Chase Geiser On The Race For Congress In GA-10 With Mike Collins | OAP #49
Chase Geiser is joined by Mike Collins.
Mike was born and raised in Jackson, Georgia. He credits his first job at age 12, sweeping floors in his dad’s shop, for instilling in him the value of hard work and an appreciation for the American Dream. That strong foundation and his entrepreneurial spirit spurred him to found his first business at age 25.
For the past 31 years since, Mike has successfully owned and operated several small businesses. Since then, he’s grown his trucking business from just one semi-truck to a fleet of 115. Collins Trucking hauls millions of metric tons of freight throughout the nation each year and employs more than 100 hard-working Georgians.
Mike graduated with a business degree from Georgia State University and married his high school sweetheart, Leigh Ann. They have three children and three grandchildren and still reside in Jackson, where they are actively involved in their community. They attend Rocksprings Church.
And tonight I am honored and pleased to have the guest, Mike Collins with us tonight.
Mike Collins is going to be the next congressman representing uh the District 10 of Georgia.
And uh I'm very excited to uh have him and very pleased that he agreed to come on the show.
How are you doing, Mike?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on, Chase.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
I like your uh I like your logo on the back.
I uh I did a little bit of research on you before you came on the show, and uh I noticed that you uh uh your kind of claim to fame is that you have a hundred employees that are in Georgia and you you started a trucking business, is that right?
We do.
Uh you know, my parents were in the trucking industry.
We uh we started out, we hauled logs out of the woods, and uh of course I I took over their business when I was 20 and so that was not gonna feed all of us.
So my wife and I we started our own trucking company.
I think I was around 23, maybe 22, 23 years old.
Wow.
How'd you get your first 18-wheeler?
Uh believe it or not, that is a wild story.
I had a uh a person that I knew, and uh he let me lease the truck, and he said, as you can afford the payments, we'll swap it over.
And uh another guy did the same thing with the trailer, and as I just kept building, they kept honoring that agreement.
And uh it was nice.
It was uh it was a great way to get started.
Um I don't know why they did it, but uh regardless, it uh it's been very, very we've been very, very fortunate in what we've been able to do.
I heard that there's uh been a major shortage in uh truckers.
Is that is have you experienced any of that struggle?
Yes, everybody's have we in and that's been a uh a struggle for a number of years.
Uh you you when you think about it, the the a truck driver, you can't start that career until you're 21.
Now you you graduate from high school at 18, you go to a tech school at 18, get out at 19, but you still you're still not able to drive a truck until you're 21.
So it kind of puts this uh at a very bad disadvantage.
And then uh, you know, you take last year especially when COVID hit, um the motoring public was fantastic, but the shippers in the consonants, you might take a load 11, 1200 miles and the shipper or the consonies closed because somebody had COVID, and but they didn't call anybody.
So you've got a driver that's sitting there, you don't know how long.
So you know it it got to where it was a frustration factor, and a lot of our drivers are older.
A lot of your older drivers, 65 plus, they drive because they love it.
It's who they are.
And uh when when the frustration set in, you know, they thought, well, you know, I've got a wife, kids, grandkids at home, I'll go home.
And then uh you throw into the mix the fact they closed the truck driving schools.
And so you've just got a perfect storm.
We can't hire you without two years' experience.
Even though I run operate a hundred and fifteen trucks.
We just can't hire you.
Um because of insurance.
So we're in kind of a holding pattern.
You know, I've got 20 trucks sitting out there on the fence.
So is that a state law that that drivers have to be 21 or is that a federal law?
That's a federal law.
You know, and and and some of them are changing.
Uh I see no problem with an 18-year-old driving.
Uh yeah, maybe I'm a unique situation.
I started when I was 16.
But the trucks are so much safer now than what they used to be.
Incredibly safe.
You know, everything from collision mitigation to lane departure.
So roll over.
Safe for the driver, but if you get if you get ran by one of those, you're in trouble if you're in a Nissan Versa.
Well, you know, you you go back to that collision mitigation.
It it actually, if you come up on a vehicle, it will slow that truck down tremendously.
Yeah, the artificial intelligence stuff.
What do you think about the um some of the work that Elon Musk has been doing in terms of the electronic uh cyber truck that he sort of brought out a couple years ago?
Well, uh, you know, I wait and see.
You know, yeah, I I've always I've always loved technology.
Anything sure.
We we we we run solar panels on our trucks now.
So we we run solar panels with uh uh electric APU or auxiliary power unit to run the truck at nighttime.
And uh that's great.
It works out great.
So you know, anything that that makes it more technologically advanced, safer, more efficient, better for for our drivers for all of us to make more money, then certainly I'll uh I'll take a look at it.
Got no problem with it.
Well, I'm I'm all about the uh green energy approach, but it seems to me that if we're if we're still making electricity with fossil fuels, then you know, if you have an electric car, you're not exactly saving the environment, you're just you know burning coal to make the electricity, right?
You yeah, you you know what my problem with it is.
Um you you've got the EPA, and this is through all bureaucracies.
You know, I just know the the trucking side of it, but you could pull me out and you could put a plumber in, an electrician in, even a painter.
It doesn't matter.
Yeah, they don't really know the industry.
But yet they're able to regulate you and demand that you put everything on the equipment that they think that needs to be so that if Chase, if you want to go up there and put your mouth on the muffler and breathe in the exhaust tomorrow, right?
You'll be okay.
Now I I don't recommend it.
But you'll be okay.
