Republicans fear Trump’s false claims will harm the party in Georgia runoff | Donald trump

Donald Trump is set to hold a rally in Georgia on Saturday amid fears he is discouraging Republicans from going to vote in a critical run-off by attacking senior GOP officials and falsely claiming that fraud and the irregularities of the voting machine cost him the November elections.

The event will be Trump’s biggest public appearance since the loss of Georgia and the presidential race last month. He will rally on behalf of Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, two Republican senators in the second round contests. Republicans must win at least one of the contests in order to retain control of the U.S. Senate and maintain a veto over the next four years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Trump is urging supporters to vote for Perdue and Loeffler, but some Republicans fear it will hurt their chances of winning. Even after a recount confirmed that Trump lost Georgia by around 13,000 votes, the president continued to falsely claim that fraud cost him the election. By undermining confidence in the election, Trump could also tell his supporters that their votes won’t matter.

L Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, two prominent Conservative lawyers who have filed a series of baseless pro-Trump lawsuits alleging electoral malfeasance, encouraged supporters in Georgia on Wednesday. do not vote in the second round of elections.

“We will not go to vote on January 5 on another machine made by China. You will no longer cheat the Georgians, ”Wood said wednesday. “If Kelly Loeffler wants your vote, if David Perdue wants your vote, they have to earn it. They must publicly demand, repeatedly, consistently: “Brian Kemp: call an extraordinary session of the Georgian legislature”. And if they don’t, if Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue don’t, they didn’t earn your vote.

“Don’t give it to them. Why would you come back to vote in another rigged election? “

Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, faced skeptical voters in Georgia last weekend and had to reassure them that the Senate election was not yet decided, according to CNN. Donald Trump Jr tweeted last month that calls to boycott the second round were “nonsense” and that the allies are planning to launch a Super Pac aimed at transforming the president’s supporters in January.

Trump previewed an attempt to balance his support for Perdue and Loeffler with his attacks on voting in a 46-minute video statement released Thursday filled with blatant lies about voting.

“David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are two great people. Unfortunately in Georgia they use the same, horrible Dominion system, ”he said, referring to a company that manufactures voting equipment that Trump and his allies have attacked baselessly. “Hundreds of thousands of postal votes have been requested. You check who requests these ballots. The difference is, it’s a state and we’ll see it as if no one has ever watched anything before. Because we have to win those two Senate seats.

Several well-known Georgia Republicans, including former Gov. Nathan Deal and former Senator Johnny Isakson, also issued an open letter on Wednesday warning that attention around the fraud was diverting attention from the second-round race.

“We have observed with growing concern that the debate around the state’s electoral system has caused some members of our party to question whether the vote in the second round of elections matters,” they wrote in the letter, according to the New York Times.

Trump will also arrive in Georgia after starting an internal war between Republicans. He has repeatedly attacked fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top electoral official, for failing to help him overturn the election results. Perdue and Loeffler have asked Raffensperger to step down for handling the election, even though there is no evidence of wrongdoing in the state.

Raffensperger strongly rebuffed Trump’s accusations, saying the president’s own fear campaign over postal voting is what cost him the election. Trump also attacked Brian Kemp, the conservative governor of Georgia, calling him “unhappy” Monday, saying he regretted approving it, and asking him to exercise emergency powers to overturn the election results. Kemp issued a statement in response saying Georgian law prohibited him from meddling in the elections.

Jay Williams, a Republican strategist in Georgia, said Trump’s attacks on the election weren’t particularly helpful, but said he didn’t think they would ultimately have much of an impact on the election.

“Most of these voters who show up for these ballots are quite sophisticated and understand what is at stake and in Georgia in particular,” he said. “It’s not ideal from a unit point of view, from a messaging point of view.”

Eric Johnson, a former Republican state lawmaker who now advises Loeffler’s campaign, also predicted that Trump’s attacks would not dramatically affect election results. Still, Johnson said Trump’s message about the election was “complicated” and he hoped he would change his tone at Saturday’s rally.

“The way I put it is, ‘Let the lawyers focus on the last election. Those at the grassroots must focus on the next elections, ”he said. “He doesn’t have to accept what happened in Georgia, but he can say, ‘We still have to go to the polls. We must always be confident that we have learned from what happened on November 3 and move forward. ”

Johnson said he encouraged people in Georgia to register to be polling officers and poll observers for the second round, and Republicans would ultimately be motivated to vote by the potential for Senate scrutiny.

“Republicans do the math, they know what 50-50 looks like, and they know what 52-48 looks like,” he said. “Not everyone who voted for President Trump wants the far left agenda. They want the president’s legacy, if he is not re-elected, to come forward, and the Senate is finger in the dyke.