Sen. Susan Collins is calling out her likely Democratic opponent in Maine's 2026 Senate race after deleted Reddit posts attributed to Graham Platner resurfaced, including vile comments mocking a U.S. soldier who was shot four times in combat with Taliban fighters.
The posts, written under the now-deleted Reddit account "P-Hustle," target Pfc. Ted Daniels, whose helmet-camera footage of a 2012 firefight went viral. Daniels was awarded the Purple Heart after sustaining four gunshot wounds in that engagement. Platner has previously acknowledged owning the account.
Collins did not mince words when Fox News Digital asked her about the posts.
"It's never appropriate to mock a downed American soldier. It's just appalling."
That assessment lands harder when you read what Platner's acknowledged account actually said.
A 2019 post from the "P-Hustle" account, now cataloged in a Maine Monitor database of Platner's deleted Reddit history, read: "Dumb motherf***** didn't deserve to live." That comment referred to Daniels, a soldier who nearly died defending his fellow troops in Afghanistan.
Another post attributed to the same account went further, attacking Daniels' conduct, fitness, and survival itself:
"At least his stupidity and fat a** wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban's part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home, he managed to make every possible s*** decision possible when it comes to small unit combat."
Set aside the profanity. Set aside the cruelty. A man running for the United States Senate looked at combat footage of an American soldier absorbing four rounds from enemy fire, and decided the soldier deserved to die.
As we previously reported, Platner's deleted Reddit post mocking Daniels represents one of the most damaging revelations in a controversy that has dogged his candidacy for months.
The posts about Daniels are not the only problem. Lewd and inflammatory Reddit posts tied to Platner's account have continued to surface since last year. When Fox News Digital pressed Collins on which specific posts concerned her most, her answer was telling.
"You'd have to narrow your question down because there are so many."
That volume of problematic material has drawn sustained attention. Fresh scrutiny over crude, deleted Reddit posts has kept Platner's online history in the spotlight, raising questions about the judgment of a man asking Maine voters to send him to Washington.
The sheer breadth of the deleted content has also created a political opening that Republicans are eager to exploit. A super PAC aligned with Collins launched a website on Wednesday compiling what it calls Platner's "red flags." The site, run by the fundraising committee Pine Tree Results, frames the issue bluntly: "Over 20 years of a grown man revealing his true character with one red flag after another."
Pine Tree Results goes further, labeling Platner as "radical" and "dangerous" and declaring him "too extreme for Maine." More than $4 million has already been spent on attack ads targeting Platner during Collins' re-election campaign, a staggering sum this far out from a general election.
Collins' seat ranks among Republicans' most competitive Senate defenses in 2026. Democrats have targeted Maine in their broader push to flip control of the chamber, and Platner is the presumptive Democratic nominee.
If both candidates win their primary elections next month, they will face off in Maine's November 3 general election. That timeline means Platner's Reddit history will remain front and center for months.
Republicans have already moved aggressively to define Platner before he can define himself. As we covered, Senate Republicans began targeting Platner as the Maine race reshaped after Governor Janet Mills dropped out of contention, leaving Platner as the Democrats' standard-bearer in a contest with national implications.
The GOP offensive has found an unusually cooperative target. Platner's own digital trail provides the ammunition. Deleted posts can be scrubbed from Reddit, but once archived by outlets like the Maine Monitor, they become permanent, and politically lethal.
What makes the Platner situation more damaging for Democrats is the party's response, or lack of one. National Democratic leaders have largely avoided commenting on their nominee's Reddit history, a silence that itself becomes a story. Top Democrats have gone quiet when pressed on the vulgar posts, leaving Platner to absorb incoming fire without institutional cover.
That silence is a strategic calculation. Defending the posts is impossible. Condemning them risks weakening the party's own nominee in a race they need to win. So they say nothing, and hope the story fades.
But the story is not fading. Every new batch of resurfaced posts extends the news cycle. And the specific nature of the Daniels posts, mocking a Purple Heart recipient who nearly died in combat, makes this harder to dismiss than generic online vulgarity.
Pfc. Ted Daniels took four bullets from Taliban fighters in 2012. His helmet camera captured the firefight. The footage went viral because it showed, in raw and unfiltered terms, what American soldiers endure. Daniels survived. He received the Purple Heart. And years later, the man who wants to represent Maine in the Senate looked at that footage and wrote that Daniels "didn't deserve to live."
Even Sen. John Fetterman, not exactly a Republican ally, has weighed in on the broader Platner problem. As we noted, Fetterman warned that Platner is a gift to Republicans, suggesting the candidate's baggage makes him a liability rather than an asset for Democrats trying to flip the seat.
Senate races turn on many things, policy, money, turnout, national mood. But they also turn on character. Voters in Maine, a state with deep ties to military service, will have to decide whether a man who mocked a wounded soldier from behind an anonymous screen name deserves to sit in the chamber that confirms generals, funds the military, and votes on matters of war and peace.
Collins framed it simply: it is never appropriate to mock a downed American soldier. That is not a partisan statement. It is a baseline expectation of decency that most Americans, left, right, and center, would recognize without hesitation.
Platner deleted the account. The posts survived anyway. And now Maine voters get to decide what that record means.
Some things you can't unsay, even after you hit delete.