But it doesn't make any sense at the expense that we did to get to that point.
You know, you you take we had trucks that used to get eight, eight and a half miles to the gallon.
Well, when they got through with us, we're back down to five.
Five and six miles to the gallon.
You know, and the the oil change intervals are so much more.
So we go through a lot more oil and and diesel to do what they want you to do, but they really don't understand the the total cost of what they're putting you through.
Um you get a truck, you most of the trucks you see sitting on the side of the interstate, they're derated.
And that means that the truck has shut itself down, and most time it's because of some sensor instead of letting you be able to limp to the next you know, truck stop or something.
So just it's just a lot of stuff.
It's called federal government interference, and it's one of the biggest pet peeves I have.
Regulations and and a federal government that is way too big, way too intrusive, and we need to we need to get them out of our lives.
Yeah, it would have been a lot easier to prevent the expansion than it is to reverse it, I imagine.
That's one of the concerns that I have.
And I'm an optimistic person just generally speaking, but you know, it's alarming how like how do you how do you untangle the uh the unchecked nature of the intelligence community, right?
I I I sometimes on my Twitter account I I call the intelligence community the unchecked fourth branch of government.
And that, you know, they're not really accountable to anybody if you know if the FBI or the CIA breaks any law, they do an internal investigation, right?
There's not like an external branch of government that really checks on them.
I mean, technically Congress could do investigations, but with the top secret nature of these um uh intelligence communities, they they can't even tell politicians uh um uh secret information unless they have need to know or they specifically ask.
And so I'm really concerned long term about how some of these the way that we've allowed our government to get so big, but particularly with the intelligence community, I'm concerned long term with how that's gonna play out in terms of the tyranny versus liberty kind of uh dynamic.
Oh, I think I think I just lost you.
I you muted for some reason.
I'm not sure what happened.
Okay, am I back on the back?
Yeah, you're back, you're back.
Hey, Chase.
Okay.
I I had had an echo in the background.
I was trying to just trying to correct it there on my side.
But um it, you know, it's it's not just the law enforcement or the CIA or the FBI.
Yeah, a lot of that needs to be looked at.
You take a look at what's happened to Trump over the past four years.
Now, if if people don't think that we need to really look to see what's going on in our federal government just from that standpoint, then they're not really paying attention.
But it's in all bureaucracy, and the the problem is that that they're not accountable.
You know, you you take you take a lot of the and and this is not with the CIA or the FBI, but you take with the the regulations and the bureaucrats and and the fact that they've been trying to pass this rains Act.
Uh, and it's still in Congress today.
Just so that Congress has the power to either say yay or nay over a regulation that's over a certain cost.
And and the fact that they should be able to bring those regulations in every so often and say, hey, we need uh do we still need this regulation?
Because without that, there is absolutely no check and balance on on those people up there.
Yeah, well, I think that the original intention of the structure of government was that the states would kind of hash out the specifics and the federal government was sort of, you know, provide for the common defense, make sure no states are violating, you know, individual rights, uh, like we see in the Bill of Rights.
And so um, you know, it's just one of those things where over time it seems that the federal government has garnered more and more power, and I think a lot of it has to do with uh how dependent the states are financially on contracts and grants from the federal government.
So we there's sort of a leverage there.
You know, you well, let's let's take let's break it two things.
You you take the bill that just got passed with HR four in there.
Now you've got a federal government that is gonna take over the elections in in every state.
Now that's not which is explicitly unconstitutional.
It's an it's unconstitutional, right?
Yes.
But but it's a systematic approach, and it's been this way for a long time.
You know, you you go back as far as any social program you can think of, even the social net programs that were uh basically set up as a safety net, be it Social Security or Medicaid, and how over the years the government has gotten you into a dependency, whether you're older and and and every time something happens with Social Security, man, they're they're they're right there on top of it.
And and they paid into the system, don't get me wrong.
They they deserve their money.
But that's part of the dependency that the government has systematically processed and put us through to where you take your faith and and and everything that guides you off of God, and and then you move it right over to government.
And and and you could go right on down the line.
Uh you take the the the middle class or or middle-aged people, and there's Obamacare, health care.
Let the government take care of it for you.
And now we are on the children with CRT, the the mask mandates to make you conform.
So where they to where everything that they're gonna start doing, these children, they want them to say, what does the government think that I need to do?
Have you seen the numbers on uh how many children under the age of 18 uh have actually died of COVID this whole pandemic?
No, I haven't seen it.
It it's only about 360.
And I knew I thought it was less than 400.
Yeah, and if you look at the numbers of children without COVID who died of pneumonia, it's over double that.
So if if you're if you're advocating for for masking children to save them from COVID, then you should have already been mandating before COVID to protect them from pneumonia.
It's sort of this new inconsistency going on.
Right, right.
So I don't know why it's just very bizarre.
That makes sense.
There's so much uh I I hate to use the word stupidity, but you almost wonder what do they really think we are?
How do they think we're that crazy?
That we're that that stupid that uh I can't figure out if they believe it or if they're just use if they're just lying.
That's what I can't figure out.
Do they actually think that masks are gonna save kids?
Is that what's going on?
I I think that I I don't even think they care about the mask.
I I think that it is just a point to where and people get to that point to where they just say, man, okay, hands up, forget it.
Whatever, whatever you want me to do, just leave me alone.
Just tell me what you want and then leave me alone.
And and that's where they want you.
To me, it really doesn't have anything to do about mask.
Um, I I am totally against these mask mandates.
