democrats for continuing to back the Maine candidate.

Pfc. Ted Daniels, who captured viral helmet footage of himself moving into open terrain to draw Taliban fire away from his squad in 2012, said Democrats backing Platner owe his children an apology.

“I’m very thick-skinned, and he said it,” Daniels told The Post. “I don’t want an apology, and any apology from him [Graham] at this point would definitely not be sincere.”

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“What I’d really like is for [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren, [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer, [Sen.] Bernie Sanders, [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries, and everybody else on the far left to tell my children to their face that they are endorsing and supporting a man who said that their father should have not lived. Cheering on the death of their father.”

Here’s some more coverage of the backlash: