Joe Collins, a Navy veteran challenging Maxine Waters in LA's 43rd District, accuses the incumbent of corruption, citing her $6 million Hancock Park mansion and Judicial Watch listings for alleged backhanded deals totaling $45,000. After experiencing homelessness as a Black veteran, Collins shifted to the GOP to restore freedom and proposes a five-point plan focusing on infrastructure, education, and police-community relations via training rather than defunding. He dismisses defunding as a "red herring," advocates for term limits to empower millennials, and argues that political gridlock prevents necessary progress, suggesting that true representation requires bridging divides instead of adhering to divisive rhetoric. [Automatically generated summary]
We're doing a mini interview today with Joe Collins.
Joe is a U.S.
Navy veteran and a Republican running for Congress in Los Angeles's 43rd District, looking to unseat Maxine Waters, who's been in Congress for a cool 44 years.
I caught wind of Joe after his viral campaign ad that I'm sure many of you have seen.
So we're gonna show you just a bite of that and then get right to the interview with Joe.
Success leaves clues, and we saw what Kim did, and we absolutely, you know, did one of our own.
And people have been coming our way for a very long time.
We've been getting a lot of support, but I think one of the biggest things is we had to actually shine a light on how Maxine lives compared to how we live in the district, and we absolutely nailed it with that.
So before we get to a little of your history, which is pretty amazing, and you've done some great stuff, let's talk about Maxine Waters, because in the ad, you talk about the fact that she lives in a $6 million mansion that is not in that district.
If I'm not mistaken, she's in Hancock Park, which is a pretty swanky, swanky area of LA.
Obviously not South Central.
But that she's also been in business, and by business, I mean government, for 44 years.
How did she get a $6 million mansion, which I don't begrudge someone earning money, honestly, but in 44 years of public service, you usually don't think of someone getting a $6 million mansion.
Yeah, you know, she has a ton of mansions, and from doing research, I've seen a lot of backhanded things that she's been doing, you know, pocket patent and all that other type of stuff.
And we have to say, you know, it has to be corruption.
She's been labeled the most corrupt politician five times by the Citizens for Ethics Committee.
She has her own page in the Judicial Watch called Career Corruption, and it features Maxine Waters and everything she's been doing.
She's gotten a lot of backhanded deals.
She's even ripped off politicians here in California.
She put, they pay her $45,000 for an endorsement and another, you know, 10, 15, $20,000
to get on a slate murder scheme that she has going.
So, I mean, when it comes to the corruption of Maxine Waters, it knows no limit.
as well, and why is it, do you think, that people in L.A., and really California as a whole, but I think L.A.
and San Francisco specifically, seem unable to connect the dots between always voting in Democrats and things always getting worse?
They seem to not be able to realize, oh, we keep doing the same thing, and things keep going the wrong direction, maybe we gotta vote in some other people.
And the reason why I came up with- I'll go with all five, let's do all five.
All right, so I want to rebuild the infrastructure to support the expansion of small businesses as well as housing.
I want to overhaul the education and start rebuilding our high schools in the 43rd district.
I want to bring quality jobs back, improve the relationship between the law enforcement and the community, and I also want to bring financial literacy back.
And these are just basics, basic things that you need in order to have a productive, positive society.
So we have to get back to the basics.
And, you know, you ask, how am I doing?
It's easy.
You just go to work and you do your job.
And I know that on a private capacity, what we've been able to do with the campaign, what I've been able to do in the community as far as bringing jobs and taking care of our community, COVID-19 is absolutely possible.
Yeah, let's talk about the policing situation because obviously everyone's talking about that all the time.
What do you make about the relations between the police and, I hate phrases like the black community, but with at least the constituents in your district right now?
You know, it's kind of tough because everybody overemphasizes the issues of police brutality in inner cities, and they ignore everything else that we have going on in our communities.
And a lot of times, you know, when you hear a black person was shot by a cop, it has to be racism, even though the cop was either black or the cop was Latino who shot the guy.
It has to be racist for some point.
And then they always point out, well, cops did this and cops did that all the time.
And having someone like Maxine Waters coming to the community doesn't make it easy.
Having organizations like Black Lives Matter coming into the community doesn't make it any easy.
Because, you know, if we have such an issue with police, then what we need to be working on is police reform.
We need to get social training within our police departments.
We need to get better oversight committees within our police department.
We need to increase the budget so we can have better training for our police department.
and these aren't things that people are bringing to the table, but these are things
that I've been able to work with the mayor on, and we've been doing a really good job.
So we've been standing in a gap between the police department and the community,
making sure things stay calm.
And a lot of people from the Black Lives Matter organization
don't like it because they raise money off hatred and fear.
But at the end of the day, when it comes to taking responsibility for the community,
this is something that me and my team has been doing.
No, I'm not gonna sell anybody on Mayor Garcetti, because he's never sold anybody on me.
But I think when you're in a leadership position, it is your obligation to work with the people who are leaders in order to effect better change, and I don't have a problem working with anybody if it's gonna create some type of positive Do I like him personally?
Maybe.
He's a US Navy sailor.
Do I like his policies?
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, but at the end of the day, if we could take some type of medium ground to build some type of relationship to improve our communities, I'm with it.
Yeah, so backing up for just a sec, when you hear people talk about defunding the police and everything else, I've heard a lot of people basically say this is just like a media construct, like nobody really wants it done.
Um, nobody's going to defund the police department.
I mean, when you look at the amount of gang violence and gun violence, domestic violence and drugs and alcohol related incidents and, and, um, you know, all these cases in our communities, you absolutely don't want to defund the police.
The crazy part about it is the same people who talk about defunding police are the same people who call the police when something happens to them, you know?
So it's never going to happen.
It's like a red herring.
It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
Yeah, what do you make about just the general state of politics right now?
Not just your district, not just Maxine Waters, but like what's happening nationally, Trump, Biden, the over and intense focus on politics all day long.