I'm totally against the vaccine mandate.
I if if it helps you go see your doctor, y'all discuss it.
Not the government.
That's just another part of this, this whole process.
So I and I tell you what, Chase.
We if you're so did you decide to get the vaccine?
No, I've not got I I actually contracted corrupted uh December 31st.
So I got to bring in the new year's eve.
And quarantined.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was actually all watching.
Uh there was probably two or three days that were a little bit.
I know I made some phone calls uh that I don't remember.
And I was I would drive my V by drive.
No, I never I never had a fever.
I I knew I had it when I lost my sense of smell and taste.
But I would drive my truck to my office and sit out in the parking lot and uh and make all my phone calls and watch what's going on and see what was going on.
But uh but uh it was it I I was fortunate I didn't have anything bad happen, but uh I feel like I still got the antibodies, so you know I I I haven't even checked out on getting uh getting the vaccine.
I'm glad they approved it.
It was one of those those things that I think is really interesting, and I can't I can't get to the bottom of it.
It's that you know, one of the one of Trump's greatest accomplishments was being able to get a vaccine for for this illness in record time, right?
Within a year, and it was you know, it was really a Trump thing with uh with Warp Speed.
And it's I don't understand why it totally flipped, and you see sort of like a lot of uh hesitance and reluctance from the right to actually take the vaccine, and then you see the left really pushing it, and it's like I never imagined that I would see the left pushing something that Trump did.
You know, it is kind of it is kind of strange, but but you know, and and I in all honesty, I had a good friend of mine, he had he got COVID probably two weeks before I did.
And so he went and got the vaccine back in March or April, but he has had tremendous headaches, and that's what I had while I had COVID.
Man, I had headaches like you wouldn't believe.
And so he's he had headaches so bad after he took the vaccine that they have they have not figured out yet why he cannot get rid of them.
And so there's that that's the reluctance that I've had.
Uh just thinking that well, maybe he still had the antibodies, I don't know.
I'm not a doctor, but uh when I decide to really take a hard look at it, then I'll go to my doctor and see what uh see what we need to do.
But uh to me, that's still a personal decision.
So you ran um in 2014 for the first time, is that right?
I did.
I did.
What made you decide to do that?
I saw that we need business people in Washington.
And and it would to me, I thought that it was a good time for me to step up and run.
Um I've never run for office before, I've never been in elected office, and and came pretty doggone close to winning that election.
I know half a point.
Uh it was well, I lost about 4500 votes at the end of the day in the runoff.
Uh the primary uh we were pretty much tied.
And and but I was running against I was running against a uh second-time candidate.
Uh Congressman Heist had run before.
He's the pastor of a fairly large church, probably three to four thousand people.
And so, you know, I had a I knew I had a little bit of a hill to climb, but uh anybody that's ever worked around me or or worked on our team knows that uh man, we run nine and day, we run wide open, and so we we I really thought that I was gonna take that election last time, but uh, you know, uh it didn't.
It turned out it's probably the right decision that I didn't win.
You know, you look back hindsight, and it's always 2020.
I got to uh you know, I got to spend five good years with my dad before he passed away, and I probably I wouldn't have got to be able to do that.
And I know that's sorry you lost your dad.
Yeah, it was about two and a half years ago.
So uh, you know, he was he was he was one of my biggest mentors, and uh and I learned a lot from him, you know, and and that's okay.
We'll see him again one day.
But uh, but this time around, I am telling you, Chase, I'm not coming in second place again.
Uh we'll do what it takes to win.
Uh, we've got the right message.
And and especially after Donald Trump four years showing that a business person, an outsider, and what he was able to do, and the whole time, just think the whole time, four years he they had his head underwater trying to drown him to death.
And look at what he was able to accomplish.
Man, if he'd if he'd have had if we wouldn't have had Paul Ryan as uh speaker of the house, just think of what we could have done.
So this time around, I think people I uh Chase, everywhere we go, and I would say for the last two weeks, everywhere I've spoken, we've had standing room only.
Thirty percent of the people in these meetings, especially these monthly meetings we go to are brand new.
They have they they've never participated, they've never been to a meeting.
They may have started in January, February, or they may have just came in that night.
And every one of them had the same meshes.
I have no idea what to do.
I've never been here before, but I'm here because we got to do something.
And that's what's incredible.
Man, that's sweet.
What do you think about the um what do you think about the state of the Republican Party?
You know, I I've been um a Republican voter for my entire adult life.
I'm 30 now, but I'm feeling somewhat disenfranchised with the party, not because my views on policy have changed, but because I feel like um a lot of the existing leadership within the party is sort of coasting.
And um I I don't know if that's a sentiment that you share or if that's something that you hear, but I you know, I feel concerned that there's not the hustle that that is needed in order to be the Democrats, because you know, as much as I despise them, they know how to win.
You know, you're right on you're you're right on the money.
But and and the reason is is that most of these people up here for or go up there for a career.
And but there's a good group now.
The the the freedom caucus guys and and ladies now they're they're hustling.
Yeah, you know, you you you've got those political prisoners from January 6th, you've seen them there, they're trying to get them to a trial.
They're out there pushing, trying to make sure everybody understand what how we're getting messed over with this budget resolution and this infrastructure bill.
But you're right.
You've got a number of them up there.
You've got a lot of Republicans that like spend your money just like Democrats.
Sure.
And and you're gonna if you if you go to Washington today, you better be willing to fight the people on the left, the wacko liberal leftist, but you better be willing to fight those rhinos and those establishment people.
