00:00This might be the most disgraceful political smear ever caught on live television.
00:04When confronted with white supremacists on his own campaign staff,
00:08Republican Mike Collins panicked and tried to accuse Georgia's first Jewish senator of anti-Semitism.
00:14Watch his face when John Ossoff drops the hammer.
00:17If you voted against the big, beautiful bill, what is your plan to bring financial relief to Georgians?
00:22We're going to repeal the tariffs.
00:25We're going to end this disastrous war in Iran.
00:28We're going to repeal those Medicaid cuts that have defunded hospitals and nursing homes across Georgia.
00:34If you want to understand whether the Trump-Collins budget has helped you, just go fill up a tank of
00:42gas.
00:42Go to the grocery store. Try to buy food for your kids.
00:46Look at your electric bill this week.
00:49Look at your health insurance premiums.
00:51They've doubled for more than a million Georgians the predictable results of these disastrous policies.
00:58And Rick, I'm not asking the congressman a question.
01:02I'm making a statement.
01:03Georgia voters deserve to know why he voted over and over and over again for those tariffs.
01:11Georgia voters deserve an explanation.
01:14How have these tariffs helped us?
01:17That's a question that Congressman Collins should answer right now if he has the courage to do so.
01:23Let's hear it.
01:23Let's pause right there and examine what Senator Ossoff actually did.
01:27He refused to allow the conversation to remain in the abstract realm of macroeconomic statistics.
01:33Instead, he linked the Trump-Collins economic framework directly to the lived experience of everyday Georgians.
01:39The gas pump, the grocery checkout line, the monthly electric bill, and healthcare premiums that have doubled for more than
01:45a million citizens across the state.
01:47And specifically, he honed in on tariffs.
01:50For years, conservative candidates have framed tariffs as an aggressive, patriotic weapon to punish foreign adversaries.
01:57But basic economic reality tells the exact opposite story.
02:01A tariff is not paid by foreign governments.
02:04It is an import tax paid directly by American businesses,
02:07and inevitably pass down dollar-for-dollar onto working families in the form of higher prices on everyday consumer goods.
02:14For Georgia's agricultural sector, pecan growers, poultry producers, and peanut farmers,
02:19these trade policies triggered devastating international retaliations that closed export markets and threatened multi-generational family farms.
02:27And when Ossoff brought up Medicaid cuts, he was pointing to an open wound in Georgia.
02:32Because the conservative establishment in this state repeatedly resisted healthcare expansion,
02:37rural hospitals and nursing homes have shuttered their doors,
02:40leaving working-class rural communities without emergency medical care or maternity wards.
02:45Ossoff laid the indictment on the table and demanded an answer.
02:48And watch how the moderator immediately trapped Representative Collins with nonpartisan fiscal facts.
02:54Thank you, Senator.
02:55Congressman Collins, Republicans' campaign on cutting wasteful Washington spending.
03:00But the Congressional Budget Office reported just tonight the federal deficit climbed to $2 trillion this past fiscal year,
03:07up more than $200 billion from last year.
03:10If tax cuts and deregulation are the answer, why is the national debt and the federal deficit continuing to balloon
03:18on your party's watch?
03:21You know, tax cuts are the answer to keeping more money back in people's pockets.
03:26That, in turn, when you keep money in the private sector, it turns over another five, six, seven times.
03:32And what that does, what does that do?
03:33That creates more taxes, more tax-paying people, and businesses grow.
03:40But my opponent doesn't get that.
03:42My opponent's a trust fund kid who's never had a job in his life.
03:46He doesn't understand that.
03:47He doesn't understand business.
03:49That's okay.
03:51And as we continue to become more independent,
03:54as we continue to make sure that we have a fair shot for America,
03:59it should be America first.
04:01We have bowed down to the rest of this world
04:04and took it from companies or countries charging us tariffs over and over again.
04:10We shouldn't be doing that.
04:11We should set it up to where we have the advantage,
04:14and you should always have America first.
04:16You know, but I think that people in this state need to know some things about my opponent.
04:22Why he left that border wide open?
04:24Congressman, I'm going to have to stop you there.
04:25We'll get to that.
