Graham Platner, the progressive U.S. Senate candidate in Maine, received an avalanche of criticism over the weekend from veterans, many elected Republicans, after he told CBS News’s Major Garrett that the “culture’ of the military was to blame for several of the scandals surrounding him.

“Graham, there have been a lot of things said about you — things you have written on Reddit, a tattoo you had, and a controversy around that. And I want to ask you this, because I don’t think it’s been put to you this way before. Is there anything you’ve done or said that you regret that did not come from the stresses you internalized from post-traumatic stress itself? That is to say, is PTSD the explanation for everything, or did you also just make some additional human errors that you want to explain or contextualize?” Garrett asked Platner on his show, The Take Out.

“Yeah, I’ll be up-front. I’ve never laid the entire fault of my previous opinions at earlier parts of my life at the feet of only post-traumatic stress. When I left the military, I came out of a hyper-masculine, hyper-violent place. I did four tours in the infantry. We have a crude sense of humor in the infantry,” Platner replied, adding:

We certainly have a — I would say — narrow view of a lot of topics. And that colored my opinions and my beliefs. Once I left and came out and interacted in the civilian world with lots of different people, with very different experiences than my own, many of those beliefs and thoughts and even just language changed significantly over time.

I didn’t have some of the — I mean, some of that was not because of my combat service, but much of it was because of the culture I had come out of. And over the years in between, I’ve met a lot more people, had a lot more experiences, learned a lot more about the world, and my opinions have changed with it.

Platner has been under fire for his past bombastic comments on Reddit, calling cops “b*stards” and rural white Americans “racist,” as well as a Nazi tattoo on his chest, and recently sharing a post from an avowed neo-Nazi.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a moderate Republican and former Air Force general, replied to a clip of Platner’s exchange with Garrett and wrote, “I served nearly 30 years and never saw a Nazi tattoo on one of our servicemen or women.”

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT), a former Navy SEAL, added, “I must have missed the day in basic training where they taught us to get Nazi tattoos and say women deserve to be raped.”

Below are some more reactions:

—

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!