Trump Endorses Susan Collins for Re-Election, Calling Her a ‘Sane Person’

Even though Senator Susan Collins is not his “best friend,” President Trump said Wednesday he hopes she will be re-elected by the people of Maine in November, calling her new opponent, Democratic nominee Graham Platner, a “thug.” Mr. Trump has had a fraught relationship with Ms. Collins during his 10 years as a national politician. Ms. Collins never supported Mr. Trump for president and voted to convict him after his impeachment trial in 2021, which came about following the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Last year, Mr. Trump said Ms. Collins and a number of other senators should never be elected to office against after a small band of Republicans supported a War Powers resolution to constrain his military activities in Venezuela. After the vote, Mr. Trump called Ms. Collins and went on a “profanity-laced rant” against the Maine senator, according to a report by the Hill. “Republicans should be ashamed of the senators that just voted with Democrats in attempting to take away our powers to fight and defend the United States of America,” Mr. Trump said at the time. On Thursday, Mr. Trump’s tune changed, saying he supports Ms. Collins’s re-election campaign. She is the only Republican senator running for reelection this year in a state won by Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. “She’s not my best friend at all. She’s a sane person and she’s a person that never missed a vote in many years,” Mr. Trump told reporters, noting Ms. Collins’s accomplishment of casting 10,000 consecutive votes during her near 30-year career in the chamber. She even voted on the day of her mother’s funeral after flying back from Maine. He jokingly said it was unfortunate that Ms. Collins never missed a vote, considering “she sometimes voted against me.”“She’s a sane woman and she’s a respected person — maybe a little different ideology than me,” Mr. Trump said, adding that Mr. Platner is “a thug.”“He’s a phony. I’ve made a lot of money picking out phonies. He’s a real phony,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Platner on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination for November’s Senate race in Maine. A political newcomer, Mr. Platner enlisted and served four combat tours with both the Marines and the Army during the Global War on Terror. A number of personal scandals, however, have hovered over the campaign. First was the disclosure that he had had a Nazi symbol tattoo on his chest for nearly two decades but later covered it after announcing his Senate bid. He says he was unaware of its meaning when he got it and in the years that followed though his ex-girlfriend said he told her a decade ago that he called it “my Totenkopf.” The same woman accused him of having grabbed her by the shoulders and leaving a mark while they were dating more than a decade ago. He denies the allegations. Speaking at a victory rally on Tuesday night, Mr. Platner said the stories have nothing to do with his campaign, but rather are fodder for national political pundits looking to distract Maine voters from the issues at hand. “The national pundits — the political establishment — they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by, but in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not about me at all,” Mr. Platner said. “This is a movement about us — about the far too many working far too hard and struggling far too much at the hands of the ruling class.”

Trump Endorses Susan Collins for Re-Election, Calling Her a ‘Sane Person’

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