04:26I want to give Senator Ossoff a chance at a rebuttal.
04:28There were some charges leveled at you.
04:30You have 30 seconds.
04:31Notice the total collapse of substantive argument here.
04:34The moderator, Rick Fulbaum, read directly from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
04:39The federal deficit climbed to $2 trillion,
04:42up over $200 billion in a single year under conservative fiscal leadership.
04:48The moderator's question was simple.
04:49If supply-side tax cuts and deregulation are the silver bullet for the economy,
04:54why does the national debt explode every single time your party holds the purse strings?
04:59Colin's response was the textbook recitation of trickle-down mythology from 40 years ago.
05:05The claim that cutting taxes for the ultra-wealthy magically trickles down through the private sector
05:10and creates more revenue.
05:12Every credible economic study across modern history has proven that this theory is fundamentally false.
05:17It does not pay for itself.
05:19It simply starves public services while transferring wealth to the top 1%.
05:23And look at what happened the second Collins realized the economic math did not support him.
05:28He abandoned the policy debate entirely and pivoted to a juvenile personal smear,
05:33calling Senator Ossoff a trust-fund kid who's never had a job.
05:37This is the defining signature of the modern MAGA movement.
05:40When the facts betray your platform, you do not adjust your policy.
05:43You attack the integrity of your opponent.
05:45But Senator Ossoff had 30 seconds to respond.
05:48And what he did with those 30 seconds was the most devastating moment of the night.
05:53Well, the question was about the stewardship of tax dollars.
05:57And as we stand here today, Rick,
06:00Congressman Mike Collins is under federal investigation for the illegal misuse of tax dollars
06:05for illegally funneling public money to his violent staffer's girlfriend.
06:11And he refused to testify in that matter.
06:14The Office of Congressional Conduct had to recommend that he be subpoenaed.
06:18We haven't gotten an answer on the tariffs.
06:20I'd like an answer why he refused to testify.
06:23Congressman Collins, you have 30 seconds for a rebuttal there.
06:25That ethics complaint is bogus.
06:28Anybody can file one.
06:29It is a nothing burger.
06:30It is election season.
06:32And my opponent, the Democrats, they wanted to ride this thing through the election.
06:37Matter of fact, I look forward to the day.
06:39They need to release all of that.
06:40Go ahead and release.
06:41The ethics committee needs to release the information and clear my name now.
06:45Because that's all they're doing.
06:47He can't talk on his record, y'all.
06:49You don't hear him talk about his record.
06:51All he wants to do is slander and try to slam me.
06:54That was a political knockout.
06:57Ossoff didn't trade insults.
06:58He took Collins' rhetoric about watching taxpayer dollars
07:02and held it directly against Collins' actual conduct.
07:05Because behind the performative working class persona,
07:08Congressman Mike Collins is the subject of an active federal investigation
07:12referred to the House Ethics Committee by the Office of Congressional Conduct.
07:16The allegation is severe.
07:18That public taxpayer dollars were illegally funneled through congressional payroll
07:22to a romantic partner of his chief of staff.
07:25Someone who, according to on-the-record staff testimony,
07:28performed zero documented work for the district.
07:31And when federal investigators summoned Congressman Collins to testify under oath
07:35and clear the matter, he refused to comply,
07:38prompting a formal recommendation for a subpoena.
07:41Collins' only response on that stage was to sweat, stammer,
07:45and dismiss a documented federal inquiry as a nothing-burger
07:48and an election-season smear.
07:51This is the fundamental contrast facing voters in Georgia
07:54and across the United States.
07:56You have leaders like John Ossoff fighting to protect the sacred legacy of John Lewis,
08:01defend the Voting Rights Act,
08:03expand access to health care,
08:05and hold powerful corporate interests accountable to working families.
08:08And on the other side,
08:10you have an extremist faction that votes for tax giveaways for billionaires,
08:14passes policies that raise the cost of groceries and gas,
08:17and runs from accountability the second an ethics committee demands answers under oath.
08:21Real leadership is not measured by tough talk on social media.
08:26It is measured by whether your policies uplift the vulnerable,
08:29protect the democratic process,
08:31and honor the public trust.
