It's 'Seizing' Season!

"Cease your seizing, please!"

We’re evidently in the “pounce” phase of Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner’s Hindenburg of a campaign.

We love consistency, folks.

The funny thing about the “pounce” trope — in which newsrooms divert attention from a Democratic scandal to the Republican and conservative reaction — is that it’s nearly always a dead giveaway that the scandal is indeed … a scandal.

Otherwise, there would be no need to shift focus.

At ABC News, crackerjack correspondent Mary Bruce, like clockwork, accused Republican Senator Susan Collins of “pouncing” on the series of controversies dogging Platner, whom the network correspondent describes as a humble “oyster farmer” who, yes, once had a tattoo “resembling a Nazi symbol.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, not least of which is the insistence that Platner’s tattoo merely resembled the SS symbol rather than being the symbol itself. The tattoo, which Platner has since covered up with a goofy Gaelic dog-thingy, was an exact likeness of the SS “death’s head,” not just a lookalike. Furthermore, former acquaintances and text messages from before the tattoo became public knowledge claim that he was aware of the image’s meaning as far back as 2012 and referred to it as “my Totenkopf.”

Then, of course, there’s the insistence on characterizing Platner, whose academic background includes attendance at an elite prep school with tuition currently ranging from about $71,000 to $80,800 per year, as the mild-mannered “oyster farmer,” with no mention of the fact that his customer base is essentially just his mother.

More than all of this, though, is the laughable suggestion that there is anything notable or even untoward about the Collins campaign’s pointing out that her opponent in the 2026 midterms is a too-online sexpest edgelord with no impulse control.

This is not “pouncing.” This is called campaigning.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

And when life gives you an opponent who once sported a Nazi tattoo, whose fondness for dating apps and hookup sites followed him into his marriage, who has published a series of psychotic opinions and statements that would make even President Trump blush, and who has a string of ex-girlfriends who allege physical and emotional abuse, you cut a campaign ad.

Collins’s team would be guilty of political malpractice if they didn’t point out that their boss’s knuckle-dragging opponent appears to have been plucked straight from the Paleolithic Era.

Yet, if you can believe it, Bruce and ABC are hardly the first to accuse those wicked Republicans of noticing what the Maine Democratic candidate has said and done.

In response to reports that Platner had sent racy text messages to women who are definitely not his wife, the New York Times reported gravely that “officials with the campaign arm of Senate Republicans seized on the news, circulating reports and attacking Mr. Platner.”

Then, in reaction to a report detailing allegations that Platner was abusive toward ex-girlfriends, The Guardian likewise noted with sadness, and perhaps a tinge of indignation, that “Republicans [had] seized on the latest report.”

In reference to the full body of scandals and controversies created by Platner, The Hill reported last week that “Republicans have pounced on the string of controversies in the lead-up to Tuesday’s primary.”

Even after Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills suspended her Senate campaign, Politico reported that Republicans had “seized on” her exit “to question Platner’s blue-collar bona fides and highlight his past scandal.”

Emphasis very much added.

The “pouncing” trope is funnier than usual in the context of the Maine Senate race because of the implicit, if not explicit, suggestion that it’s unfair to dig into a Senate candidate’s past.

Are the folks at ABC News, the New York Times, Politico, etc., unaware of what goes on in regular campaigning?

Are we really going to pretend that bringing up Platner’s own words and deeds is somehow unusual in U.S. politics or dirty pool?

Apparently — but that’s not all!

The trope is doubly absurd in this specific scenario, given that it comes after the 10-plus years of press-sponsored moral panics about “white supremacy,” “toxic masculinity,” and how everything from milk to birdwatching is rooted somehow in racism and fascism.

Yet now that these people are faced with something more concrete than their own bogeymen — a U.S. Senate candidate with an honest-to-goodness Nazi tattoo and a body of aggrieved women — they’d like very much for everyone to look the other way.

They’d like it even more if the Republican senator from Maine would cease her seizing.

A version of this article appeared originally in National Review on June 14, 2026.