What's Smaller Than a Hitler Mustache?

Platner limps to victory, Talarico gobbles meat. Plus: the glory of sports.

IT’S FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2026

God bless professional sports.

They are one of the last vestiges of a shared national culture that’s been slashed to pieces by the internet and smartphones. There is drama, suspense, heroes and villains, ecstasy and heartbreak. They are best enjoyed communally and encourage camaraderie by giving strangers something else to talk about besides the weather.

This week has featured some of the most entertaining athletic contests I have ever seen. Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, Canes vs. Golden Knights. Game 4 of the NBA Finals, Knicks vs. Spurs. Mind-blowing comebacks. Epic chokes. Millions tuned in, alone on their couches.

We need to enjoy this while it lasts. By the time you read this, the World Cup will have already started and the U.S. team will be gearing up to eke out an exciting 0-0 draw against Paraguay.

Democrats have sought to burnish their support among working-class men by recruiting Graham Platner and James Talarico, among others.

One is a bearded scumbag with a Nazi tattoo and a vanity oyster farm. The other is a precocious fifth-grader running for student body president in Martha’s Vineyard. Have they considered trying to find some normal dudes who like sports? (No, soccer doesn’t count. Nice try, Zohran.)

Remember Tim Walz? Sorry, “Coach” Walz. It’s easy to forget how excited Democrats were to have a VP nominee who (allegedly) coached high school football. The limp-wristed waiving didn’t help, but Walz really dishonored himself playing Madden with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and praising her ability to “run a mean pick 6.”

Talarico is Tim Walz with the manliness dialed back a notch. No self-respecting sports fan would allow himself to be filmed discussing how “prophetic voices like Jesus have helped me reckon with my own whiteness, my own masculinity.”

Platner looks and sounds like someone who should like sports, but he’s also a left-wing crank who hates all things capitalism. His old Reddit posts suggest a preference for less conventional pastimes.

He recently filmed himself riding a bicycle, and was spotted at a minor league soccer game wearing one of those obnoxious scarves. If he starts posting about the World Cup, it could raise serious questions about his character.

Seriously, where do the Democrats find these people? And where do they find the people who found them?

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Daniel Moraff, a left-wing activist turned political consultant with degrees from Brown and Yale. He’s the guy who recruited Graham Platner after seeking out candidates “who are real human beings.”

Moraff doesn’t seem like much of a sports guy either. Just listen to him talk. It should not be legal to sound like this!

The combination is genuinely terrifying. Moraff the effete Bruce Banner, Platner the DSA Hulk in shredded Carhartts. The overcredentialed nerd and the loafing Hotchkiss washout who sells oysters to his mom—united by left-wing crankery. They could have spent their free time watching sports or playing them, but here we are.

Democrats of all people should remember that being good at sports is not a prerequisite to liking them. Barack Obama is a terrible athlete, but he liked sports and had no trouble winning elections—especially against Mitt Romney, a posh weirdo who “enjoyed sport.”

OK, let’s get on with it.

THIS F—ING GUY!

Graham Platner made history on Tuesday as the first former Hotchkiss attendee with a Nazi tattoo to win a major party’s U.S. Senate nomination while facing credible allegations of domestic abuse. He is also, presumably, the first U.S. Senate nominee who has fantasized about raping burglars and reminisced about masturbating in porta potties.

Democrats are stuck with him now, so they’ll just keep supporting him no matter what until Election Day. Platner insists there is “nothing out there that’s actually concerning,” but at this point what do you expect him to say? Sure enough, the awkward allegations kept on coming.

An anonymous woman who appears to have dated Platner in 2021—when he was engaged to be married—sounded off on X about his “small d—,” “weird noises,” and the tattoo he definitely knew was a Nazi symbol. But that’s not all.

The woman, who described herself as being “on the left side of the political spectrum,” revealed that Platner never returned the pie dish she gave him. Once again, he is beginning to sound like a sketchy dude.

The Free Press reports that campaign staffers were forced to plot an intervention because the candidate kept “fighting with volunteers in his campaign’s Discord channel” using a pseudonym. Platner is 41 years old, but appears to have the emotional maturity of a middle school girl.

This is why we need candidates who actually work for a living, as opposed to shiftless losers who were born privileged but were “too mediocre or lazy to parlay that advantage into professional success,” Josh Barro writes on Substack.

Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) is already feuding with his prospective colleague, telling “Captain Dick Pic” to “close his mouth.” Fetterman explained the nickname by noting that Platner “hasn’t denied [sending dick pics], but he could clear it up and show it.”

There’s no telling what else we might learn or (God help us) see in the months ahead, but let’s not encourage him.

Good luck to all!

OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPENED

James Talarico is in damage-control mode after realizing he’s running for U.S. Senate in Texas. The Democratic candidate struggled to contain his disgust during a campaign photo-op with a plate of meat.

It was still more convincing than Talarico discussing his freshly minted opposition to sex change surgeries for minors, which he not long ago described as “life-saving health care” for “trans children.”

In Michigan, U.S. Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed rolled out a new line of defense when asked to explain his past support for “defund the police” and other woke nonsense. In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, the Democratic candidate argued that his past statements were not relevant because he was working in academia at the time.

“Well, look, at that time I was a professor,” he said. “I was teaching at the edge of criminal justice and public health. At this point, I’m running for U.S. Senate.” He was teaching at Columbia, which makes sense. As far as resumes go, that’s arguably worse than pretending to farm oysters.

Lastly, the journalists are out of control. Leslie Stahl said learning that a handful of her 60 Minutes colleagues had been fired was “by far the worst experience” she’d ever been “involved in, or even witnessed.”

Even worse, apparently, than covering child trafficking in post-communist Romania, where Stahl spoke to a family trying to sell their 4-year-old son for a video camera. She’s also interviewed survivors of Josef Mengele’s twisted human experiments at Auschwitz.

Scott Pelley, who has been whining like an aggrieved toddler since getting fired for insubordination, compared the personnel changes at CBS to a “spouse being murdered.”

You might think he’s overreacting, but keep in mind that Pelley is a combat veteran who risks his life every day on the front lines in a war for the very soul of American democracy.

Bless their hearts, the poor things.

PALATE CLEANSER

Do yourself a favor and follow @FreddyLA7 and @shaunvlog_, a few of the many European soccer fans who have been documenting their travels around the U.S. ahead of the World Cup, and loving every minute of it.

Behold the European mind as it struggles to comprehend the land of the free in all its exceptional beauty.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

X: @AndrewStilesUSA

Email: stiles@freebeacon.com

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