In Donald Trump’s push to fundamentally reshape the Republican Party, few places are a higher priority than Georgia, as primary races heat up before the midterm elections in November.
Saturday’s rally at a former drag strip in Commerce, 70 miles north-east of Atlanta headlined a slate of Republican candidates, all of whom Trump endorsed and, not coincidentally, all of whom have backed his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.
The rally featured Herschel Walker, a former football player running for the U.S. Senate; David Perdue, who is challenging Governor Brian Kemp; and congressional candidate Vernon Jones, a former Democratic state representative who began calling himself the “Black Donald Trump” after switching parties.
Trump is still furious at Governor Kemp because the governor refused to go along with Trump’s lies about the election in 2020 being stolen.
The rally, ahead of the state’s May 24 primary was an attempt to boost Perdue in a campaign that is emerging as an early, critical test of whether the former president can live up to his professed role as a kingmaker in the GOP.
“Before we can defeat the Democrat socialists and communists … we first have to defeat the RINO sellouts and the losers in the primaries this spring,” Trump told the crowd, lacing into Kemp again and again as he accused him of betraying Republican voters with the derisive acronym, “Republican in name only.”
“Brian Kemp is a turncoat. He’s a coward and he’s a complete and total disaster,” Trump went on, calling Perdue the only Republican who can defeat Stacey Abrams, a Democrat who is running for governor a second time.
And it looks like the race for governor is going to be a lot harder than Trump has figured because Kemp may be the favorite in the race. Kemp has a 10-point lead in most of the polls and has opened up a significant fundraising advantage as well.
Actually, Perdue, being Trump’s mouthpiece, has not had any original ideas on how he proposes to lead Georgia, other than to say he has Trump’s endorsement and to reiterate the former president’s claims that the election was stolen from him.
“This race is the ultimate test of the enduring strength of a Trump endorsement,” said Brian Robinson, a prominent GOP political consultant in Georgia. “If Perdue wins, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a Trump endorsement has messianic influence,” he added.
America really should be wary of Trump
Although it is not mentioned in many news stories, Trump choose his rally on Saturday night to again praise Vladimir Putin, calling the Russian president “smart” even as he said the invasion of Ukraine amounted to a “big mistake.”
Trump also had warm words for China’s president Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and referred to such leaders collectively by saying: “The smartest one gets to the top.”
He spoke admiringly of Xi in terms of the fact that he “runs 1.5 billion people with an iron fist” and referred to Kim as “tough.”
Trump also praised Putin’s strategy of putting his military forces on Ukraine’s border before the invasion, saying, “That’s a hell of a way to negotiate, put 200,000 troops on the border…That was a big mistake, but it looked like a great negotiation. That didn’t work out too well for him.”
This kind of talk, from a “Putin-wanna-be” is disturbing to me. It leads me to think that if Trump were to get back in power, he would quickly hand over the United States to the first regime that approached him, and that is scary.
And secondly, if Trump is trying to remake the Republican party into his own image of what it should be, then it is about time that sane minds speak out and stop the devisive and hate-filled ramblings of Putin’s puppet.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
