The widow of “American Sniper” hero Chris Kyle is blasting a Democratic Senate candidate for accusing her husband of intentionally killing civilians to inflate his kill count.
In an appearance on Fox News, Taya Kyle accused Senate hopeful Graham Platner of Maine of attention-seeking and cowardice.
“Nothing says, I want attention more than disparaging a national hero who’s also dead,” Ms. Kyle said on “The Sunday Briefing,” calling Mr. Platner’s charges a “cheap political trick.”
“It is cowardly, it’s lowbrow to lie about somebody else, and it distracts from what you’ve probably said,” the widow said.
“To me, it shows a total inability to lead with character. For me he would be out of the running immediately,” Ms. Kyle added.
Mr. Platner, an Iraq war veteran aiming to replace Republican Sen. Susan Collins, has drawn numerous controversies regarding his past online remarks and behavior, most prominently a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest.
Mr. Platner has not publicly reacted to Ms. Kyle’s charges.
The interview came in reaction to the resurfacing of remarks Mr. Platner made in a 2024 podcast on military issues in which he said indiscriminate sniper shootings were ordinary behavior and Chris Kyle’s claims an example of such unprofessionalism.
“His stories about how many people he was shooting certainly tracked with the behavior I witnessed, and people I knew witnessed down at the Gov Center, which is it’s relatively easy to get high numbers like that if you’re a little less discriminating your fire than say a more professional unit would be,” he said on the “Green Beret Chronicle Show.”
Some of Kyle’s accounts of his service in Iraq and other behavior in his best-selling book “American Sniper,” which became the basis for a smash-hit movie starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood, have been disputed by other veterans and/or not confirmed by the Pentagon.
Sniper counts by their nature are often uncertain and depend more than other war accounts on the personal word of the shooter.
Kyle spent much of his post-service life helping other combat veterans with PTSD and related issues but was murdered by a Marine in 2013 at one such session.
