This F*cking Guy: Susan Collins

Erin Ryan (0:02)

Welcome to another episode of This F***ing Guy, the series where we spotlight one f***ing guy making America worse and explain why they suck. I'm Erin Ryan, host of Crooked Media's Hysteria podcast.

Julia Claire (0:11)

And I'm Crooked's resident obnoxious New Englander, Julia Claire. You may recognize me from Crooked Media's socials, or if you're a true fan, from several episodes of This F***ing Guy, including our three-part series on Donald Trump. Yes, that was the one where Erin forced me to read excerpts from the Fifty Shades of Grey style erotic novel that Donald Trump hired a guy to write. Yes, I am still scarred by it.

Erin Ryan (0:34)

But it was worth it, right? Right?

Julia Claire (0:35)

It was worth it.

Erin Ryan (0:36)

The real ones know that Julia Claire is one of the greats. Today, we're paying homage to the wet paper bag that for some reason Maynards have elected to the United States Senate five times. The ever concerned, courage challenged Republican Senator Susan Collins.

Julia Claire (0:51)

She's so concerned, Erin.

Erin Ryan (0:52)

She's so concerned.

Julia Claire (0:53)

So concerned.

SPEAKER_3 (0:54)

Concerned. Concerned. Concerned.

Julia Claire (0:59)

Concerned.

SPEAKER_3 (1:00)

Concerned. Concerned. Concerned. Concerned. Concerned.

Julia Claire (1:05)

Concerned.

SPEAKER_3 (1:05)

Concerned.

Erin Ryan (1:06)

Concerned.

Julia Claire (1:07)

I'm very concerned.

SPEAKER_3 (1:09)

Concerned. Concerned. I have a lot of concerns.

Erin Ryan (1:13)

Collins was born on December 7th, 1952, a date that will live in infamy in Caribou, Maine, which isn't like, it's not like Hallmark Christmas movie Maine. It's like, Cap-a-Croix outlaws hide there to escape the Mounties, Maine. Her family could probably win a game of Maine bingo. They ran a lumber business. Her uncle Samuel sat on the Maine Supreme Court. Both of her parents served as mayor of Caribou, and her dad went on to serve in the Maine legislature for five terms.

Julia Claire (1:41)

Susan Collins is so Maine that she bathes in a human-sized ramekin of drawn butter.

Erin Ryan (1:46)

Susan Collins is so Maine that her prom date was a moose.

Julia Claire (1:50)

Susan Collins is so Maine that her grandfather was a lighthouse.

Erin Ryan (1:53)

I also heard her dog is a lobster and that she was born already wearing a pair of baby-sized waders. Okay, that's what she would want you to believe. She has spent decades in public touting herself as a country girl who grew up picking potatoes in rural Oroostook County, but she didn't grow up on a potato farm. When she was growing up, schools took a multi-week break and all of the kids from all of the families would help out in the fields. So yeah, she did grow up picking potatoes, but so did literally everybody else. There's also some slippery myth-making around the nature of the Collins family's lumber business. As historian Tommy Pennette pointed out in a September 2026 op-ed, the Collins family wasn't out there chopping down trees. They were buying already chopped lumber and processing it and selling it while lording over a region fraught with troubling history of racial unrest. I'm from a small town, although not in Maine, and where I grew up, we had something my parents referred to as the Country Club Mafia. They were just families that hung around our shitty nine-hole golf course, like they really thought they were something, which sounds a bit like Pennette's characterization of the Collins clan.

Julia Claire (2:56)

There are Trump families everywhere for those with eyes to see.

Erin Ryan (3:00)

Is that Mary Oliver?

Julia Claire (3:01)

It is.

Erin Ryan (3:03)

Pennette also writes, I know about the Collins family's wealth by way of hypergamy. I gained private access to the lives of Caribou's oligarchs seated in their fives behind the high school. I was permitted access to their camps, Nestled on Mattawaska Lake, mansions three times the size of my family's home, complete with motorboats, sea-doos, in-home movie theaters, and Castilian lofts. Sea-doos.

Sea-doos.

Julia Claire (3:28)

Susan Collins is so Maine that her family stole land from indigenous people and got rich off it. Well, that one's not as fun.

Erin Ryan (3:35)

No, that's not as fun. Collins attended high school in Caribou where she was president of the student council and graduated second in her class in 1971

That's the year that Collins would board an airplane for the first time and fly down to Washington, DC as part of the Senate Youth Program. During that visit, she got FaceTime with one of her senators, a certified baddie named Margaret Chase Smith.

Julia Claire (3:54)

At the time, Smith, a Republican, was the only woman in the entire Senate. But Senator Smith set time aside to meet with her young constituent, and the pair talked for two hours.