Ron Klain, former White House chief of staff under President Joe Biden, is facing backlash after he defended Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who has covered up a tattoo that he said he didn’t know was Nazi imagery.
On Tuesday, the Republican Jewish Coalition called for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to withdraw support for Platner, whom it condemned in the “strongest possible terms.”
“A Nazi tattoo is disqualifying. Full stop,” the RJC said. “Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America, and every Senate Democrat propping up Platner’s campaign should be ashamed.”
Klain, chief legal officer for Airbnb who is Jewish, responded on social media to the RJC statement, which he called “just a partisan attack.”
“The tattoo was a skull and crossbones to remember his fallen comrades from his service in Afghanistan,” wrote Klain, who hosted a fundraiser for Platner in Washington last week.
Platner has denied knowing that his Totenkopf tattoo was a symbol used by Adolf Hitler’s SS, though Lindsey Fifield, who dated Platner more than 10 years ago, has said he understood the tattoo’s symbolism.
Sam Markstein, national spokesman for the RJC, told JNS that “Ron Klain is not some random political operative who stumbled into this.”
“He is President Biden’s former White House chief of staff, Airbnb’s chief legal officer and a former member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council,” Markstein said. “He knows exactly what the insignia of the Nazi SS represents.”
“Klain chose to host a fundraiser for Graham Platner anyway and is now whitewashing the Totenkopf skull and crossbones itself. It’s a total disgrace,” he told JNS. “One after another, prominent Jewish Democrats are lining up behind Graham Platner, a candidate caught wearing the insignia of the unit that ran the Holocaust death camps.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is Jewish, “calls him ‘excellent.’ Chuck Schumer gives his full endorsement. Klain writes the check and writes the excuse,” Markstein said.
Airbnb owes the Jewish community “an answer about whether this represents the values and position of their company,” he told JNS. “The American Jewish community is watching, and we will remember.”
Klain told JNS that he has heard Platner tell the story of his tattoo.
“I find it believable,” Klain told JNS. “He has denied Ms. Fifield’s claim that he knew the tattoo to be a Totenkopf, and I believe Mr. Platner’s account.”
