The comments are the latest to come to light of Platner disparaging military veterans and, in particular, attacking the Navy SEALs
Maine Democrat Graham Platner accused former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell of “lying” in his popular war memoir Lone Survivor about his combat experience in Afghanistan, in part by using a British ghostwriter who, Platner says, ripped off another SEAL’s book to create a work of fiction. It’s the latest example of the far-left Senate hopeful smearing his fellow combat veterans, and of his particular antipathy to Special Forces.
In a series of deleted Reddit posts in 2013, Platner accused Luttrell of promoting “war porn” in his 2007 book, which was made into a 2013 film starring Mark Wahlberg. Luttrell’s memoir was his account of Luttrell on a mission to take out a Taliban militia leader. Luttrell’s three SEAL comrades were killed during the mission, known as Operation Red Wings. Luttrell alone survived after being rescued by Pashtun villagers in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
Platner, now running to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R.), asserted in his posts that Luttrell and his British coauthor, Patrick Robinson, stole material for the book from another Navy SEAL author.
“Luttrell didn’t write the damn book, it was ghost written by a limey, and is war porn at its worst,” wrote Platner. He asserted that most of the scenes about Navy SEAL training “are taken almost verbatim” from another book by Dick Couch about the SEALs, and were therefore fictitious. In another thread, Platner agreed with a Reddit user who said the book and movie were “bastardized and plagiarized.”
Platner suggested Luttrell and Robinson colluded with the Navy—and lied—in order to put a positive spin on Operation Red Wings.
“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,” wrote Platner.
While some historians have questioned whether Luttrell embellished the SEALs’ harrowing mission, there is little debate about the courage of the SEAL team, which was led by Michael Murphy, a legendary SEAL who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. And there is no evidence that Luttrell and Robinson, the Lone Survivor coauthor, plagiarized the book. Little, Brown, and Company, the publisher of the book, did not respond to requests for comment. Luttrell and Robinson could not be reached for comment.
Platner, who served in the Marine Corps and the Army, has a penchant for smearing his fellow soldiers in arms. 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.
“[Kyle’s] stories about how many people he was shooting certainly tracked with the behavior I witnessed [in Ramadi],” Platner said in a 2024 podcast, the Washington Free Beacon reported. “It’s relatively easy to get high numbers like that if you’re a little less discriminating in your fire than, say, a more professional unit would be.”
Platner was deployed to Ramadi at the same time as Kyle and his SEAL team in 2006, though he said he did not know who Kyle was until years later. Kyle, one of the most prolific combat snipers in history, was killed in 2012 in Texas by a fellow Marine veteran with PTSD whom he was mentoring.
Platner bristled at the narrative that Kyle and his SEAL unit, known as Task Unit Bruiser, are now portrayed as war heroes.
“I almost felt like there was like a weird practical joke being played on me by the war that, like all these years later, I’m like, having to like… People are telling me like ‘Oh, look how great this guy is, these guys are amazing heroes,’ this whole incredible thing,” said Platner. “The paragon of leadership, and I’m just sitting there like, ‘Am I living in like an alternate reality?’ Because this is the exact opposite of my experience.”
Platner himself has pushed an inaccurate narrative on the campaign trail about his own military experience. He accused Collins and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) of voting to send him and his comrades “off to die” in the Iraq War—a reference to their 2002 vote to authorize the war. But Platner voluntarily joined the Marines in 2004—and later worked for a military contractor—and has written on Reddit that he did so because he “wanted to have an adventure and kill some people.”
“I chose this profession because I wanted to fight, and am not going to make excuses for it,” Platner wrote in 2012.
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