Bulwark Takes - Republicans Found a Way to Blow Georgia Again

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Tim Miller takes on Georgia Senate candidate Mike Collins, from his support for taxpayer-funded payouts to January 6 rioters to his ties to white nationalists, racist social media posts, election conspiracies, and bizarre campaign stunts. And when Collins is confronted with questions about the extremists in his orbit, he literally runs away.Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/bulwarktakes to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you.

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark. And I've got a new series for you where I'm going to be featuring crazy stupid Republicans who are up for statewide office in the midterms this year. A lot of discourse. And the media, the media loves trying to balance the playing field and look into old tweets, old views, old comments of Democrats. Some of these Democratic candidates, of course, brought them on themselves. But I do just feel like we've sort of lost the plot a little bit in the coverage of these midterm candidates. And I think if you asked an average person following the media, they would think that the crazy nominees are who the Democrats put up in Maine or Michigan or whatever. And if you compare their backstories and their positions to just the cavalcade of clowns that the Republicans have put forth, They're not even in the same circus tent. All right. Like, it is insane. And I think that there is, to borrow a line from DeBia, the soft bigotry of low expectations

when it comes to the Republican candidates from the media. And we don't share those low expectations. And so we are going to judge these Republican candidates on the merits. And let me tell you, there's going to be some lunacy for you ahead. So the first candidate that we were featuring in this series, crazy, stupid Republicans is Mike Collins. Mike Collins is running for Senate in Georgia. Again, we're not nutpicking random city council people. All of these people are statewide candidates in states where, like, ostensibly Republicans could win a race where Republicans have won and not

too distant past. And in this case, it's Georgia. State Republicans dominated up until the Trump era. And when you learn about Mike Collins, you can see why the Republicans have totally face-planted in Georgia, and John Ossoff is an overwhelming favorite to win the Senate race and is maybe now the Buzz candidate for 2028. So let's go through the history of Mike Collins. This guy has extreme views on a wide variety of issues. He is a conspiracy theorist. He has dabbled in racist social media posts. He is pro-insurrection. He supports, to this day, as far as we know, the fund for the January 6 rioters. And he has so many times, to white nationalists, it makes you wonder where he's keeping the hood.

So what I want to do is start with the most recent outrageous from Mike Collins. He's had a couple of comments recently that Assoff has been highlighting related both to the weaponization fund and to the aforementioned ties to white nationalists. All right. So the most recent video that we're going to show you here, this is from August 11th, the campaign event in Savannah, Georgia. Collins is asked his position on the Wapidization Fund. Let's watch. With Todd Blanche being confirmed as the new Attorney General

and the victims of political weaponization fund being such a controversial issue that's important to me, I lost everything. I'm a business owner now in Savannah by the grace of God. I lost my home, my car, all my entire life savings. To put it clearly, would you support either the victims of political weaponization fund, compensation fund, or some form of compensatory relief, not just to January Sixers like myself,

but all Americans left, right, and center who have been convicted of a weaponized political system. Yeah, you know, it's anything, a lot of things have been politicized and weaponized. And when the federal government harms you, then yes, they have a might be looking to. I see. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. What?

That dude, it's so weird that people, like, self-identify as Jan Sixers now, like, as if that's a badge of pride, you really? realize that your grandkids and their kids are going to look at the pictures of the Confederate flags and the smoke as people stormed the Capitol raising a Donald Trump flag and that they are going to see you as the enemies of freedom and the enemies of the country that you are. So it's a very strange, warped world view that that questioner has. It's kind of like, what does you do on January 6th if you lost your life savings? You know, like for me, if I was a candidate up there before I weighed in on whether he might need some compensation, I'd like to know what exactly it was that caused him so much legal trouble. Seems like he must have done something pretty bad on the insurrection day. Mike Collins has no concerns about that. Easy yes for him. He wants to take my tax dollars, your tax dollars.

