Saturday's rally in Savannah
On Saturday, I rallied a massive crowd in Savannah to organize opposition to the Trump administration and my opponent, Mike Collins.
On Saturday, I rallied a massive crowd in Savannah to organize opposition to the Trump administration and my opponent, Mike Collins.
(You can watch my speech here on YouTube.)
Here’s what I said:
Hello, Savannah. Thank you all so much for being here.
Now, I don’t know if you saw the mess in Washington last week. The President was so humiliated in Hormuz, he threw his toys out the stroller and refused to sign the affordable housing bill. Did you see that?
But wait, that’s after he gave some felon donor a no-bid contract for the Reflecting Pool, and it filled up with algae, which for some reason required the deployment of the National Guard. And then, because of his war and his tariffs, inflation rose to over 4%.
He promised to bring down prices on day one. Do you remember that? Do y’all know what today is? Today is day 524, and groceries, rent, and health care are at their all-time highs in American history.
Donald Trump and his puppet Mike Collins, they doubled health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians and threw 300,000 Georgians off their insurance altogether. I heard from a woman with cancer who waits tables for a living and said she was going to lose her health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy.
And they did this to pay for a tax cut that went overwhelmingly to the rich and to corporate America. Did you know that, Savannah?
Savannah, I never want to hear these two pretend they give a damn about working people again. Because while hundreds of thousands of Georgians lose their health care, Mike Collins builds Trump a ballroom.
They worked harder burying the Epstein files than they ever worked to lower your grocery bill. And while you pay more for everything, the Trumps are raking in billions from all over the world.
Illegal tariffs, failed war, health care cuts, and unmatched corruption. 34% approval and a presidential legacy cemented in disgrace.
But he didn’t just promise to lower prices, he promised to keep America out of war. Instead, Donald’s defeat sent gas prices soaring and made America weaker and less secure.
And just like the Iraq War, the Donald Trump-Mike Collins Iran War is a war built on lies — lies about intelligence, lies about the war’s purpose, and lies about its progress.
Daily lies, hourly lies, lies and empty threats. Donald Trump said he would pick Iran’s next Supreme Leader, and, “There will be no deal except unconditional surrender.”
He said, “We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.” And at his most desperate, “A whole civilization will die tonight,” said the President.
And all the while, daily promises of total victory.
But the reality of the situation is brutal and undeniable. Because instead of unconditional surrender, the Iranian regime is emboldened. And instead of destroying Iran’s missiles, we burned through years of our own.
American facilities across the region were heavily damaged. Thirteen brave, heroic American service members were killed in action and hundreds more wounded.
And after all that, not only are Iran’s drones and missiles intact, along with their ability to throttle the global energy supply, Iran also still controls its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, a stockpile it only built after Trump shredded President Obama’s Iran deal. Do you remember that?
A decade ago, Donald Trump attacked President Obama for lifting some sanctions to secure nuclear inspections and restrictions on Iranian enrichment. This month, Donald Trump was lifting sanctions just to reopen Hormuz.
On Wednesday of this last week, he said the war was “done.” And then on Thursday, another ship was struck. On Friday, the President was bombing again. And last night Iran attacked Bahrain.
But see, this is what happens when you send your son-in-law Jared to cosplay as a diplomat. See, despite zero qualifications, Prince Jared was tapped to lead Middle East diplomacy. Now remember, Jared’s slush fund, Affinity Partners, already got $2 billion from the Saudi Crown Prince.
And even now, while negotiating for the United States over Iran and Gaza, he’s actively asking Arab princes for billions more, not for the United States, for his own business.
Okay, but here’s a twist in the story. There’s this beautiful little island off the Albanian coast called Sazan, and Jared Kushner wants it. So he took his Saudi billions, and he decided he and Ivanka would buy the island and build a luxury resort.
And then, like clockwork, just a few weeks after Trump wins a second term in the White House, Albania’s Prime Minister grants Jared’s company “Strategic Investor” status, so permitting and approvals are expedited to help the American prince develop his new island.
Now, this island is an Albanian national treasure, some of the last pristine coastline in the Mediterranean. Its waters were a National Marine Park, protected from development until Albania changed the law to let Jared Kushner build his resort.
And it turns out, Savannah, that ordinary Albanians are not fans of this arrangement. There are, right now, massive national anti-corruption protests, like tens of thousands of people in the streets of the capital, Tirana. They’re calling it the Flamingo Revolution, all sparked by opposition to Jared Kushner’s land deal.
Now Albania’s anti-corruption police are getting involved. They froze a bank account controlled by two of Jared’s investors, both Syrian billionaires.
Now, do you think Jared Kushner would get special island-buying privileges if he weren’t the President’s son-in-law? And isn’t he supposed to be doing diplomacy, not shady land deals?
And it’s not just Jared. Listen to this: The son of the other Middle East envoy is raising billions from the Emirates for the President’s crypto business, while the President grants the Emirates the rights to our most sensitive technology.
Your tax dollars are backing a Trump family tungsten mine in Kazakhstan.
