Kevin Miller

But kind of to your point, she looked rather awkward.

She was not holding America's back hat nearly as high as the others.

She didn't speak during the event.

And as soon as those images came out of

Senator Collins standing kind of far off to the left holding this hat.

Democrats instantly jumped on it and put out statements.

And Governor Mills said that Senator Collins has gone from clutching her pearls to clutching her MAGA hat.

And Graham Plattner said this is not what Maine people voted for.

Yeah, and I'll just add there, Senator Collins, in 2020, she campaigned on basically the prospect of her rising to this chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee, saying that's going to benefit Maine because I'm going to be able to bring all this additional federal money back to Maine.

She has been able to do that.

These most recent federal spending bills that passed contain more than $400 million for Maine, a relatively small state, that she has personally brought back through these congressional directed spending or earmarks.

So she's going to be able to campaign on that.

But as Mara said, the challenge is, is that going to be enough to get past voters' just anger and frustration over the Trump agenda?

Yeah, it's interesting because right around the same time that the shooting, most recent shooting happened in Minneapolis involving Alex Preddy, ICE was launching a surge, an enforcement surge here in Maine.

This was enormously controversial.

It was targeting Maine's largest cities that have the most diverse populations.

We saw similar tactics of armed agents out on the streets in masks, pulling people out of cars, breaking windows.

And there was just this growing awareness

uneased and similar to what we've seen in other states, this opposition.

This was viewed politically as not being a very big benefit for Susan Collins if the situation in Maine kind of slid more towards like we were seeing in Minneapolis.