Sanders-backed Maine Senate candidate Platner faces heat over China views

Maine Democrat Graham Platner is vowing to pursue closer ties with China if elected to the Senate, arguing that the U.S. should be “far more cooperative” with the communist state on issues like climate change.

“I think our position towards China should be one of cooperation instead of one of opposition,” Platner said during a livestream in February, arguing it would be “absurd” to have an aggressive approach toward Beijing, citing its trade relationship with the United States.

“I am not a China hawk, not by any stretch of the imagination,” he continued. “I think we need to be figuring out how to integrate, or at least be far more cooperative, especially to fight challenges like climate change.”

Platner, a staunch progressive, is running to unseat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in November’s midterm elections. His views on China appear to be well outside the political mainstream and place him to the left of many Democratic lawmakers, who see the country as the United States’ most formidable strategic competitor or a geopolitical threat.

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The Senate hopeful has also argued that fascism followed by climate change is the top two challenges facing the United States on the world stage.

“Before the rise of fascism, I would have said that the biggest challenge we have … globally is climate change,” Platner, an oyster farmer and combat veteran, said during the livestream. 

Platner referred to federal immigration officers as “armed thugs,” accusing them of murdering American citizens, an apparent reference to two fatal shootings during an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis earlier this year.

He has previously advocated for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and dragging agents in front of Congress to testify about their work.

Platner’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) sharply criticized Platner’s remarks in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“Graham Platner’s soft-on-communism radical ideology would lift up dictators, threaten America’s national security, and cost American lives,” RNC spokeswoman Kristen Cianci said in a statement. “He has no business in the Senate or any position of power.”

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Platner is facing Maine Gov. Janet Mills, D-Maine, in an increasingly nasty primary that has split factions of the Democratic Party. Leading progressives, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have endorsed him while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who leads the party’s establishment wing, is supporting Mills. 

Sanders and Warren have doubled down on their embrace of Platner despite the political newcomer’s bevy of controversial online posts and scrutiny over a Nazi-linked tattoo that he has had removed.

Platner called for deposing Schumer as Democratic leader, weakening the filibuster to ease the passage of left-wing legislation and adding seats to the Supreme Court to dilute the power of the conservative majority, in an interview with NBC News this week.

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The Sanders-backed oyster farmer has carved out a dominant lead in recent polling ahead of the June primary, despite Mills serving as the most senior-ranking Democrat in the state. 

Collins is running for a sixth Senate term in the blue-leaning state. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the contest as a “toss-up.”