Yeah, noticed that in your uh campaign ad.
It's rhino season two.
Whoever did that, whoever wrote that, um, whoever wrote that uh um ad did a really good job.
Well, I I appreciate it.
Uh I can't take credit for writing it, but that's been our message the entire time.
Um and and and the red truck you see is my campaign truck in there.
That's an 06 Peter built extended hood.
So uh she's gonna go out on the road with us as soon as we manual or automatic.
Oh no, man, that's a manual there.
It's got 13 speed in it.
You know that's awesome.
We we have a lot of automatics now.
Uh no kidding, I had no idea.
Yeah, oh yeah.
Yeah, I would say probably 75%, 80% of our fleet now is automatic drugs.
But uh so with this government spending thing, you know, I I used to get bothered about it because I'm a big capitalist guy, read a lot of Milton Friedman growing up, a lot of Ayn Rand, and you know, I used to be concerned because it's like, hey, there's they're spending my money, but you know, as I've looked into it, and I could be misguided, but as I've looked into it, it's not even really the spending that's the problem, it's the fact that they have to sell bonds in order to pay for it.
And it seems like the inflation that comes from the spending is what's really hurting poor and middle class people disproportionately and sort of kind of making the political class richer because if you have your money in the market, inflation, you know, grows your your your portfolio value.
But if you're too poor to put money in the market because you're a paycheck to paycheck person, then inflation's you know really detrimental because every dollar you have loses value.
Well, you and and you know, you you younger crowd, uh and I've been I've been in it since 2017.
I think that's why there's such an interest in crypto.
Yeah, it's such a hedge against inflation, and it has nothing to do with the dollar.
But that's a different story.
I mean, but but I think that's why there's such a push from younger people to go towards cryptocurrency.
Sure.
But uh you talk about just bonds are selling off our debt, and you look at who has our debt.
You know, the the number one country that hates the United States the most is China.
You know, and I hate to refer back to Trump, but that's what he always said.
He just would say China.
Look at what they're doing now.
And and and I I'm You may have heard of it by now, but I read it a week ago, where China closed down the world's third largest port.
So all your cheap Chinese crap that you buy for Christmas is not going to come because of one coronavirus.
They found one coronavirus.
That tells me that they really aren't interested in the economic side of it.
What they're interested in is breaking you.
They're sitting there saying we've got control over every bit of your economy.
And we've got to get that back.
And we've got to do that in a couple of different ways.
And getting that debt down is one of the most important ways that we can do that.
We have you've got people up there that don't understand debit and credit.
They they run that place off the seat of their britches with an open checkbook.
And anybody in business understands that won't do nothing but get you, you'll you'll go broke pretty dang quick.
Yeah, and I think one of the things that people don't understand about China is that it's a communist dictatorship, and yes, they use capitalism in order to gain revenue and profit, but it's really a communism at its heart.
And what that means is none of the officials in leadership are accountable to constituents.
They're only accountable to who's it's it's a top-down system, not a bottom-up system like democracy, right?
And so when you see things like what happened in between 1958 and 1962 in China, that was the great leap forward when Mao uh moved tried to move all the agricultural um workers into the cities to industrialize China and make it this tech hub.
And what ended up happening was they had tremendous famine for four years because nobody was farming and harvesting food.
And um they, you know, there's some studies that say that you know up to a hundred million people starved to death in that four-year period.
And so people don't understand that you know, something like that would never happen in the United States because there's bottom-up accountability and the people you everyone would lose the power, but in China, they don't care about the pain that the people feel.
So they're willing to do things like you know, make people suffer financially or make people get sick, you know, because of a like a bioweapon.
Yeah, I'm not saying that COVID's a bioweapon for sure, but but but my but my point still stands that they don't care how much it hurts their people to hurt us.
Like we sort of kind of had this like, hey, you know, they're never gonna do anything to us because they need us just as much as we need them, but that's not really true.
Uh because they don't they don't care about the pain that the people feel from economic strife.
You know, Newt Gingrich said it best, and he said this over 10 years ago.
He said that the Chinese are beating our socks off in math and science.
And if the United States doesn't get their act together, we're gonna be in a world of hurt, wouldn't that?
Let's fast forward.
What has been going on with these H1 visas?
They've been bringing the Chinese in because corporations can't find anybody to help them produce their products.
So they bring these people in, and then what, six months, a year later, all of a sudden, boom, they're gone.
They're back in China.
They're not just back in China, they're back in China producing your product.
And then you're sitting over here producing your product with all these regulations that are some of them are not worth paper to written on, but you're having to you're you're at a disadvantage already.
And and now you have people that say, Well, I just want to buy the cheap stuff, and and there is a national security there.
Because well, just look at it.
Look at what's going on today with China, and the fact that that they're not that they've got those container ships over there sitting there and they're not loading them.
And then what two days ago they closed down the uh the airport there at Shanghai with the air cargo.
So you think you've got a few empty shelves now, and you think inflation's bad now, it's coming.
So are you are you familiar with uh Eric Weinstein at all or Brett Weinstein, the Weinstein brothers?
I've done yeah, I I've I've heard their name, but I don't I don't know anything about it.
Brett Weinstein is uh an evolutionary biologist, and he uh came to prominence because he was involved in that Evergreen State University um uh controversy where a number of years ago they had a day on campus where they said, listen, if you're white, don't come on campus.
This is like a solidarity day for minorities.
So and he showed up anyway, because he's like, that's racist.
