Ex-Trump Adviser Is Annoyed Republicans Had to Denounce KKK Leader

Republicans are slinging mud at the wall trying to counter Graham Platner’s popularity in Maine.Lacking any competitive, ideological alternative, Kellyanne Conway suggested Monday night that Democrats should be forced to step away from Platner, who has been polling with a tremendous lead for the state’s Senate seat over Governor Janet Mills. (Mills ended her campaign in April, but she is still on the primary ballot.) But the language Conway chose to express her complaint was particularly odd—particularly as she tried to liken the working-class oyster farmer’s intraparty prominence to that of David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and what she perceived to be an unfair double standard.“Remember, everybody who’s a Republican anywhere had to disclaim David Duke,” Conway told Fox News. “I want every single Democrat who’s running as United States Senate candidate this year to step away from [Platner], to tell him to get off the ticket.“This guy needs to go and take care of his family. They’ve been married two short years, he’s bored already,” Conway added.Kellyanne: They made us disclaim David Duke. I want every single Democrat to step away from Platner. pic.twitter.com/mxAbppYRdm— Acyn (@Acyn) June 2, 2026Platner has recently been at the center of several controversies that have created some anxiety amid the higher echelons of the Democratic establishment. The first involved Platner’s tattoos, which included a skull-and-bones symbol that resembled Nazi imagery. Platner claimed in October that he had covered up the tattoo and eventually planned to remove it.Platner told the Associated Press at the time that “going to a tattoo removal place is going to take a while.”That same month, Platner apologized for resurfaced Reddit posts that revealed some of his unfiltered thoughts, such as messages that minimized the experiences of military members who had been victims of sexual assault, and posts in which he referred to white rural Americans as racist and stupid, among other topics.Another scandal emerged Saturday when The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, had warned the oyster farmer’s team, days into his campaign, that he had previously sent sexually explicit text messages to other women.Gertner told CNN that she was “deeply hurt” that their marital problems had become public knowledge. She has decided to stand by her husband anyway.“We did the hard work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. We were honest with each other in ways that weren’t easy,” Gertner said in a statement provided by Platner’s campaign. “And we came through it, not in spite of how much we’ve been through, but because of how much we love each other and the life we’ve built. Our marriage today is stronger than ever before.”Platner still has a cadre of progressive figureheads standing behind him, including Senators Bernie Sanders, Ruben Gallego, and Martin Heinrich.“We got a housing crisis. People can’t afford health care, they can’t afford groceries, they can’t afford to fill up their gas tanks. And I think it’s important for us to focus on the issues facing working families a little bit more than Graham Platner’s marriage,” Sanders told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I wish their marriage the very best. But right now, I think we should be focusing on the crises facing the working class and electing people of the guts to stand up to the oligarchs who control our country.”