Republicans Found a Way to Blow Georgia Again

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bulwark Takes

Episode: Republicans Found a Way to Blow Georgia Again
Date: August 13, 2026
Host: Tim Miller (The Bulwark)
Main Focus: Examination of Mike Collins, the GOP Senate nominee in Georgia, and why his far-right extremism and controversies are jeopardizing Republican prospects in the state.

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Episode Overview

This episode kicks off a new series from Tim Miller spotlighting what he describes as “crazy stupid Republicans” running for statewide office. The goal is to critically assess Republican candidates whose backgrounds and positions, in Miller's view, outstrip any controversy attached to Democratic contenders. The featured candidate is Mike Collins, the GOP nominee for Senate in Georgia, whose extremism, racist ties, and conspiratorial claims, Miller argues, have effectively handed Democrats like incumbent Jon Ossoff a major advantage going into the 2026 election.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Media Coverage and “Low Expectations” for GOP Candidates

• Miller critiques mainstream media's tendency to overemphasize Democratic candidate controversies while not applying the same scrutiny to Republican candidates, especially in critical swing states.
• Quote:

  “[T]here is…the soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to the Republican candidates from the media. And we don't share those low expectations.” (01:41, Tim Miller)

2. Who is Mike Collins?

• Mike Collins is not a fringe actor — he is running for U.S. Senate in a state previously dominated by Republicans.
• According to Miller, Collins:
  • Holds extreme views on a variety of issues.
  • Is a conspiracy theorist and supporter of the January 6th insurrection.
  • Has documented ties to white nationalists.
  • Has made or endorsed racially inflammatory social media posts.
• Quote:

  “He has so many ties to white nationalists, it makes you wonder where he's keeping the hood.” (02:26, Tim Miller)

3. Recent Controversies — The Weaponization Fund (04:04–05:02)

• At a recent campaign event in Savannah (August 11th), Collins was asked if he would support financial compensation (“Victims of Political Weaponization Fund”) for people prosecuted after January 6th and others claiming to be victims of the “weaponized political system.”

• Collins responds unequivocally that he would support such compensation.

• Quote:

  “That's easy. Yes.” (04:44, Mike Collins)

• Miller calls out the normalization of “Jan Sixer” self-identification, critiquing Collins' pledge to use taxpayer dollars to support January 6th participants.

• Quote:

  “He wants to take your money, give it to rioters. So that is number one.” (05:20, Tim Miller)

4. White Nationalist Ties — Staff and Family Accusations (06:37–11:47)

• Family: Collins’ son-in-law, David Scheer, is described as “an avowed white nationalist social media influencer,” having posted Nazi imagery and praised white supremacist groups like Patriot Front.
• Chief of Staff: Kip Talley participated in group chats with notorious white nationalists (Nick Fuentes, Richard Spencer), where antisemitic and racist material was exchanged.
• Social Media: Collins’ official accounts have posted or amplified racist trolling and hate content. Most notably, posting a video approvingly of Ole Miss students making monkey noises at a Black woman.
• Quote:

  “If your chief of staff is hanging out with white nationalists, if your son in law is posting white nationalist stuff, you know the, the white nationalism is inside the house if you will.” (11:44, Tim Miller)

5. Jon Ossoff Responds (13:09–14:20)

• Senator Jon Ossoff addresses Collins’ behavior and lack of accountability directly, demanding Collins:
  • Hold a press conference.
  • Unambiguously retract support for payouts to January 6th rioters.
  • Recant claims that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
  • Answer whether his businesses have funded neo-Nazi propagandists.
• Quote:

  “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 US Capitol.” (13:33, Jon Ossoff)

6. Collins’ Broader Far-Right Positions (14:20–17:16)

• Collins is described as holding “the whole gamut of far right views” on all major issues (abortion, immigration, etc.) and pushing conspiracy theories.
• On the day of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Collins falsely accused President Biden of “inciting” and ordering an assassination via tweets:
  • “The Republican district attorney in Butler County, Pennsylvania, should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination.”
  • “Joe Biden sent the orders.”
• Collins posted a campaign video shooting at voting machines, promising to “fight for Trump” and overturn the 2020 election.
• Quote:

  “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.” (15:57, Tim Miller)

7. “Nepo Baby” and Persona (17:16–end)

• Miller satirizes Collins’ “regular guy” campaign narrative, highlighting how Collins’ career is a product of family privilege, both politically (father was a congressman) and in business.
• Miller suggests resentment over Obamacare may be rooted in prejudice.
• Quote:

  “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. You can decide for yourself.” (17:43, Tim Miller)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Comment | |-----------|--------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:41 | Tim Miller | "...the soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to the Republican candidates from the media."| | 02:26 | Tim Miller | "He has so many ties to white nationalists, it makes you wonder where he's keeping the hood." | | 04:44 | Mike Collins | "That's easy. Yes." (re: Jan 6th compensation fund) | | 06:37 | Tim Miller | Describing Collins avoiding questions about his family's white nationalist ties | | 11:44 | Tim Miller | "The white nationalism is inside the house if you will." | | 13:33 | Jon Ossoff | "He needs to come out today. He needs to hold a press conference himself..." | | 15:57 | Tim Miller | "This is a lunatic...he's using a firearm to take out his conspiratorial delusions on a voting machine."| | 17:43 | Tim Miller | "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."|