And so there's a video of him that went viral, and that's how he kind of came to prominence.
His brother Eric works for Teal Capital in a um uh in a very high capacity, brilliant physicist, brilliant mathematician, and he believes that what really happened with the um the H1 visas, uh, is that not that the corporations actually needed the engineers?
He believes that those those those needs were exaggerated, um, so that the so that the universities could get the free labor from the foreign students coming over.
And so I don't I don't know if that's I don't know if it's true or not, but he's and he can he can frame it in a much more sophisticated manner that than I. But if you're you know an ambitious head of an engineering department at MIT and you're trying to accomplish these studies and you're trying to uh you know kind of be groundbreaking, and you can have you know a whole uh team of 10 foreign students helping you with the research and doing all the work for free that maybe Americans wouldn't uh just because of the cultural differences or whatever.
He claims that that was actually an effort for us to import free labor for research, and then we just sent it back and it ended up being a national security crisis.
But I mean, think about it.
How many how many engineers graduate you can't find a job?
You know, it's like is there really a shortage of engineers in the United States, or is you know either way, we're in the same position.
Yes, right.
You're right.
So there's so much going on in DC.
Yeah, it it's it's so much happening at at one time that you find yourself talking in four and five different directions, just trying to keep up with what's going on up there uh during the day.
These last two bills that just got passed through the house.
Boy, I tell you, we need to I encourage everybody, I encourage all you listeners, they need to be on the Senate.
You need to be calling a senator.
I don't care if it's your senator or any senator, they need to understand that the American people are awake.
We're not woke, we are awake.
And the day of reckoning is coming soon.
I I believe, Chase, I'm telling you, I believe that there is gonna be such a huge red wave coming in this midterm elections.
Now y'all are gonna pick up two seats in in Congress because California's giving them to you.
So that's gonna be net there.
That's gonna be and then and then you pull one out of New York, put it in Florida.
We can tell we will take the house.
It's just a matter of how much we're gonna take.
I think it's gonna be huge.
And and there's gonna be a day of reckoning coming.
And the Republicans and the Senate need to understand that because we've got some over there, they need to be looked at, they need to go.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta clean your own house.
Too.
It's you know, it's not just about the left.
So you know, I want to ask you, and if if you don't feel comfortable talking about it yet, that's fine.
But what are your thoughts uh as far as cryptocurrency?
Because I know there's a lot of concern.
I I'm someone who's invested in cryptocurrency fairly uh heavily.
There's a lot of concern about regulation on crypto.
Uh do what are your what's your position on it?
And uh it's okay if you don't have one yet, because it's a complicated thing.
Yeah, I I've my two sons are 28, so they're they're fairly close to you.
And uh they introduced me to cryptocurrency in 2017.
That was a good time to get in.
I've I've been fooling around with it for a while.
You know, I used to finance.
I used to use Binance when it was in Korea until we got forced out by the United States.
Uh so they the the funny thing is you you look at a lot of what the the feds say about cryptocurrency, and they really don't understand it, but yet they're wanting to regulate it, but they don't know what to do or how to do that.
Um but it's to me it's a it's a group of people that do software and they don't want to be paid in any monetary system that's out there in anybody's currency, and so that that's why they use the digital currency that they use.
Sorry you can't pick it up.
And for all those people that think that hackers are able to to ransom you with the bitcoins and all that, transactions are public.
You can see it out there.
It's what's called the blockchain.
What you can see is the password to get it out there.
And so it's it's not a complicated system.
It's just people that do that do software work and are building these programs, and they just want to get paid in a different form.
It's almost a form of bartering.
And uh, sure.
I mean, I I love it.
I you know, I I enjoy it.
I've got you know, I've been invested in it for a while.
That's great, man.
So what's it like running in obviously it's the beginning of the campaign season, but what's what's it been like running so far?
I mean, how do you how do you convince your family to agree to go through that?
You know what?
So the the neat thing is you take seven years ago, I had two sons, we've got twins.
They were in college.
My daughter has was just turned had just turned 16.
So it was kind of uh my wife stayed at home a lot.
And uh so now, fast forward seven years, my two sons are married.
I got three grandkids, and uh and two years ago I divided up all my job duties.
So as of about a year and a half ago, they've been running the place, they run our day-to-day operations, and our daughter has graduated from college.
Thank the good lord.
And uh, you know, it's just a fantastic time.
I I'm able to take my wife with me everywhere we go, you know, and uh she she's a big plus.
I I know we were at a we were at a fundraiser about a month ago, and I had four or five people around me.
I looked across the room, she's got like 10 over around her.
Sounds like you picked a good one.
Yeah, yeah, she's got her opinion.
Better watch out, she might run against you.
Hey, I tell you what, may have to step aside.
But uh we we just don't do anything halfway, you know.
It's it's either we're running wide open or we're sleeping, you know, and and and then we're ready to get up and go again the next day.
And so whether there's nine months with their which there actually is left in this election, or there was two weeks, we're gonna run it the same way, and that's we're gonna do everything we can to get our message out to let people know it whether you're in this district,
what we stand for, if you're not in a district, the opportunities that we have in this country to set this country on the right path in a midterm election and be ready for Trump when he comes back in 2024.
Could you imagine the success and the way we could get this country back on path with him in the White House and with a true Republican majority in the House and the Senate of good true Republicans, right?
And you've got some there now, but boy, they need they need some help, and we need to add to the fold.
And we're gonna be favorite.
