by All Donald Trump has to do on Saturday in Georgia is show up, rally the tent and not pick a fight with other Republicans. There may have been money in the bag.
Instead, Trump attacked Governor Brian Kemp, who is far more popular in Georgia than he is. Early in his comments, Trump pointed to several recent high-profile murders in Atlanta, saying: “Atlanta is like a killing field, and your governor should get off his ass and do something about it.”
Related: Name-calling and hyperbole: Trump continues ecclesiastical feast at Georgia rally
Trump was just warming up. Between recommending three Republicans to the election board who are supposed to be neutral arbiters of election practices, and a strange, false and previously debunked claim that Al Capone had fewer indictments than he did, Trump on an 11-minute tirade about Kemp. and the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, with a job alongside the attorney general, Chris Carr, despite. None of them attended the rally.
Trump appeared at the Georgia state convention center on Saturday, likely because it was a controlled and covered venue, compared to the open-air staging area where he was shot three weeks ago. The Secret Service is said to have advised him to stop outdoor rallies.
The facility is also owned by a state agency, Georgia State University. Georgia law requires that any government facility used by a political candidate be offered to opponents on the same terms.
And it was offered to the vice president, Kamala Harris, last Tuesday, where she packed the stadium with supporters. (And yes, it was packed, and no, people didn’t start leaving en masse after Megan Thee Stallion’s brief performance before Harris took the stage.)
Trump also seemed on edge, up until at least an hour into his rambling 90-minute speech when people started heading for the door. Trump’s speeches are long-winded, rambling and generally offensive. It’s action, and the Maga faithful enjoy the show.
But Maga is not a majority in Georgia, if anywhere. Republicans can’t win this state when mainstream conservatives abandon the party, as Herschel Walker’s US Senate challenge against Raphael Warnock showed two years ago.
Split ticket conservatives love Georgia Kemp and are indifferent to Trump. And Trump didn’t give them any love on Saturday.
“If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be governor. I think everybody knows that,” Trump said, describing them as disloyal.
“Governor Kemp, and Raffensperger are doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win. Why do they do it? I do not know. They have something in mind. You know, they have a little thing in mind. Kemp is very bad for the Republican party.”
Then Trump went after Kemp’s wife, who told people that she wrote her husband’s name for president in the Republican presidential primary this year. “Don’t I deserve her endorsement? I have nothing to do with her. Somewhere it went bad. And you know what? Your numbers in Georgia are very average. Your economic numbers, your crime numbers, your numbers are all very average. You can do a lot better and you will do a lot better with a better governor.”
On and on. He said that Kemp was not supporting the ticket, that he wanted Trump to lose, and complained that Kemp had somehow failed to act in the prosecution of Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, regardless of the limits of the law. “Kemp doesn’t want to end it. Because he is a bad man. He is an unfaithful man. And he is a normal governor.”
To be fair, Georgia’s economic and crime numbers are in the middle of the pack. But Georgia’s economic growth has outpaced that of the US since Kemp took office, which Republicans accuse of being the first governor to end lockdowns during the pandemic. Georgia is one of 17 states with a Fitch AAA bond rating. The state has currently saved $16bn as state revenues consistently exceed projections, an unprecedented amount that gives a conservative the kind of political headache.
By Republican standards, Georgia is very well run.
This is why Kemp can win Georgia and Trump and Trump-lite candidates will lose it. Kemp beat Stacey Abrams, who had deep fundraising pockets and a national media profile, by seven points in 2022. On the same ballot, Walker, who has universal name recognition in Georgia, lost to Warnock by three points.
Under supercharged attendance conditions, that 10-point gap is the difference between Georgia winning and losing. Here is a measure of Maga’s power. That’s why Trump narrowly lost this state in 2020, even as other Republicans won statewide races.
Close observers know the math. Each year, the demographic shift from people moving into the state of Georgia shifts about half a point toward Democrats. But Biden had lost most of the support from the Kemp-Warnock split ticket Republicans. Biden was down six points in the Georgia poll.
If Harris picks up those voters again, Trump could lose Georgia by as much as four points, regardless of expectations of increased Black voter support for either candidate.
“In 2020, Trump lost the state by less than 12,000 votes while 30,000+ voted for president,” conservative Georgia talk show host Erick Erickson wrote Sunday.
“It is unwise to attack a man who has supported you, whose ground game is to be won in 2024. Fortunately for Trump, Kemp is not a small man. Unfortunately for Trump, he’s reminding those 40,000+ voters who wouldn’t vote for him in 2020 in Georgia why they didn’t vote for him.”
On Saturday, Trump delivered his combative comments about his views on Georgia, its popular governor, and how he hopes the state’s election board will overturn an election he could lose, which will be replayed on commercials. YouTube on every iPhone between the Fox Theater and Lake Lanier for another 91 days.
Trump can’t help himself when he comes to Atlanta, even now, with the state and his political future on the line
And Republican political professionals know it.
“Trump has a political death wish in Georgia,” wrote political messaging guru Frank Luntz, noting specifically how Trump actually told Republican voters to blow the Senate runoff in January 2021 because he claiming that the Georgia election was rigged.
“The attack on Brian Kemp, the popular governor who defeated his hand-picked GOP primary challenger 70-30, is so stupid. Republicans cannot win if they are divided, but Trump continues to divide them.
Within hours, Republican leaders began making statements.
“My focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats – not engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or relying on the past spent,” Kemp wrote in a short statement on X. “You should. likewise, President, and leave my family out.”
“Governor Kemp is a proven leader, a consistent conservative, and a champion for Georgia families,” said state representative Jon Burns, Georgia’s speaker. “We will continue to work together to make Georgia the best place to live, work and raise a family.”
Trump can’t help himself when he comes to Atlanta, even now, with the state and his political future on the line. Trump attacked the late beloved Atlanta congressman John Lewis in 2017, shortly after his inauguration, describing the city as “crime infested”.
It is opinions like these that raised the number of people who attended the Democrats in 2020 and protected the state.
However, before pleading guilty to racketeering and election interference charges in Atlanta last year, Trump described Atlanta in similar terms. “Murder and other Violent Crimes have reached unprecedented levels,” he wrote, claiming that Willis “has allowed Murder and other Violent Crimes to INCREASE”.
He wrote that Atlanta was suffering from a “KILLING WAVE!” and that Willis is “overseeing one of the largest Murder and Violent Crime SCHEMES in American History”.
None of that was true. It was all infuriating, in ways Trump defended at the polls.
“The state Republicans are currently leaning and following Trump, but Trump has 90 days to break it further,” Erickson wrote.