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:00] Start of content; introduction to series and theme
• [02:26] Overview of Mike Collins' extremism
• [04:04] Weaponization Fund question at Savannah event
• [06:37] Collins dodging questions about white nationalist ties
• [11:47] (Ad break — skip)
• [13:09] Jon Ossoff’s response
• [14:20] Far-right views, conspiracy theories, Collins' tweets on Trump assassination attempt
• [15:35] Voting machine shooting campaign ad
• [17:16] Analysis of Collins’ “regular guy” persona and background
• [19:11] (Ads — skip)

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Episode Tone

• Analytical, satirical, and biting critique (Miller’s characteristic style)
• Strong emphasis on the real-world stakes of fringe candidacies and the need for rigorous scrutiny of Republican candidates

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Conclusion

Miller concludes that Mike Collins’ nomination represents a colossal failure of both the mainstream GOP and the MAGA movement to field electable, responsible leaders. With white nationalist associations, extreme positions, promotion of conspiracy theories, and a performative “regular guy” persona, Collins represents what Miller sees as the key reasons for Republican struggles in Georgia, opening the door for Democratic dominance in forthcoming elections.

Call to Action:
Listeners are urged to share the episode, especially with Georgia contacts, to spread awareness of who’s running in these pivotal races.

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Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

hey, everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark and I 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 in 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 W, 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 gonna be some lunacy for you ahead. So the first candidate that we are featuring in this series, crazy stupid Republicans is Mike Collins. Mike Collins is running for Senate in Georgia. Again, I'm not nut picking random city council people, okay? All of these people are statewide candidates in states where like, ostensibly Republicans could win a race where Republicans have won in the 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 Jon 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 was pro insurrection. He supports to this day, as far as we know, the fund for the January 6th rioters. And he has so many ties 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 Ossoff 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 weaponization fund. Let's watch.

[Mike Collins Supporter]

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, 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 become victims of a weaponized political system?

[Mike Collins]

Yeah, you know, it's anything political. A lot of things have been politicized and weaponized. And when the federal government harms you, then, yes, they have a liability. That's easy. Yes.

[Tim Miller]

Thank you.

[Mike Collins]

Yes, ma'.

[Tim Miller]

Am. 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 realize that your grandkids and their kids are going to look at the pictures of the Confederate flags and the smoke as people storm 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 worldview that that questioner has. It's kind of like, what does she 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 insurrection day. Mike Collins has no concerns about that. Easy. Yes, for him. He wants to take my tax dollars. Your tax dollars. He's going to take money from you and give it to this guy and others that beat up cops and stormed the Capitol 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 on that in a second. But first I just want to kind of hear what Mike Collins says about those relationships.

[Mike Collins]

Yes, ma', am. I'll give that young lady right there, she has a question. One last question. Listen, thank you. I appreciate yalls time. I appreciate your coming out this morning. Thank you very much.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, so you can see there Mike Collins walking away in a field from questions about the racists 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 Jon Ossoff responding to that. The first example when he's talking about his family there, the person that is referenced is Mike Collins son in law David Scheer. David is an avowed white nationalist social media influencer. He has 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 D.C. over the July 4th weekend. It's funny, a lot of like the racist Magaz 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, that's okay and polite company. Whenever the Patriot Front guys show up. You see these other maggots 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 Klan 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, son in law, actively promoting the Patriot Front. The modern day KKK Scheer 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 kind of who is writing the history textbooks. Jews, saying the Jews are responsible for porn, killing JFK, 9, 11, the Charlie Kirk assassination. They just, you know, anything bad that has happened in history, Mike Cohen's son in law thinks that it's the Jews that did it. You might say to yourself, okay, well look, we all have a crazy person in our family. 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 after 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 the most famous white nationalists in the country. And then you have Collins social media feedback itself, the Congressman, which as best as we can tell was kind of run by a groiper, an acolyte of Nick Fuentes. But all this 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 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 the kind of the groiper adjacent troll posts that Mike Collins was doing. But I think this pretty much sums it up. I mean if you're cheering monkey noises at 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, the white nationalism is inside the house if you will.

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[Tim Miller]

Ossoff is responsible to both Collins support for the weaponization fund and its ties. Right Nationalist.

[Jon Ossoff]

Let's watch that Georgians deserve to hear answers directly from a sitting 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 US 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.

[Tim Miller]

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, horrifying day, was out there accusing the then President of the United States of attempted murder while Joe Biden was trying to calm the temperature, 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.

[Mike Collins]

You see, Georgians are sick and tired of weak kneed, 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.

[Tim Miller]

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 safeguarding our elections, safeguarding our constitutional order like that is a crazy person. Or it's somebody who's just so 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 can end with a laugh. Mike Collins 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 trucking business.

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I've had my ups and downs, my

[Tim Miller]

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

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confronted with Obamacare, disastrous government plan that

[Tim Miller]

defies the laws of market and a

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mindset that the government knows better.

[Tim Miller]

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 hire white nationalists who 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. You can decide for yourself. That is Mike Collins. We're going to be back. I don't even think he's the worst. 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 in 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 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 Feedback 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.

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[Tim Miller]

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