Vice President JD Vance used an appearance in Maine to rally support for a Republican senator who has bucked the Trump administration at key moments but remains critical to Republicans’ hopes of hanging onto the Senate majority.

The vice president offered up praise for Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is locked in a tight re-election battle, and made sure to tout her “independent” credentials when speaking at a manufacturing facility in Brewer.

“Whenever I’m in Maine, I got to give Susan a little bit of crap, because as you know, Susan is the most independent member of the United States Senate,” Vance said. “And as the president of the United States Senate, she sometimes makes my job just a little bit harder. But she makes it harder because she is coming to work every single day and fighting not for a political party or not for any abstraction; she comes to work every single day, and she fights for the great people of Maine.”

Collins, however, was not present at the rally, citing a scheduling conflict.

Collins’ absence and Vance’s emphasis on her voting record — she has frequently voted with the Trump administration but has opposed the president’s agenda at critical times — illustrates the uneasy relationship between the GOP senator and the White House in a state former Vice President Kamala Harris won by nearly 7 points in 2024.

And it demonstrates how they can be mutually beneficial to each other, with Vance appealing to the GOP base and Collins avoiding appearing alongside a prominent member of the Trump administration at a time when the president’s approval rating is underwater. Collins is set to face Democrat Troy Jackson in the November general election. Recent polling shows Jackson with a slight lead.

Over the weekend, Collins took aim at Trump’s trade war with Canada, which borders Maine.

“I really want us to go back to the very friendly, economically beneficial relationship that we have with our Canadian neighbors,” she told reporters, calling new tariffs “a mistake.”

Trump on Saturday escalated his trade war with the close American ally, imposing 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods after talks between the two nations collapsed. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to retaliate “dollar for dollar” after walking away from what he characterized as a bad deal. And on Monday, Trump said the United States would impose 50% tariffs on all cars, trucks, automotive parts and steel from Canada beginning Jan. 1.

“Build in the U.S. and there are ZERO TARIFFS. Canada will be treated like a State no longer!” he wrote in a post on X. “On Trade, and in other ways, also, they are among the worst Nations in the World to deal with. They feel entitled, and yet, WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!”

At Monday’s rally, Vance defended the tariffs, calling Canada “a country that has underinvested in its military, that quite literally would get invaded by a foreign country were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America.”

Vance initially referred to Canada as a U.S. state, which Trump has repeatedly done, but he insisted his remark was a “Freudian slip.”

“That was actually an accident,” the vice president said.

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