He wants to take money from you and give it to this guy and others that beat up cops and stormed the capital. on January 6th. That's Mike Collins. That's how he wants to be a steward of your tax dollars. He wants to take your money, give it to rioters. So that is number one. He has another quote recently where he was asked about his ties to white nationalists. And I'll give you the whole backstory on that in a second. But first, I just want to kind of hear what Mike Collins says about those relationships. Yes, ma'am. I'll give that young lady right there. She has a question. One last question. Listen, thank you. I appreciate y'all's time. I appreciate your coming out this morning. Thank you very much. Okay, so you can see there Mike Collins walking away in a field from questions

about the racist on his staff or in his family. And so let me tell you a little bit about the backstory there. And then we do also have a video from John Ossoff responding to that. The first example when he's talking about his family, though, the person that his references, Mike Collins' son-in-law, David Shear. David is an avowed white nationalist, social media influencer. He's a long track record of sharing anti-Semitic material, Nazi imagery. They're pictured on Mike's website. You can see it here. On Instagram, Shear recently shared multiple posts promoting Patriot Front, the white supremacist hate

group that descended on DC over the July 4th weekend. It's funny, a lot of like the racist magas that are just like, they just kind of want to do high society racism. You know, they want to do the comfortable racism that's okay and polite company. Whenever the Patriot front guys show up, you see these other magas on social media being like, that's an FBI op, that's fake. Those are leftists pretending. Like, there's not, there aren't any real people who are that.

racist, you know, that they have to cover their face now. Like the clan-style racism is totally from the past. Like, this is just a liberal op. That's what they say. Well, here we have a Republican candidate for Senate's son-in-law actively promoting the Patriot Front, the modern-day KKK. Shear also just a couple of other highlights from him recently asked his followers whether he should make a video about why Gen Z doesn't hate Hitler. He's encouraged his viewers. to do some digging into, uh, into kind of who is writing the history textbooks, Jews, um, saying the Jews are responsible for porn, killing JFK, 9-11, the Charlie Kirk assassination. I just, you know, anything bad that has happened in history.

Mike Collins, son-in-law thinks that it's the Jews that did it. Um, you might say to yourself, okay, well, look, we all have a crazy person in our family. Um, but there's some questions about whether Mike has employed his son-in-law at various times or what kind of relationship he has with the campaign. Mike is not answering questions about that. He's running away in a field. But it's not just the son-in-law. If it's just the son-in-law, you know, maybe you can say, okay, we'll give you a carve-out for one family member. But Collins Chief of Staff, pretty important position in the office. Kip Talley was in a white nationalist group chat with Nick Fuentes, Richard Spencer, and others. Politico reported that the chat had praised Adolf Hitler, joked about gas chambers and exchanged

racist slurs. Colin said he doesn't really care about what's happening on the group chat. So we've got the son-in-law posting white nationalist stuff, the chief of staff in a group chat with, you know, the most famous white nationalist in the country. And then you have Collins' social media feed itself, the congressman, which as best as we can tell was kind of run by a groiper, an acolyte of Nick Fuentes, but all the stuff is going out under Mike Collins' name. Here is the most disgusting example in a long line of really sick, racist,

supposedly troll posts that a United States congressman has been putting on their social media. He shared the following video with taking care of business. Let's watch it. Okay. So that is Ole Miss students making monkey noises at a black woman, kind of a mob of of Ole Miss students. If it wasn't for the fact that the video was color, you might think it was 1962. And Mike Collins shared that video with, again, Ole Miss taking care of business.

So a positive endorsement of the frat bros making monkey noises at a black woman. So look, I could keep going on, you know, kind of the Groyper adjacent troll post that Mike Collins was doing. But I think this pretty much sums it up. I mean, if you're cheering monkey noises of a black woman, if your chief of staff is hanging out with white nationalists, if your son-in-law is posting white nationalist stuff, you know, the white nationalism is inside the house, if you will. This message is sponsored by hymns. So losing weight is one thing, but looking and feeling your best for the summer, that's the real goal. That's why weight loss by Hymns now offers access to FDA-approved Wagovi pill and Wagovi Pen.

