There’s been a lot of speculation in the mainstream media about the decline of Donald Trump’s clout in the Republican Party.
A Trump rally in Georgia might have dispelled that speculation, given the large crowd that waited nearly five hours for the former president to make an appearance.
While the GOP faithful were waiting, they were treated to speeches from Trump’s handpicked candidates, including former NFL star Herschel Walker, who is running for the Senate, and David Perdue, the former senator who is looking to upend incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
Trump was greeted with the usual roaring cheers, despite being more than an hour late. And his speech tore into Kemp with great zest, referring to him as a “RINO” and warning the crowd, “Before we can defeat the Democrats, socialists and communists … we first have to defeat the RINO sellouts and the losers in the primaries this spring.”
Trump turned on Kemp after the 2020 election, when Trump became the first GOP presidential candidate to lose the state in 28 years. Trump accused Kemp of betraying Republican voters when the governor decided not to stand by the former president’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud and refused to call a special session to overturn the result.
“I endorsed Brian Kemp, unfortunately, in 2018 — I feel so badly but look you can’t have them all. He was losing, I endorsed him and he won big, how about that? And he wouldn’t do a damn thing about the election fraud,” Trump said.
“We picked Kemp and now we have to get Kemp out.”
“If Brian Kemp is re-nominated, he will go down in flames at the ballot box because Stacey will steal it from him and humiliate him,” Trump said, referring to the Democrat’s presumptive nominee for governor Stacey Abrams.
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Trump couldn’t resist bringing up Hunter Biden and Ukraine — a war that never would have started on his watch, he says.
Trump declared to the crowd that the war in Ukraine would have never happened had he been elected in 2020 and compared his administration with that of current President Joe Biden.
Trump noted that a war had not been started during his 4-year term. He also criticized the handling of the Russia-Ukraine conflict as it rages on and said that Biden “gave up” on Ukraine.
Claims of a connection between Biden, his son Hunter Biden and Ukraine were brought up again, including allegations that they took money from the country.
A recent poll has Kemp beating Perdue handily 50-39. If Trump carries out his threat to urge his supporters to boycott the election if Kemp is the candidate, the incumbent governor is in deep trouble.
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