From the article:

“Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means,” Platner’s former political director Genevieve L. McDonald, who quit the campaign last week, said in a Facebook post Tuesday.

"Are We the Baddies?" is one of the most famous skits of all time and is literally about how the death's head is a symbol of the Nazis. It has been memed incessantly. Platner has been on Reddit since 2013 (which dear lord is a whole other topic), do you *really* think he never heard about it?

Platner says that he got the tattoo when we was drunk one night in the Marines. Ok sure maybe, people make poor decisions while they're drunk all the time. But that was almost 20 years ago! What about all the time since then?

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."

"The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it."

"But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate."

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Mill worked for the British East India Company for thirty-five years of his life, and judging from this quote it seems unlikely he saw a contradiction in doing so. "Freedom for me," I suppose, "but not for thee."

To wit: "Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end."

Incredibly though, he then immediately qualifies in the next paragraph that this doesn't apply to those in the "backward states of society".

"That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. [...] Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

Meanwhile, Trump's replacement pick never served in key assignments that are required by law for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This isn't about "meritocracy." It's just old-fashioned racism.

“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote.

Not sure I agree with his opinion though that "I don’t think the party’s changed." Trump has completely remade the party and its top leadership in his own image, and essentially all Republicans in congress are towing the new line. Subservience to authority has trumped (ha) adherence to principle.