President Trump on Saturday took to the stage for the first time since losing to Joe Biden to declare emphatically that he won the election, in particular the state of Georgia, and demanded the Peach State’s governor get tougher.
But he also allayed the fears of some Republicans and took time to praise Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are in crucial runoff races that will determine which party takes control of the U.S. Senate in January.
Trump, alongside his wife Melania, spoke in Valdosta, Georgia. He told a crowd of mostly maskless supporters, who chanted “stop the steal,” “four more years,” and “we love you” after waiting hours to hear him, to go out and vote for the Republican candidates in the “most important congressional runoff, probably in American history.”
Republicans need just one victory to maintain their Senate majority. Democrats need a Georgia sweep to force a 50-50 Senate and have Vice President-elect Kamala Harris be the tiebreaker.
Trump called Perdue’s Democratic rival Jon Ossoff, a “radical left-wing zealot,” and Loeffler’s opponent Raphael Warnock “a dangerous extremist.”
Though Trump was in Georgia to stump for Loeffler and Perdue, he spent the majority of his time on stage airing his own grievances with the election.
“You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” Trump told the large crowd gathered for his first post-election rally.
.@realDonaldTrump: “You Must go vote, and vote early starting December 14. You have to go do it. They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it. We will still win it.” pic.twitter.com/9Y18AHmihb
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 6, 2020
He used the spotlight to claim defiantly that Democrats cheated and “rigged” the 2020 election, that he had won all of the swing states, and that he had “won them all by a lot.” Trump won Florida and Ohio, but Biden secured the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia.
At one point, Trump said if he had lost, he’d be “a very gracious loser” and go on vacation.
At the beginning of the speech, Trump read a list of his electoral achievements but returned to the central theme that he had bested Biden and unfairly been declared the loser.
Trump said he refused to concede, though his own attorney general said earlier this week that the 2020 presidential election had been conducted without any instances of widespread voter fraud.
On a rumored 2024 run, Trump said, “Hopefully, I won’t have to be a candidate.”
Ahead of Saturday’s event, Trump called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to press him to overturn Biden’s win and to order an audit of absentee ballot signatures.
He also wanted Kemp to call a special session of the state legislature to get lawmakers to override the results and appoint electors that would back him instead of Biden, the Washington Post reported, a brazen move that has made some Republicans nervous. Biden won Georgia by about 12,500 votes out of 5 million cast, the slimmest margin of victory out of the battleground states.
State GOP leaders initially turned to Trump right after the election to rally his Georgia base into coming out to vote for Loeffler and Perdue in the runoff election.
However, Trump has instead slammed the state and its Republican leadership for “allowing” a rigged election to go unchallenged.
His hostile tweets in which he called Kemp “hapless” and criticized the lieutenant governor and secretary of state had some wondering whether the president’s visit would help or hurt the cause. Republicans worried that if Trump continues to push his baseless theory that the system is rigged, his supporters will decide to sit out the two Jan. 5 races.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Saturday dismissed those concerns.
“I think the voters very much support the president,” McDaniel said on Fox News. “I think they’re concerned with the state and how they administered the election,” she said, adding, “However, they want to make sure we keep David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in as well, and they can balance both.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany also rejected the idea that Trump’s comments would depress turnout and predicted the president’s visit to Valdosta would be “the start of these two senators crossing the finish line.”
She added on Fox Business Network that Trump’s base is “behind him all the way.”
“He is the head of the movement, make no mistake, and that will not be changing,” she said. Despite her reassurances, the rift between Trump and those he believed wronged him in Georgia doesn’t seem to be getting better any time soon.
Just hours before Trump’s visit on Saturday, he once again tweeted his disapproval of Kemp.
.@realDonaldTrump: “We continue to fight. We’ve had some great moments. We just need somebody with courage to do what they have to do… And we’ll be going up to the Supreme Court very shortly. pic.twitter.com/A4W0lETVBg
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 6, 2020
“I will easily & quickly win Georgia if Governor @BrianKempGA or the Secretary of State permit a simple signature verification,” he said. “Has not been done and will show large scale discrepancies. Why are these two ‘Republicans’ saying no? If we win Georgia, everything else falls in place!”
Kemp has become Trump’s favorite punching bag of late, a 180-degree turn from his relationship with the governor in 2018, when he helped Kemp win the governorship in a tight race against Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams.
Earlier this week, two pro-Trump lawyers questioned whether voting again in the runoff election would be worth it, given claims of widespread voter fraud.
During his visit to Savannah, Georgia, on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence betrayed concerns that the GOP coalition would crack under the force of Trump’s complaints.
“I know we’ve all got our doubts about the last election, and I hear some of you said, ‘Just don’t vote,'” Pence said. “If you don’t vote, they win.”
