Chris Hayes says vulnerable GOP senator got 'sham vote' to look independent against Trump

Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has endured a brutal week of reporting on his personal history and unsavory interactions with women — issues that have left many people wringing their hands over the state of the race. However, MS NOW's Chris Hayes, who interviewed Platner earlier in the week, noted that Maine voters on the street largely seem unfazed.

Part of the reason, he suggested, is that there is genuine disgust with longtime GOP incumbent Susan Collins — despite their "reservations about his character."

"A lot of them ... really do not want to send Susan Collins back to the Senate," said Hayes. For all her posturing over the years as a dealmaker and moderate, she "is really a party line Republican" and "a rubber stamp for the Trump agenda during both terms."

"I also think Senate Republicans realize she's in trouble, right?" he continued. "I mean, this is a state that Donald Trump has lost three times. She managed to win in 2020, but she's got a real tough road ahead of her."

Because they realize she's in trouble, he continued, they organized a "sham vote" in the reconciliation bill for an amendment to formally restrict President Donald Trump's $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization" slush fund — and while the GOP voted it down, Collins and two other vulnerable Republicans were allowed to vote against it.

"Everyone knew that it was doomed to fail from the beginning," said Hayes, because Republicans would not let such a huge rebuke to Trump pass, even though his Justice Department is now claiming the fund won't go forward anyway. "They don't actually want to bar your money from being stolen from the government to pay off cop-beaters and seditionists. And so what they do is Collins gets to pretend to be independent when the stakes don't actually matter."

When they do, though, said Hayes, Collins reliably joins the party line — most famously being "the key vote to get Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court" while falsely assuring voters he would never restrict abortion rights.

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