They are literally the elites they pretend to hate. The same folks who tried so hard to cover up the Epstein files.
And listen, here’s the bottom line: If you’re involved in any of this, next year you’ll be raising your right hand and swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God, in front of the United States Congress.
They act like they expect permanent impunity.
And it reminds me of my opponent, Congressman Mike Collins.
Listen to this: A few years back, this degenerate political staffer named Brandon Phillips had been convicted of multiple crimes in Bibb County for some brutal violence.
A few months later, he was arrested again for an armed altercation and then again, a few years later, for animal cruelty.
This kid was such a mess that he had to resign from the Trump campaign.
But Congressman Mike Collins saw Brandon and thought he’d make a great chief of staff. So Mike hired Brandon to run his entire congressional office.
Fast forward four years, and, as we speak, both Brandon and Mike are under active federal investigation for illegally funneling federal tax dollars to Brandon’s girlfriend.
Then last month Brandon starts mocking a rape victim on Mike’s official campaign account. And even then, Mike only fired Brandon after the head of a Republican Super PAC threatened to cancel tens of millions of dollars of support from Mike’s campaign.
So Brandon’s gone, and Mike Collins promotes a young man named Kip to be his new chief of staff.
But then it’s revealed Kip’s been briefing Nick Fuentes, the Hitler admirer, and Richard Spencer, the Charlottesville guy, on how he’s using Mike Collins’ office to free a Holocaust denier from prison. And Mike’s okay with this.
Kip’s still on the payroll. Because this is the same Mike Collins who saw a gang of young men harassing a Black, female college student with monkey sounds, and Mike Collins called it, “Ole Miss taking care of business.”
See, there’s a reason Brian Kemp worked so hard to stop Mike.
Why Erick Erickson said Mike “knowingly hired a sociopath with a criminal record who was alleged to have used your and my tax dollars to subsidize his girlfriend.”
Why conservative radio host Shelley Wynter called Mike a “bottom feeder.”
Why Coach Dooley said that Mike’s “disgusting behavior does not represent Georgia values or frankly, any values.”
There is a reason one of the founders of the Tea Party said, just last week, “I cannot in good conscience vote for Mike Collins. He is unfit for office.”
And the reason is that Mike Collins is a bigot and an antisemite under federal investigation for the illegal misuse of tax dollars, widely known as a man of poor character who lacks the judgment and integrity to serve in the United States Senate.
And now, the bigot congressman, who is only a congressman because his daddy was a congressman, wants a promotion. But Savannah, come November, we’ll end his political career instead.
From Jared Kushner to Mike Collins, the Mar-a-Lago mafia has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights.
But corruption in America runs a lot deeper than Donald Trump. American politics is coin-operated. Money goes in, favors come out. Spectacular wealth buys an ever-greater share of power over our national affairs, while the mere citizen is treated with contempt.
Cynicism sets in, amidst a politics of broken promises, unmoored from fixed moral principles and incapable of inspiration or great national achievement.
We were promised tax cuts for the rich would bring wealth to the working class.
We were promised Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and our forces would be greeted as liberators.
We were promised fairness, only to see banks bailed out while millions lost homes. Do you remember?
We were promised hard work earns wealth and advancement. But for too many, the treadmill gets faster and steeper. Georgians work harder and harder, but the bills get higher and higher.
A 60-hour workweek still needs SNAP. Santa can’t make your little girl’s wish come true this year, and that bucket list trip looks off the table for good.
And meanwhile, the corporate disrespect is suffocating.
Instead of reading to your child, that precious spare hour after work is spent on the phone fighting your bank or the cable company or the insurer that’s denied your claim and dared you to fight back while you’re sick.
A toddler’s ambulance is followed by a $3,000 bill.
Hedge funds buy up houses till there are none left to afford, then rip off the renters they forced into tenancy. And how did they get away with it?
Well, we were promised a political system that delivers for the public, but instead it delivers for the donors. Citizens United was the most destructive court decision in modern American history.
It’s unleashed a flood of secret money, corporate money, billionaire money on both sides. And Donald Trump’s rise is a symptom of this deeper disease.
I suspect many of you are here because you recognize that our task is not just to contain his wickedness, but to cure the rot that gave rise to it. That this broken moment is an opening not for restoration, but for reformation.
Because who really supports allowing unlimited, secret political money to bend the national agenda in darkness? In Garden City or Albany or Columbus, if I ask anyone — Democrat, Republican, or none of the above — if I ask them whether this is how things should work, it doesn’t matter who they are, the answer is a resounding no.
And Savannah, if it takes a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United, we’ll deliver a united Georgia to ratify it.
Because all of this has real human consequences. Right here in Georgia, we’re in the midst of a health care emergency, and our so-called leaders try to numb us to the suffering they’ve caused. They’ve continued to block Medicaid expansion, while Georgia lost 21 hospitals in 20 years. And then last year they gutted Medicaid nationally.
Just listen to this: 40% of all Georgia kids are covered by Medicaid. 50% of all Georgia births are covered by Medicaid. 70% of all Georgia seniors in nursing homes are covered by Medicaid.
