ATLANTA — President Trump on Monday told a revved-up crowd in Georgia to vote for two Republican senators locked in tight runoff races that will determine the success of President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
Calling the runoffs a “biggie,” Trump said if Democrats won Tuesday’s contests, it would give them “the power to ram through every deluded piece of left-wing legislation that they’ve ever wanted, that they’ve ever dreamt of.”
“Your religious liberty will be gone, your Second Amendment will be gone, your borders and great new wall will be gone, your police departments will be gone as we know them, and your life savings will be gone,” Trump said.
Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are going head-to-head against Republican incumbents Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
If Ossoff and Warnock win, the Senate will be split 50-50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. If Perdue and Loeffler win, Republicans would hold a slim 52-48 majority and could block Biden’s legislative agenda.
During his prime-time speech, Trump toggled between stumping for his party and airing his own grievances.
Trump has repeatedly claimed he bested Biden in the state’s presidential election.
“There’s no way we lost Georgia,” he told the crowd of supporters gathered in Dalton, some of whom came from neighboring states and stood in line for hours to see him.
Trump also mentioned Vice President Mike Pence, whom he has publicly asked to intervene in the electoral college vote tally.
“I have to tell you, I hope that our great vice president, our great vice president, comes through for us,” Trump said.
He added with a laugh, ““He’s a great guy. Because if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much.”
Trump also focused on one of his favorite targets, the press, and claimed the media “went silent” in recent months and that it was “the beginning of communism.”
“That’s exactly what happens,” he said. “They hate our country, and they despise Georgia values.”
The president’s visit comes on the heels of a taped telephone call that surfaced Sunday between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
In the call, Trump repeated a litany of election fraud claims and asked Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the presidential race in his favor, despite three separate vote counts that confirmed his loss.
“The people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry, and there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you’ve recalculated,” Trump said in the call. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
Biden won the state by 11,779 votes.
Trump’s obsession with winning has created a rift in the Republican Party, with several lawmakers siding with Trump’s attempts to stay in power versus those who have encouraged him to accept the reality of the election results.
On Monday night, Loeffler announced she would oppose the certification of the Electoral College results on Wednesday.
“On January 6th, I will vote to give President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve and support the objection to the Electoral College certification process,” she tweeted ahead of Trump taking the stage.
Perdue has also said he would urge his colleagues to object to Biden’s win.
Loeffler and Perdue have used Trump’s popularity to bolster their campaigns. Both have picked him over members of their own party in the election results debate and called for Raffensperger, a Republican, to resign. Tuesday’s dual races are playing out because none of the candidates got more than 50% of the vote in the Nov. 3 general election, as required for winning a statewide race in Georgia.
In the nine weeks between the general election and Tuesday’s runoff, nearly a half-billion dollars has been spent, with another $205 million spent during the first round, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
A record 3 million Georgia voters, about 38.8% of all registered voters in the state, have already cast their ballots. The number easily exceeded the previous record of 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2008 Senate runoff race between Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin.
Trump wasn’t the only political heavyweight in Georgia on Monday.
Biden and Pence were also in the state, fighting for every last vote.
Biden, at a rally in Atlanta, thanked Georgians for helping him become the first Democratic candidate since 1992 to turn the Peach State blue. He asked his supporters at a drive-in rally to come out one more time to help Ossoff and Warnock.
“It’s a new year, and tomorrow can be a new day for Atlanta, for Georgia, and for America,” Biden said. “Unlike any time in my career, one state, one state, can chart the course, not just for the four years but for the next generation.”
About an hour away in Milner, Georgia, Pence made his eleventh-hour pitch at Rock Springs Church.
“We’re going to keep Georgia, and we’re going to save America,” he said.
