Still More Extremists Surface in Senate Candidate Mike Collins’ Orbit

How Many of These Guys Are There?

The latest report about far-right extremists in Georgia Republican candidate Mike Collins’ orbit comes from the Daily Beast, which identified two people associated with the far-right group American Patriots USA serving as campaign-appointed “convoy captains” in his bid for Senate. Convoy captains head up grassroots organizing efforts in Georgia’s counties.

American Patriots USA is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist” group, or a group that believes “white identity should be the organizing principle of the countries that make up Western civilization.” It was founded by a Klan leader who attended the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

One of the two convoy captains identified by the Daily Beast served as a state director of American Patriots USA, and the other as a vice president of the group, the outlet reported.

These two are the latest in a long line of extreme far-right figures who have surfaced in Collins’ orbit. Perhaps most notoriously, Collins’ son-in-law was identified by CNN as a white nationalist influencer with millions of followers who has promoted the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front, called for Muslims to be deported from the country, and shared the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews control politics in the U.S. The Washington Post found a former Collins staffer posting a swastika and an image of himself in a Klan robe to Twitter. Slate discovered that Collins’ (now former) chief of staff informed a group chat that included Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer that he was trying to use his influence to spring notorious Holocaust denier and troll Chuck Johnson from prison.

Perhaps — perhaps! — you might be inclined to think Collins is just unlucky, and these guys are turning up all around him by coincidence. But I can’t see these repeated headlines emerge without thinking about Collins’ unique online persona, which includes multiple jokes about killing immigrants through a method far-right Latin American dictators, including Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, were known to deploy against their political enemies: tossing them from aircraft. These “death flights” have become a jokey meme among online extremists, one with which Collins is seemingly very familiar.

“Another week, another scandal for Mike Collins, who is surrounded at work, at home, and now at his campaign by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klan associates,” Collins’ opponent, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), said of the Daily Beast report, adding that Collins will “have to answer” during tonight’s debate “for his extensive and disqualifying ties to white nationalism.”

Trumpworld Reportedly Looking for a Scapegoat

• Politico informs us that, amid indications of a dismal upcoming midterm election, political operatives around the president are turning on two leading figures in his orbit: Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s 2024 campaign managers, and James Blair, who served as White House deputy chief of staff. The two now run the pro-Trump Super PAC MAGA, Inc., through which Republicans are routing much of their midterm spending.
• Ironically, the cause of the fracas is that LaCivita and Blair recently spent several days in the Balkans, advising a pro-Putin party in Republika Srpska. The New York Times broke that story earlier this week.
• Trump reportedly isn’t pleased. His problem here, to be clear, is not that the two were helping a pro-Putin political party, but that they were doing so with a month to go before what is expected to be a GOP rout, during a time when they presumably should have had their hands full back in the U.S.
• “I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!” Trump posted to Truth Social yesterday, a reaction to the Times’ reporting that, per Politico, has MAGA world all atwitter.

Tabs

• Don’t miss the Wall Street Journal’s deeply bizarre story about Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle’s insistence that a MAGA donor pay off her American Express card.
• The Trump administration successfully pressured Canada and the EU to drop their sponsorship of a disinformation conference at which one panel would examine the U.S.’s role as a spreader of disinformation, the Guardian reports.

Man of the Hour

It’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, about whom Trump recently said, not at all ominously, “We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right Russ?”

“He’s gonna be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion,” Trump added. “He’s got some great things happening.”