Ex-GOP operative slams GOP senator for running again: 'Dazzlingly cynical' Trump enabler

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson called a longtime GOP senator who announced her campaign for reelection Tuesday "the worst of the worst" and said she was deserving of defeat.

In his Substack, the co-founder of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project described how Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has continued to support President Donald Trump despite everything that has happened under Trump and how even her own staff was shocked when she was reelected in 2020 after the Lincoln Project and other activists attempted to unseat her.

"The normies who stuck with Trump after the first term, the COVID deaths, the electoral massacre, the endless chain of crimes and corruption, and now, the Epstein Coverup have a poster girl, and it’s Susan Collins," Wilson wrote.

"Susan Collins is the worst of the worst because she plays moral, normal, and centrist on the Sunday shows while empowering, enabling, and embracing Donald Trump every time she thinks she can get away with it," Wilson wrote.

Collins released an op-ed in Bangor Daily News on Tuesday announcing her campaign to seek reelection, and Wilson disagreed with her claims that she is "independent" and that she should remain on Capitol Hill.

"Her career has become a transactional loop where Mitch McConnell or John Thune dangles the keys to the Appropriations Committee goodie room, showering Maine with infrastructure pork and 'targeted investments,' and in exchange, Susan provides the pivotal 'aye' for the most destructive elements of the MAGA agenda," Wilson wrote.
"She isn’t 'bringing both sides together'; she’s selling her vote to the highest bidder in the Republican leadership, trading the fundamental rights of Maine women and the integrity of the federal judiciary for a few hundred million in earmarks," Wilson added. "Forget the aw shuck granny in tennis shoes riff; Collins is dazzlingly cynical, a contestant in D.C.’s version of 'Let’s Make a Deal' where the prize is a new bridge, and the cost is the very democracy she pretends to protect."

If elected in November, this would be Collins' sixth term in office as Republicans show growing concern over her seat, which Democrats have eyed as a way to take control of the Senate, according to The New York Times.