Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), a Georgia Senate candidate and prominent foe of President Donald Trump, drew laughter from a campaign crowd on Tuesday with a pointed jab at his opponent, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA).

The two men are vying to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate in one of the most closely watched contests of the 2026 midterms. Ossoff, a first-term Democrat, is defending the seat he won by just over one percentage point in a January 2021 runoff — a victory that, alongside Sen. Raphael Warnock's the same night, flipped Senate control to Democrats. Trump carried Georgia in 2024, four years after Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the state's presidential electoral votes since Bill Clinton in 1992, and the race is widely viewed as a marquee battleground for control of the chamber.

Speaking at a campaign event in Columbus, Georgia, alongside Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) — another Trump adversary — Ossoff took aim at the MAGA candidate who has been endorsed by the president. Kelly, a retired Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut who first won his Arizona seat in a 2020 special election, has been an active campaigner for Democrats in competitive races.

"This scandal piñata, Mike Collins," Ossoff said. "Every time you shake Congressman Collins, new misdeeds fall out. Have you seen it?"

The audience cracked up at the comment.

"Mike Collins is pro-war, he's pro-tariffs, he's pro-cutting your health care," Ossoff added. "He's a bigot and a Trump puppet."

Collins, first elected to the House in 2022, represents Georgia's heavily Republican 10th District, which stretches from Atlanta's eastern exurbs toward the South Carolina line. The son of former U.S. Rep. Mac Collins, who represented central Georgia for six terms, he runs a family trucking business.

Ossoff has been among Trump's sharpest critics, and just days earlier suggested the president had different priorities in a biting speech.

"While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings," Ossoff said. "He golfs and trades stocks. So he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar."

The remarks referenced Trump's push to add a ballroom to the White House — the subject of a 2025 executive order — and the luxury Boeing 747 that Qatar's government agreed to provide the United States for use as a presidential aircraft, an arrangement Trump has defended.

Collins has faced his own share of controversies, including a House Ethics Committee investigation over allegations that he misused congressional funds and paid an intern who allegedly performed no work while dating his then-chief of staff. The Senate candidate's campaign has also been rocked by high staff turnover, an incident involving a former aide's participation in a group chat with white nationalists, and renewed scrutiny over his history of racially charged social media posts.

Before his Senate tenure, Ossoff was an investigative journalist whose production company made documentaries on official corruption abroad, and he first rose to national prominence in a 2017 Georgia special House election — at the time the most expensive House race in U.S. history — which he lost before his 2021 Senate win.

Georgia voters go to the polls Nov. 3, 2026, in a race that could help shape the Senate's balance of power.

Ossoff gets laughs for calling Mike Collins "the scandal pinata" and adds that he's "a bigot and Trump puppet" pic.twitter.com/kHbxuXYuIA — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 18, 2026