Already one labor and delivery unit in Georgia has closed citing those Medicaid cuts, with more pain coming for hospitals and clinics and nursing homes. So Georgians are getting hit with higher premiums, hundreds of thousands have lost coverage, and hospitals and clinics are losing funding.
All this when we already have the second highest uninsured rate in the nation. The third fewest mental health providers. The fourth worst newborn weight at birth.
See, the legendary civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman said, “We don’t have a money problem. We have a profound values and priorities problem.”
Because, see, this isn’t just the way it is or the way it has to be. All this needless death and suffering and misery is a choice.
Georgia’s leaders have chosen to leave Georgians without insurance and without hospitals. They’re down having a steak at The Palm, handing out your tax dollars to their donors, while women hemorrhage in Georgia labor wards because they didn’t get prenatal care.
But, Savannah, when you elect a Medicaid-expanding Governor Bottoms in November, together we can get Georgians covered with great health care.
Together, we can save our hospitals and build new ones across our state. And when you send me back to the Senate, I’ll keep fighting to ban these insurance companies from denying or delaying our families the health care we need.
I think every day about Congressman Lewis, and his portrait hangs right above my desk in my Senate office. In his final years, he kept reminding us that we all live in one American house, that we all live in one world house.
John Lewis called it the inevitable truth that we’re all members of one human family.
And I know many of you are here because you’re so deeply troubled by the pain so many of our fellow human beings are enduring right now.
The terror of a child watching ICE take away his mother. The despair of a cancer patient losing coverage mid-treatment. The silent panic of a grandma when she sees the receipt for her groceries with three weeks left until her next Social Security check.
Now, maybe they don’t care in the White House, or in the Governor’s Mansion, but that ache in your heart, that pit in your stomach? That’s what reminds us we’re all in this together, that we’re not just one United States, we’re one united people. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
That we’re bound together by the same great national spirit that passed civil rights laws, that defeated fascism, that landed men on the moon.
And see, this is what small men like Donald Trump and Mike Collins will never understand — that our national greatness flows not through our blood or our genes, but through our ideas and through our care for one another.
How amazing is it that the most powerful nation on Earth proclaims as its core values that all are created equal, with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, no matter how humble our beginnings, no matter our ancestry, or when we arrived on these shores?
Americans aren’t a race. We’re a people. United not by ethnicity, but by shared convictions, and that is what makes us exceptional and a beacon to the world.
Just think, 250 years on, what the founders would see if they visited us today. They would see that slavery had been abolished. They would see that Americans without land, and then women, and then the descendants of slaves had secured voting rights.
They would see that our science and discovery propelled human knowledge to unimaginable heights and that those thirteen colonies had grown into a superpower that defeated the Nazis and Communism. They’d see a pluralist democracy, people of all colors descended from every point on Earth, stitched together out of many nations into one.
But they’d also see a nation that at the height of its wealth and power fell into the very traps they most feared, devouring itself in bitter conflict between warring factions captured by special interests.
And they’d see a faithless President exploiting this rot to pursue the absolute power they overthrew. A President who’s embarked on this unmistakable project, not to lead us, but to rule us.
And here we are in Georgia, where he sent spies and agents to seize our ballots. Did you see that, Savannah?
Now, why Georgia? Why Fulton County? I submit to you it’s because the fact that Black voters were instrumental to his defeat might be even more offensive to this committed racist than defeat itself.
And now, here in Georgia, he wants to send an election denier to the U.S. Senate. Mike Collins, who’s pro-war and pro-tariff and pro-cutting your health care, he proudly defends the violent mob that sacked the Capitol on January 6th to throw out your votes and install a defeated President.
To this day, Mike Collins defends that violent attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
But Savannah, he forgets your power. Because not only did their attack on the Capitol fail, it was early that same morning five years ago that Georgia shocked the world and sent to the Senate the young, Jewish son of an immigrant and a Black pastor who holds Dr. King’s pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
You did that, Savannah.
And last week, when they gathered in Atlanta to remove Black elected officials from office, not by defeating them at the polls, but by manipulating maps to dilute minority power, they saw you mobilize, Savannah, and they backed down in fear of your power.
Savannah, a wave is building. The kind of wave that comes once a generation, when people have been pushed too far, and they decide all at once, all together, that enough is enough.
We have the power, not just to restore checks and balances, but to rebuke these abuses of power with such power and decision that no President dares try anything like this again for a century.
So, Savannah, let’s give them a united Georgia.
And let’s make sure they hear it all the way down at Mar-a-Lago that Georgia will bow to no king.
The polls open in four months, Savannah.
Let’s get to work.
👋 Wait! Before you go... 👋
Jon Ossoff in Georgia is the ONLY Democratic Senator running for reelection in a state Trump won.
He is MAGA’s #1 target in the 2026 midterms.
If you can afford it, please rush a donation to Jon’s reelection campaign today.
The people stand with you, Jon.
It’s not Trump “administration.” It’s Trump “regime.”