Atlanta, August 3, 2024 — Donald Trump picked a new fight Saturday with Georgia’s Republican governor as he campaigned in the key swing state where he’s looking to avenge his narrow 2020 loss — a defeat he continues to blame on GOP officials for not giving into his false theories of election fraud.
Trump attacked Gov. Brian Kemp on his social media site before his rally and said Kemp should be “fighting Crime, not fighting Unity and the Republican Party.” He also criticized Kemp’s wife, Marty, for saying she would write in her husband’s name for president this fall instead of voting for the Republican nominee.
At Saturday’s rally, Trump assailed Kemp in a roughly 10-minute tirade, blaming him for his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden and for not stopping a local district attorney from prosecuting him and several associates for his efforts to overturn the results.
“He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor,” Trump said. “Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”
On X, Kemp told Trump to “leave my family out of it” and urged him to stop “engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”
Georgia is likely to see another closely contested election as both campaigns push hard in the state, with Democrats riding a new wave of enthusiasm after Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. To win this time, Trump will likely need the support both of Kemp’s political operation and from moderate and conservative voters who aren’t as committed to him as members of his base.
Going to Atlanta put Trump in the state’s largest media market, including suburbs and exurbs that were traditional Republican strongholds but have become more competitive as they’ve diversified and grown in population. Thousands of supporters packed the same arena for a Harris rally days earlier.
Draic Coakley, a 23-year-old who works in the trucking industry and drove from Heflin, Alabama, just across the western Georgia border to attend his third Trump rally, said he believes Trump “sees people like me,” while “Biden and Harris, well, are part of what I think of as the elite.”
“President Trump may be a billionaire, but it’s OK to be rich,” Coakley said. “He gets us. He just gets us, and he gets the country.”
Biden beat Trump in the state by 11,779 votes in 2020. Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to change the outcome and his allies tried to present slates of so-called “fake electors” that could replace the Democratic voters Biden won. – AP