Who's your favorite uh Republican in the House or Senate?
Oh, Connell.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh a lot she may she may get mad at me about this, but a lot of people compare my comments and the way I talk to Marjorie Taylor Green.
Um, you know, I I'm not gonna vote for Kevin McCarthy.
And and if that costs me a committee assignment, so be it.
Uh you know, I'll put it this way.
I honestly believe that the fundamental process of Congress will be changed because so many people looked at it from a um gotta have this committee, gotta have that committee.
You know, I want to be on the subcommittee of the dinosaur bones or whatever, you know.
And I think people like Congressman Marjorie Taylor Green are showing that no, that's not really the way you have to do this, and you can be more effective.
Um but but you know, you take a number of them, uh, or or banks or Jordan or Gates, you know, they all have different roles.
Um, I had breakfast with Congressman uh Kat K Mac last week.
You know, they they all have their different roles, but they're all good at what they do, and and I and Any number of those people would be good people to follow and latch on to.
Do you think Gates is guilty of those allegations against him?
That's a that's a tough question to answer is somebody running for office.
So I'm not trying to put you in the spot, but no, that is.
But I will yeah, I I have no idea.
I but I but I will say this with a heavy dose of skepticism.
If you're in Congress today and you're effective, look at what they said about Jim Jordan.
You're a target, and you're effective.
You're right, you're a target.
And you're a target from everybody up there that wants to get rid of you because you are rocking the boat.
And they don't want that.
So you know, uh until you show me proof, then then you know, I'd I'd I'd put it over in national choir.
Yeah, I'm with you there.
So what's the first thing you're gonna do when you get into office?
You know, well, you first thing you do is gonna vote for speaker to house, but uh what I tell people is you take a look at this crazy budget resolution that just came out of today.
Everything was increased from your personal income tax all the way up to a state tax.
And what we're gonna have to do is take a hard look at everything that they have done and then start passing bills to get rid of that and push this stuff back down.
That's gonna be a major thing.
The other thing you've got to be able to pass and get through Congress things like this Keystone pipeline to where it's just not um things that that Trump was only able to executive order, we've got to make sure that we put into law, and then we've got to start limiting the federal government.
We've got to start lowering getting rid of some of these old regulations, and then we've got to just make people look and be responsible for themselves.
It's just an individual responsibility.
Um, yeah, I've got a few pet that things that I'd like to see done too.
I think litigation is is huge.
That's that's a huge problem right now, and it's getting worse.
Well, you mean it's hyper litigation, people getting sued all the time.
Oh, yeah, nuclear nuclear verdicts, everything until you get some true tort reform.
I mean, and then it's getting way in the weeds, but until you get true tort reform, you're gonna continue to see these runaway verdicts, and you're gonna see insurance be a very tough issue for for small businesses, and and that needs to be addressed.
That that was on Trump's hit list, he just didn't have the people or the time to do that.
You know, obviously, um higher education costs and debt are a huge issue.
A lot of people want their debt to just be erased.
It seems to me that the cause of the debt is the fact that the government's willing to spend so much on tuition.
I mean, we saw tuition costs rise dramatically in the last 50 years in the United States.
I mean, there was a time when you could be a waiter or a waitress and you could pay your way through college and not have debt when you were done.
And so, you know, it seems to me that if if that is the case, then the real solution is to cut off federal funding for tuition and loans.
But that's a that's like a that's like a like political suicide to do something like that, right?
I mean, you just get totally raked through the coals if you if you cut off like funding or lending.
You don't think so?
You think you get away with it?
No, yeah, yeah.
I think you need to go to private funding for for colleges.
Yeah, the other thing, the other thing you need to do is get out of this mentality that everybody deserves to go to college.
Not desert.
What is deserves to go to college?
It should be an option, an option along with technical school.
My goodness, look at the shortages and and and then the needs in technical school, and just because you go learn a technical school trade, man.
I got plenty of buddies uh who they've they've earned a whole lot of money, they've done well and what they and it doesn't mean you don't own your own business and you're not an entrepreneur, it's just a different route.
But you know, this theory that everybody's got to go to college, and then you've got all these liberal arts degrees, uh, that won't get you anything.
It certainly won't get you a job.
You you're just putting people through four years of something, and then when they get out there at the end, they don't really know what they're gonna do anyway.
That that to me has been a bigger problem.
The federal government getting into the loan business is a problem.
But but we just need to encourage people to get back into the high school side of the economics or the shop class and and see if that might be a an avenue for them.
Well maybe maybe one solution is and I'd be interested to hear what you think about this but maybe one solution is that uh federal funding or low or lending for education is is variable based on what what major you pursue right so if the United States for some reason needs engineers then hey if you want to if you study engineering then we'll we'll help you out more than if you study basket weaving right and so I don't know if that's if that's practical or not I you know I'm I'm I'm just I'm just a layman here.
And but it seems to me that there's creative ways to solve it.
Yeah.
Yeah I'm free market guy if if if you can keep the federal government out of my life it's best and and that's in anything you do if you start to lean and depend on the federal government for anything then eventually that's going to be your go to and uh and and that's just not me.
That's just not who I was made to be and uh so I always goodness here I want to go up there and join but I I'm skeptical of anything they do.
I just soon go up there somebody asked me the other day uh said Mike well what would be the first thing you want to do when you go to Congress honestly I'd like to go up there and turn the lights off close door and then we all go home.
Absolutely nothing yeah I promise if I'm elected I'll do absolutely nothing put the shovel down you've dug enough you know it's time to stop a dog our way all the way to China.
