Fox News "The Story" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Doug Collins

Interview

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MACCALLUM: So Republican Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia who was quick to denounce Omar's comments joins me now. You know, I saw you reading along with her statement of apology and it's sort of an apology but.

REP. DOUG COLLINS (R), GEORGIA: It definitely is an apology, but.

MACCALLUM: She says, you know -- maybe we have that. We can put it back up. You know, explain why you think the second part of that sort of negates the apology to some extent.

COLLINS: It's one thing to make an apology about something. You're truly sorry about something, you do find out. We all learn. We all make mistakes. We all do things that were not proud of. And you come out and you say I'm sorry. I did wrong. Let's change the narrative.

And it makes me sad to see that that's not where she went in. She went to end with another slap at what she thinks is the straw man of money and things in politics which it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, it has nothing to do with attacking Israel as she is has a history of doing. So I think in the end is sort of saddens me that a member of Congress who has the platform to really change the world, to raise our gaze above the things that we're seeing has chosen to take a time to continue this but then when she even -- she apologized, she said but.

MACCALLUM: So it sounds like you in some ways are separating the anti- Semitic comments she called Israel evil from her opinion about the impact of money and politics.

COLLINS: She's trying to conflate the two as well. I think when you look at both of them, I think the problem is she takes her anti-Semitism which came across very blatantly in these tweets and with others and then she attaches it to saying that the members of Congress were bought by the thing that she disliked so much and obviously that is Israel.

When you start doing that, that makes it even worse because the people in her position when she has the ability to change minds and to change attitude, she chooses to go to the lowest common denominator. That makes everybody believe again toward money or politics or whatever you want to think. And let's not take it off the eye of what's really there. Just in Congress this past month, we denounced again, white nationalism, black racism.

That was something I did on the floor leading our side. We took a member who had made comments and took them off committees. These are kind of things that real I think apology shows. And she was only forced into this apology. That's another issue you have to look at.

MACCALLUM: You know, when you look at what would you say, you know, she wasn't around today, what would you say to her if you were to explain to her how you see the effectiveness of APAC, for example, versus the way she sees it? She thinks that people are getting bought.

COLLINS: What we have to understand is everyone has an opinion that they want to bring forward. APAC is an organization if you look at them, and they defend themselves very well. But when you look at them, they work both Republican and Democrat.

I can remember having disagreements with APAC when it came to the Iran deal. There were times that these are very good friends of mine and I said, I thought they ought to be more partisan. And they said, no, we're bipartisan because we believe that's the best way to work it, by the way, which you have no seemingly knowledge of how they operate.

Again, just takes our civility and continues to knock it down. We've got to, again, raise ourselves up to where it be how we feel about and having racist or anti-Semitic thoughts, those are not tolerated in what should be the most deliberative body in the world. If we continue to go that then why do we expect anybody out in the country to think better of us?

MACCALLUM: Congressman Collins, thank you very much. Good to have you here tonight.

COLLINS: Glad to be here

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