Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will travel to Georgia to campaign for next week’s high-stakes Senate runoff elections, it was announced on Wednesday, as Donald Trump called on the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, to resign.
For weeks, Trump has been attacking Kemp for his refusal to overturn the results of Georgia’s presidential election, a state he won in 2016 and narrowly lost to Biden in 2020, and on Wednesday went as far as to call on his fellow Republican to resign.
“@BrianKempGA should resign from office,” Trump wrote in a tweet that encouraged supporters to watch a broadcast of a hearing on purported election irregularities. “He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG! Also won the other Swing States.”
Kemp, long considered a staunch ally of the president, has refused to embrace Trump’s meritless accusations that the state’s vote count was tainted. Earlier this month, Kemp recertified Georgia’s 16 electoral votes for Biden after multiple recounts affirmed Biden’s victory in the state.
Despite dozens of lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign, they produced no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in Georgia or any other state. Yet Trump’s insistence that the presidential vote was fraudulent has rattled some Republicans in the state who fear his unfounded claims may depress turnout among his supporters ahead of runoff elections, scheduled for 5 January.
The runoffs will determine which party controls the Senate.
“I love the Great State of Georgia, but the people who run it, from the Governor, @BrianKempGA, to the Secretary of State, are a complete disaster and don’t have a clue, or worse,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets on Tuesday night. “Nobody can be this stupid. Just allow us to find the crime, and turn the state Republican….”
He also made reference to a conspiracy theory that claims the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has a brother named Ron who works for a Chinese tech firm, which purportedly explains his refusal to accept Trump’s unfounded claims about voter fraud in the state. The man is not related to Raffensperger.
Trump will hold a rally with Georgia’s Republican senators in Dalton on Monday, setting up a split screen with Biden, who will campaign for the Democratic challengers, the Rev Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, in Atlanta on the same day. On Sunday, Harris will appear with the Democrats in Savannah, while Vice-President Mike Pence has made frequent visits to the state on behalf of the Republican candidates.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
