Tucker Carlson on Thursday downplayed and defended Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo.
On the Canadian “Can’t Be Censored“ podcast, the former Fox News host sat down with Travis Dhanraj and Karman Wong to discuss President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Israel, Iran, and why he says he can no longer support the Republican Party.
Carlson raised eyebrows with his defense of Platner’s candidacy to challenge incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine, where Carlson also lives. Republicans across the country have targeted Platner over a series of personal scandals, including a Nazi tattoo that women around him have said he understood the meaning of.
“Look at Graham Platner, this guy who’s running in the state of Maine, where I live … he’s a Democrat, he’s liberal, I don’t have strong feelings about it,” Carlson said. “But rather than respond to what the guy’s positions are, they just have called him a Nazi for the last month, because he had a tattoo that was not a swastika, but apparently it was connected to the German military at some point, it’s not even clear he knew that.”
As expected, Tucker Carlson has rushed to Graham Platner’s defense.
He claims Platner didn’t even know about his Nazi tattoo, and insists the real reason people are attacking him is because he’s “not sufficiently supportive of Israel.” pic.twitter.com/R30ZKXdtSv
— Justin (@JustinUSA) June 19, 2026
Then, the podcaster speculated why Republicans don’t support the Bernie Sanders-backed leftist.
“They’ve attacked the guy, and his personal life. They don’t like him because he’s not sufficiently supportive of Israel,” Carlson added.
Several women, including an ex-girlfriend, have gone on the record to say Platner knew the meaning behind his infamous Nazi tattoo, with one telling the New York Post the symbol reminded him that “the U.S. was the evil bad guy overseas.” The Senate hopeful’s former political director also disputed Platner’s account and accused him of “a pattern of dishonest behavior.”
The Platner campaign insists he picked a “skull-and-crossbones tattoo off a wall” to “commemorate surviving Ramadi and his friends who were killed there.”
“Graham has also since covered up the tattoo and answered countless questions about it,” a spokesperson for the campaign has said.
In the same interview, Carlson cast doubt on the motive behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“He was not murdered for his opinions on transgenderism,” Carlson insisted with no evidence. “Obviously, he was — I believe, and most people who knew him well, as I did, and was friends with him as I was — believe he was most likely murdered for his evolving views on Israel.”
Charlie Kirk was not murdered for his opinions on transgenderism. Obviously.
Those of us who knew him best and called him a friend believe he was most likely murdered for his evolving views on Israel. 👀
— Tucker Carlson 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/D1mf5UXwHi
— Travis (@NihiloX) June 19, 2026
Prosecutors say Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused of assassinating the Turning Point USA founder, wrote in a message to his trans-identifying boyfriend that he had an “opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I took it,” The Daily Wire previously reported.
Carlson, a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, said he has no interest in running for president but announced a permanent split with the Republican Party.
“The Republican Party in Washington is just completely out of control. I don’t share their values on any level, their personal values, the way they live, greedy, bizarro sex lives, loyal to a foreign country above the United States,” Carlson said, before taking shots at individual elected officials.
“Beginning with the speaker of the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, and extending to the president and the leaders in the Senate. I have nothing in common with these people at all. I do not share their values. I find their priorities appalling, and so I’m just not going to participate in that party,” he said.
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