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Mike Collins/Instagram

Dirty Delete: Freshman Georgia rep is a pale imitation of Trump

Collins spent the early months of his campaign as a Twitter reply guy.

 

Claire Goforth

Tech

Posted on Mar 10, 2023   Updated on Mar 9, 2023, 7:09 am CST

Dirty Delete is a weekly column that goes deep into the social media history of politicians that runs on Thursdays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.

Analysis

Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) is a card-carrying extremist.

He opposed gay marriage less than a decade ago.

Collins likes opposing things. He’s anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and wants to cut the corporate tax rate—because trickle down economics worked so well the first time. Spoiler: it didn’t.

The freshman representative demonstrates the growing rift between the far-right and moderates they sneeringly call “RINOs.”

Collins spent the early months of his campaign as a Twitter reply guy cozying up to the likes of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). On Instagram, he called then-Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) “the best.”

When Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) joked about moving to an island without the internet because Greene and the Nation of Islam were trending together, Collins replied to Mace with a gif that said, “Well bye.”

Years after John McCain died, Collins posted a photo of the late Republican senator captioned, “This is why we need term limits.” Classy.

His call for term limits goes to Collins’ claim that he’s a political outsider, which is a pretty interesting way to describe being a third-generation politician.

Collins positions himself as the Trump guy. He’s constantly going to Trump rallies and talking about how much he loves Trump. Yet his main man endorsed his opponent in the Republican primary.

No matter. His loyalty is so unflagging that Collins called to impeach President Joe Biden twice in a sort of impeachment version of an eye for an eye. (He doesn’t seem to realize that a second impeachment would mean that the first one didn’t have the intended effect.)

Logic clearly isn’t Collins’ friend.

He portrays himself as pro-cop, yet he falsely claims that the Capitol riot wasn’t an insurrection. After Tucker Carlson aired misleading footage of the riot earlier this week, he called for “all” the rioters—some of whom were literally convicted of beating cops—to be released from jail.

Online, you can find Collins on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Rumble, Truth Social, Gab, and Gettr.

Dirtiest Delete

After losing his first bid for Congress in 2014, Collins shelved his campaign website. He recently repurposed it to sell a twist on the Gadsden flag to partially benefit the trucker convoy protests.

But the internet is forever.

An archive shows that Collins ran on opposing gay marriage.

“Marriage is between one man and one woman. The fact that we have to debate this basic fact is truly unfortunate. I will not negotiate on this position and will not support any legislation to the contrary,” his site stated.

If he had any sense, he’d wish he could take that one back.

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*First Published: Mar 10, 2023, 6:00 am CST