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John Oslo has responded to both Collins Sport for the weaponization fund and its ties right nationalist. Let's watch that. Georgians deserve to hear answers directly from a sitting comment. Congressman who's running for the United States Senate. Mike Collins is asking for a six-year term in the United States Senate, but he refuses to answer these questions himself. You all saw him run away from the press in an open field because he was unwilling to answer a question. He still hasn't answered. Did his businesses pay that neo-Nazi? He needs to come out today. He needs to hold a press conference himself. He needs to retract his support unambiguously for taxpayer-funded payouts to violent January 6th insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol. He needs to recant his continued false insistence that Donald Trump won that election, which Donald Trump lost, and he needs to answer the question. He still hasn't answered for three weeks now since that CNN report came out, whether his businesses paid that

neo-Nazi propagandist. That's not all, of course. Mike Collins has the whole gamut of far-right views on abortion, immigration, et cetera, all the cultural issues. Of course, he's indistinguishable from the most far-right extreme Republican in the conference on any social issue under the sun. He also has been pushing conspiracy theories on the day of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, Mike Collins tweeted, quote,

the Republican district attorney in Butler County, Pennsylvania should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination. He did another tweet. Joe Biden sent the orders. So Mike Collins on a tragic day for the country, a horrifying day, and was out there accusing the then president of the United States of attempted murder while Joe Biden was trying to call him the temperature, calling. calling Donald Trump, trying to bring the country together. That's what Mike Collins was doing.

A couple other videos just want to show you of this just total obnoxious clown show. Here is Collins shooting a gun at voting machines. You see, Georgians are sick and tired of weak, knee, spineless politicians who won't fight for Trump, get to the bottom of 2020 and fix our elections. Well, if they won't do it, Mike Collins will. Send me to Washington. I mean, this is a lunatic. This is a lunatic. This is somebody that has conspiratorial delusions about what happened in 2020,

and he's using a firearm to take out his conspiratorial delusions on a voting machine. And that is not a person that can be entrusted with a position in our democracy where they are supposed to be safeguard. our elections, safeguarding our constitutional order. Like, that is a crazy person. Or it's somebody who's just such a craven liar that he's willing to pretend like he thinks there were the election fraud was so great that he needs to be shooting voting machines. Either way, there's a person that needs to be far, far away from the levers of power.

He started his campaign like this. I think we could end with a laugh. Mike Collins. you know, pretends to be a regular, good old boy, so many of these stories. His dad was a congressman, classic establishment. His dad started a business that Mike Collins then got into. So he is a nepo baby, both in his private and public sector life. But when he came into politics, we'll just show you the video of how he tried to sell himself.

Starting a truck in business, I've had my ups and downs. my fair share of bumpy roads and heavy winds. That's what's made me what I am today. Now I stand here before you. What you see is a small businessman confronted with Obamacare. Disastrous government a plan that defies the laws of market and a mindset that government knows better. Mike Collins had to give his workers health care. And that was too much for him.

he did not like having to give his workers health care and so the nepo baby instead decided that he needed to go to congress where he would advance a series of conspiracy theories about our democracy and a higher white nationalists will help him further divide the country i wonder if his problem with obamacare was the health care or was it that a black guy wanted him to give his workers health care because you could decide for yourself. That is Mike Collins. We're going to be back. I don't even think he's the worst. I mean, it's like this is an insane person to nominate for the Senate in Georgia. It is a utter failure of the Republican establishment of the MAGA establishment that this is the candidate that they put forth. He has no business being the Senate. He's going to go the same way of Herschel

Walker before him. He'll probably do worse than Herschel Walker, actually. And yet, as Horses horrible as he is. Don't think he's the worst statewide candidate the Republicans have nominated this year. So we'll be back for more. Subscribe to the feed. Share with your friends, particularly those in Georgia. Tell your friends about what we're doing here at the bulwark. We appreciate you guys. And we'll be talking to you soon.