So um that's so I want to ask you a little bit because I started I started I I have an advertising business and I started my business in 2016 and I remember in the beginning there were there were months where it was like terrifying I did you ever have that experience as a small business owner where you're just like laying awake at night like how the hell am I going to make this work?
Number of times you go home on Friday night and you made the payroll but you didn't get paid.
Yeah there's there's been a and and the thing is and my dad always told me he said son you you you make all the money in the world but if if it's sitting in receivables and it ain't in the checkbook you can go broke quick.
And sure you you you know that that cash is keen and uh yeah there's been a number of nights man you're sitting there wondering did I make the right call did I make the right move uh so I mean yeah yeah but we worked our way through it.
Well and when when people talk about you know raising corporate tax rates I I think everybody in their head imagines like taxes on Amazon or Google or Facebook or one of these giant companies that's just you know very very cash rich.
And I don't think they realize that the vast majority of corporations are LLCs or incorporated just small inks you know sole proprietors and the amount of discomfort or risk you have to put yourself in in order to start something new is another level of stress beyond the you know the sort of typical stress that you have as an employee.
And I've been an employee and I've been I've worked for myself and I've had employees and that it's it's another level of stress I wouldn't trade it for the world because I value the freedom that comes with it.
I always say that I get to choose which 20 hours a day I work, right?
And that's why I like it.
So I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I'm just kind of built that way.
I have that disposition.
But I really wish that as a culture, we still had an understanding and an appreciation for that the blue-collar man that's a small business owner and that these corporate tax hikes impact that person.
Because these major corporations, they find the loopholes.
They don't care.
They work around it.
They offshore their money.
But when you're a small business owner and you're...
you're just you know trying to find a way to bring home 10 grand in a month or something it's like and you're getting hit with 36 per 30% tax that's a big deal.
And I always tell my wife you know it's like if you if you want to buy something for five grand you got to make 10 you know you you are singing my song you know you you can take what you just said and and in a small business especially a small business is trying to grow and they their cash is is there, but it's not a lot of cash.
But you have you have income that's not really able to be shown as far as dollars and cents.
It's on the books.
Right.
And then when you raise that in that tax rate, like what they did today, and now they're talking about going back and making it retroactive to April.
You really don't have that cash sitting there.
Okay, so now you don't have the cash.
So what's your options?
You're gonna go to the bank to get a loan, right?
You can you so I need a I need an asset based loan.
I need I need a line of credit.
Today's world with everything from Dodd Frank, what's left of it, and if you God, I wish I hadn't said that because the Democrats want to put it back in force, full force, even back to Sarbanes Ox.
You look at the amount of paperwork you have to fill out.
Now, if you're a small business person and you're out there working hard every day, in and out, every day, you don't have time, you don't have that army of accountants like you were talking about with the large corporations.
That's all they do.
You've got to do that at night, and then you've got to figure out what it is they want, and then by the time you turn that in, it's over 90 days, and oh guess what?
We gotta start over again because you now your paperwork's all that's the type of mess that is hampering and just squeezing on these small businesses, and that's the type mess that I'm gonna go up there and I'm gonna fix.
Because you're right.
This country was built on small business, and and the the do you realize in the trucking industry what the average trucking company is truck wise?
98% of the trucking companies, how many trucks?
I would well, I'm gonna say because I kind of see where you're going.
I'm going to say three.
98% of them are 10 trucks or less.
95% are five trucks or less.
Those those big mega JB hunts of the world that you see riding up now, they make a CEOs driving the truck.
Yeah, they make up less than two percent of the total trucking industry.
It is the small mom and pop people out there that make this country work, and they are the ones that got hammered today.
They're the ones that got hammered when Biden cut that Keystone pipeline off and raised their fuel prices.
They're the ones that are getting hammered because your milk is now five dollars a gallon.
And they're the ones that need help.
And by golly, we're going up there and that's what we're looking to do.
Well, and I think it it feels different too.
If you're an employee and your taxes are automatically withheld, it's a much different feeling than writing quarterly checks.
You know, because you've been looking at that money, you've been looking at that money in your bank and you have it in the you know the savings account because you know it's taxes you you know, if you're doing if you're being responsible, but it's you know, it's painful.
I mean, I wrote a I wrote a check, and this is this is not much money to many people, but to me it was a lot.
I wrote a check for $30,000 in income tax.
And that's you know, that's like writing that kind of a check, it's like that's a that's a new beamer, man.
Like that's what I was gonna say.
That you can ride.
That's one year for my kids at college, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, there you go.
There's there's my taxes, it's sitting over in the lot, you know.
Yeah, I agree with you 100%.
Yeah, and and the other thing about the Social Security side of it, you know, you take somebody, even my age, and I and I'm 54, so I'm I'm a little bit older than you.
We never talk about Social Security, because we don't even think it's gonna be there.
You know, and and and you're so used to not really seeing it in your paycheck anyway, so you don't really count it.
You don't you don't think, oh well, I'm paying, you know, whatever, $30 a week towards whatever.
You don't even think about that.
So you're right.
And and but at the end of the day, you know, nobody's nobody my age or younger is probably even looking at social security to be there.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and it's just amazing what you could do with that money if you just put it in a uh index 500.
It would be so much more than whatever the pay's are gonna be.
Okay, yeah, that's that's that's a high risk high yield situation, though.
It's like playing the slots, man.
Only only play with what you're willing to lose.
