Saturday evening, former failed President Trump was in Commerce, Georgia, for a rally. Trump’s mouthpiece claimed the crowd was “massive,” and that the “Fake News Media” didn’t show it. But local reporters from Georgia say the gathering was scant and similar to others held across the state recently.
Greg Bluestein, a politics reporter from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, tweeted: “This is the smallest crowd I’ve seen at a rally of his in Georgia since he won the 2016 election—significantly smaller than the crowd in Perry [Georgia] in September.”
Georgia Public Broadcasting reporter Stephen Fowler tweeted: “It’s almost time for Trump to speak here in Georgia and there’s probably no more than 5,000 people here, the smallest Trump rally I’ve ever covered here. Way less than the Perry rally in 2021 (closer to 10k).”
Trump was in Georgia to stump for a bunch of Republican primary candidates. But, mostly he spent his time ravaging Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for their lack of support in overturning his loss in 2020 to President Joe Biden.
"You know what, if Kemp wins, I think Herschel Walker is going to be very seriously and negatively impacted because Republicans that happen to like Donald Trump—MAGA Republicans—are not going to go and vote for this guy Kemp," Trump said Saturday. "And if they don't vote for Kemp, they're not going to be able to vote for a great man right there, Herschel Walker. And we don't want that to happen. So a vote for Brian Kemp, RINO, in the primary is a vote for a Democrat senator who shouldn't be in the Senate."
And Trump’s tone set the tone for the evening. GOP candidate after GOP candidate slammed Kemp and alleged a stolen election.
Gubernatorial candidate David Perdue chummed the audience with the old standby conspiracy that the “elections were absolutely stolen.”
Of course, the blame was placed directly on the shoulders of Gov. Kemp, even stoking the crowd with a promise that if he wins the governor's seat, he would send “whoever was responsible” for the alleged theft to “jail.” The MAGA crowd went wild, and began shouting, “Lock him up!”
Perdue wasn’t alone in using the Big Lie to rile up Trump supporters for 2024, true deplorable Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “supposed” and Sen. Burt Jones, who’s running for lieutenant governor, declared a ban on ballot drop boxes and an end to “cursed Dominion machines,” according to the AJC.
Even virtually unknown John Gordon, who is challenging Chris Carr for Attorney General insisted that if elected, he would open an investigation into the 2020 presidential election.
“We are going to uncover the facts, we will expose the truth and we are going to hold the people responsible accountable,” Gordon ranted, per the AJC. “It will never happen again.”
Despite the fact that some in the Republican party have suggested that it’s in fact time to move on from the Big Lie, it seems like it remains a requisite in order to keep Trump’s support. Ask GOP candidate for Senate in Alabama, Mo Brooks.
Brooks mentioned his desire to move past Trump’s loss in 2020, prompting the petty former president to pull support of him.
According to one AJC reporter, the mini-crowd Saturday only really roared to life when the candidates decried Kemp and cited the bogus conspiracy of a stolen election.
“I’m doing my research, but I know I’m backing Perdue. Kemp threw Trump under the bus after the election,” Dale Branham, a teacher from Sandy Springs, told the AJC. “Everyone else who watched what went on knew what was going on. And David Perdue never doubted what happened.”
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
