All Donald Trump had to do on Saturday in Georgia is show up, bring the tent together and not pick a fight with other Republicans. It might have been money in the bag.
Instead, Trump attacked Governor Brian Kemp, who is substantially more popular in Georgia than he is. Early in his comments, Trump pointed to a few 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.”
Trump was just warming up. In between praising three Republicans on the election board who are supposed to be neutral arbiters of election practices, and repeating a bizarre, false and previously debunked claim that Al Capone faced fewer indictments than he did, Trump went on an 11-minute tirade about Kemp and the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, with a side jab at the attorney general, Chris Carr, for spite. None of them attended the rally.
Trump appeared at the Georgia state convocation center on Saturday probably because it’s a controlled and covered venue, as opposed to the open-air staging area where he was shot three weeks ago. The Secret Service has reportedly advised him to stop outdoor rallies.
The facility is also owned by a state agency, Georgia State University. Georgia law requires any government facility used by a political candidate to 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 did not start leaving en masse after Megan Thee Stallion’s brief performance before Harris took the stage.)
Trump’s appearance was also packed to the rim, at least up until an hour into his 90-minute rambling speech when people started heading for the door. Trump speeches are long-winded, rambling and generally offensive. It’s an act, and the Maga faithful enjoy the spectacle.
But Maga is not a majority in Georgia, if anywhere. Republicans cannot win this state when conventional conservatives abandon the party, as Herschel Walker’s Trump-inflected US Senate challenge against Raphael Warnock demonstrated two years ago.
Georgia’s split-ticket-voting conservatives love Kemp and are indifferent at best to Trump. And Trump gave them no love on Saturday.
“If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be your governor. I think everybody knows that,” Trump bloviated, 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 don’t know. They’ve got something in mind. You know, they’ve got a little something in mind. Kemp is very bad for the Republican party.”
Then Trump went after Kemp’s wife, who told people she wrote her husband’s name in for president in the Republican presidential primary this year. “I haven’t earned her endorsement? I have nothing to do with her. Somewhere he went bad. And you know what? Your numbers in Georgia are very average. Your economic numbers, your crime numbers, all of your numbers are very average. You can do a lot better and you’ll do a lot better with a better governor.”
On and on. He said Kemp wasn’t supporting the ticket, that he wanted Trump to lose, and complained that Kemp had not, somehow, acted to rein in the prosecution by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, never mind the limits of the law. “Kemp doesn’t want to end it. Because he’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor.”
To be fair, Georgia’s economic and crime numbers are in the middle of the pack. But Georgia’s economic growth has outpaced US growth since Kemp took office, something Republicans attribute to him 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 $16bn saved right now because state revenue has consistently outstripped projections, an unprecedented sum that itself presents a kind of political headache for a conservative.
By Republican standards, Georgia has been exceptionally well run.
This is why Kemp can win Georgia while Trump and Trump-lite candidates 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 conditions of supercharged turnout, that 10-point gap is the difference between winning and losing Georgia. It is a measure of Maga power here. It is why Trump narrowly lost this state in 2020, even as other Republicans won statewide races.
Close observers know the math. Every year, demographic change from people moving into the state shifts Georgia about half a point toward Democrats. But Biden had lost most of the support of Kemp-Warnock split-ticket Republicans. Biden was down six points in Georgia polls.
If Harris picks those voters up again, Trump could lose Georgia by as much as four points, never mind expectations of increased Black voter support for either candidate.
“In 2020, Trump lost the state by less than 12,000 votes and 30,000+ refused to vote for president,” wrote the conservative Georgia talkshow host Erick Erickson on Sunday.
“Attacking a guy who has endorsed you, whose ground game you need to win in 2024, is not wise. Luckily for Trump, Kemp is not a petty 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 handed his opponents soundbites about what he thinks about Georgia, its popular governor, and how he expects the state election board to overturn an election he may lose, that will be replayed on YouTube ads on every iPhone between the Fox Theater and the Lake Lanier for the next 91 days.
And Republican political professionals know it.
“Trump has a political death wish in Georgia,” wrote the political messaging guru Frank Luntz, pointedly noting how Trump in effect told Republican voters to blow off the Senate runoff in January 2021 because he was claiming the Georgia election was rigged.
“Attacking Brian Kemp, the popular governor who defeated his hand-picked GOP primary challenger by 70-30, is so stupid. Republicans cannot win if they are divided, yet 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 dwelling on the past,” Kemp wrote in a short statement on X. “You should do the same, Mr President, and leave my family out of it.”
“Governor Kemp has been a proven leader, consistent conservative, and champion for Georgia families,” said state representative Jon Burns, Georgia’s speaker. “We’ll continue to work together to make Georgia the best place to live, work and raise a family.”
Trump cannot help himself when it comes to Atlanta, even now, with the state and his political future on the line. Trump attacked Atlanta’s late, beloved congressman John Lewis in 2017, shortly after the inauguration, describing the city as “crime-infested”.
It’s comments like this that supercharged Democratic turnout in 2020 and cost him the state.
Nonetheless, ahead of his surrender on racketeering and election interference charges in Atlanta last year, Trump described Atlanta in similar terms. “Murder and other Violent Crimes have reached levels never seen before,” he wrote, claiming that Willis “has allowed Murder and other Violent Crime to MASSIVELY ESCALATE”.
He wrote that Atlanta was experiencing a “GIANT MURDER WAVE!” and that Willis “is overseeing one of the greatest Murder and Violent Crime DISASTERS in American History”.
None of that was true. All of it was infuriating, in ways that cost Trump at the polls.
“The state leans Republican right now and leans Trump, but there are 90 days for Trump to further screw it up,” Erickson wrote.