Oh, yeah, going to the craps table.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I like how we talked about you know, running in 2014, running again in 2020 here, what it was like to be um you know, a small business owner and struggle.
I really want to touch on that because I don't think you know people realize that the heart and soul that goes into it.
Um what do you think our country is gonna look like in 10 years?
I think that a lot of the the midterm elections will change the focus of this country because right now, if we stayed on course of what we're doing, then I think you're gonna have a true federal intrusion into every part part of your life.
But with the amount of people that I see waking up today and wanting to help and and move the needle, I think, and then we get Trump or somebody in that position that understands how much we need this thing run like a business.
I think in 10 years from now, we could be blowing and going.
We we could be just wide open again.
The the other big thing that I like to tell people is Chase, it's it's so hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
Yeah, you take the last four years.
A lot of people coming in through that door that are saying I'm here for the first time, they may not really know what's going on, they may not really understand what's happened.
They they know they're paying more for gas, they know they're paying more for their groceries, but they really don't have a true because they've never fooled with it, but they do know what it felt like three years ago when they get home and they say, honey, you want to go out to eat?
Yeah, and you go out to eat and you see lines of people, and then you see people buying new cars, going on vacation, buying houses.
That's that's what Trump always said that you'd never get tired of, and that's winning.
And man, they were winning.
All of us were employees and employers, and you look at it today.
I'm telling you, people want that back.
You can even take that down to Cuba.
Those people got a little taste of it.
There are more Americans in Cuba than Portland.
Yeah, probably.
You you know, Kylie, don't give me star.
You what is the deal with this?
No, we are a nation of laws.
If if I remember right, yeah.
And here we have whole blo blocks of cities out there that are being run by these thugs.
Now, why do we not take care of that using our current law?
If we don't, if we're gonna become a mob rule, it really doesn't matter what they do up there in Washington.
Right.
Well, the reason you need a government is to protect the individual rights from the mob.
That's the whole point of government.
Is it's a third party that can protect individual rights from a mob.
That's from straight from John Locke's second trees of government.
This is the foundation of our whole entire government.
And if the government doesn't honor that duty, that's when the people are supposed to, you know, take matters of their own.
Rise up and replace them.
Right.
And so, you know, there's right now we're in a position in the United States where we can do that peacefully and legally and aggressively if we get some consensus on our side and rally, we can replace these people that allowed it to happen.
And you know, I voted for Trump both times enthusiastically.
I love Trump.
I disagree with a lot of things he said, a lot of things he did, but generally speaking, I like him because everybody I hate hates him.
And the fact of the matter is I was disappointed in in how he how he led last year.
And I know that it was difficult because it was an election year, and you know, if he did anything controversial, like really hammering down on these cities, it would have looked a little, it would have looked tyrannical.
I don't know, it would have looked racist, and I think that he held back thinking I'll be able to take care of it after the election.
And the lesson that I learned from that is you just have you have to lead the whole time.
You can't put leadership on pause for an election.
You know, I think he did a little bit.
You had uh Faucia that that blame Fauci reminds me of a squirrel crossing the road.
It's like a mouse.
Yeah, he he's running over here and over there, then over here, back over there.
He don't know which way, and and usually those type rodents they get run over and they get squished at some point.
But uh we we've got a great opportunity this time around, and we're gonna take it.
I I can feel it coming.
There's a huge momentum, there's a huge momentum that we've seen behind us, and and that's been really neat as well to see the amount of people that come out.
Um, I'm not gonna say that sometimes I don't get fired up.
And I tell folks every night if I say a bad word, I just point at my wife.
She taught me all those bad words that they come natural.
So where can people find you to support you?
You know, please do go.
They can go to MikeCollins GA.com.
And you can use Mike Collins GA and you can go all across all the social platforms from Rumble to YouTube to Facebook and Twitter.
And uh we post stuff all the time.
We put uh videos out there.
Uh today was a twofer uh video.
I did two videos today.
I was dead blame, fed up with some things that I saw.
Um, but uh yeah, they I'd love for them to go check us out because I I encourage people no matter where you're at in this country, and no matter what you do, look to see who is running for everything.
I I don't even care if it's your homeowners association because if you think about your homeowners association, they're the people that won't let you fly your flag.
Yep.
So you need to be looking at homeowners association, city council, board of education, mayors, state races, all the way up to the president of the United States.
And if you don't have partisan elections, I encourage you.
You need to go back to partisan politics and elections because these beauty contests, they're not working.
Hey, look at this middle block here.
There's like three good-looking people in Congress.
Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi.
Like everybody else.
But we need to know where these people stand, though.
From a from a basic standpoint, are you on the team of less government?
More individual responsibility.
Are you on the team of big government?
We'll take care of everything.
And then you need to get involved.
And we tell people every day, get involved.
You may not be the candidate, you may be a candidate.
You may be helping fundraising, poll watching, whatever it is, but get involved and and check us out as well.
Because there's a lot of folks running this race I'm in.
Check us all out.
And then if you can help support us, I'd love to have you support.
If you're living in the 10th district of Georgia, I want you to vote.
Because uh by God, I'm telling you, y'all send me to Washington, man.
We can fix these problems, and then we'll we'll we'll take our country back.
And then term limit myself six years, I'll come on back to Georgia.
You know, I'm kind of like the old SEC football man.
You get four years of college football, and it's time to go.
Yeah, there'll be somebody else come along.
There's some there's there's good people coming along.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
It's really been an honor and a pleasure to have you.
