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Fresh off last week’s showdown in Texas, President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set for a redo this coming Saturday in Georgia—the state that cut the cord on Trump’s presidency in 2020 while cementing Biden’s victory.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein, Trump hasn’t set foot in the state since surrendering to authorities last August for a mugshot in the election interference case brought against him by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. But Trump is reportedly expected to hold an event in Rome while Biden holds a rally in Atlanta.
Georgia is quite simply ground zero for Trump’s unraveling and he is almost single-handedly responsible for turning the state from red to battleground. Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose it since 1992, when young Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton bested President George H.W. Bush by less than 1 point.
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After being caught on tape ordering Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to help him negate the results, sore loser Trump depressed turnout and hobbled Republicans in both of the state’s Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021.
But Trump wasn’t done yet. In 2022, Trump manifested another GOP loss, tapping disgraced former footballer Herschel Walker to take on Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. Warnock capitalized, defeating Walker by a nearly 3-point margin to become the first Black Georgian to be elected to a full term in the U.S. Senate.
That same cycle, Trump turned the state party inside out with a failed attempt to unseat GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who certified the 2020 election. Kemp has told high-dollar donors that the Trump-aligned state party can no longer be trusted to help elect Republican candidates and warned that Trump’s obsession with the 2020 election will sink Republican hopes in 2024.
So when Trump returns to the state this weekend, he will be revisiting an erstwhile GOP stronghold that he has torn asunder.
Biden’s plan to visit the Peach State on the same day isn’t just impeccable timing: It’s an aggressive strategy by Team Biden to highlight the candidates’ differences. The tactic follows not only last week’s Texas split-screen, but the candidates’ dueling speeches in the Detroit area last fall, when Trump skipped the second Republican primary debate.
Trump’s campaign thought their candidate would own the moment, but Biden stole his thunder, joining the United Auto Workers’ picket line in a presidential first. The UAW eventually won historic contracts, and in January, the union unequivocally endorsed Biden.
Georgia still leans Republican without a doubt, but Trump has repeatedly given Democrats an opening to exploit—and Biden is taking him up on it.
Democratic state party chair Rep. Nikema Williams told AJC’s Bluestein, “We’re not a red state. We’re not a blue state. Georgia is periwinkle. We are a true battleground state, and we know that we have to work and fight for every vote.”
Georgia Democrats, Williams added, are “working in every county so that no one is left out.”
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