Trump teams up with former GOP nemesis to survey storm damage in key battleground state
Former President Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp will appear together on Friday for the first time in four years as they receive a briefing on recovery and relief efforts one week after Hurricane Helene tore a path of destruction after slamming into the southeast United States.
The former president and the popular two-term conservative Georgia governor are scheduled to be briefed on storm damage and to “deliver remarks to the press” as they team up during a visit to Evans, a town in the northeast portion of the state.
The event is not being described as a campaign stop.
For Trump, it’s his second trip this week to Georgia, following a visit on Monday in Valdosta. The state, along with North and South Carolina, and Tennessee, took direct hits from the powerful storm. The death toll from Hurricane Helene now stands at over 220, with hundreds still missing, more than 800,000 people in seven states still without power or running water, and damage estimated in the billions.
TRUMP CLAIMS BIDEN, HARRIS, STORM RESPONSE IS INCOMPETENT
With Trump locked in a margin-of-error presidential race with Vice President Kamala Harris, and Georgia and North Carolina crucial battleground states, Trump has repeatedly slammed President Biden and Harris over their handing of the federal response to the storm.
“It is going down as the WORST & MOST INCOMPETENTLY MANAGED ‘STORM,’ AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL, EVER SEEN BEFORE,” Trump claimed in a social media post on Thursday, as Biden spent a second straight day in the southeast surveying storm damage.
HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS REPORTING ON HURRICANE HELENE AFTERMATH
And Harris stopped in Georgia on Wednesday for storm briefings and to meet with local officials and victims of the storm, as she canceled a campaign swing in another key electoral state, Pennsylvania.
The vice president heads to North Carolina on Saturday to survey damage and get briefed on federal, state and local efforts.
When Trump visited Valdosta on Monday, he wasn’t joined by Kemp, who was surveying storm damage in other parts of Georgia.
For two years after his 2020 election defeat to President Biden, which included a razor-thin loss in Georgia, Trump attacked Kemp for failing to overturn the election results in his state.
Trump urged, and then supported, a 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary challenge against Kemp by former Sen. David Perdue.
The former president toned down his criticism of the governor after Kemp crushed Perdue to easily win renomination on his way to re-election.
KEMP SAYS THERE’S NO PATH TO 270 FOR TRUMP WITHOUT GEORGIA
But in August, Trump went on a 10-minute tirade against Kemp at a rally in Atlanta just blocks from the Georgia State Capitol. He blamed the governor not only for failing to overturn the 2020 vote count but also for not stopping a county prosecutor from indicting the former president for his attempts to reverse the results.
“He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor,” Trump said. “Little Brian. Little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”
But just a couple of weeks later, in a major about face for Trump, the former president praised Kemp in a social media post “for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country.”
“I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the Republican presidential nominee added.
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Trump’s change of heart came amid a margin-of-error presidential race in Georgia.
The Peach State is one of seven key battlegrounds whose razor-thin margins decided Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump and are likely to determine whether Harris or Trump succeeds the president in the White House.
Republican strategists agree that to recapture Georgia, Trump will need assistance from Kemp’s well-oiled and funded political machine to turn out GOP voters.
Kemp emphasized in an exclusive national interview with Fox News Digital in August that “there’s no path for former President Trump to win or any Republican . . . to get to 270 [electoral votes] without Georgia.”
The governor said his state “should be one that we win if we have all the mechanics that we need. And I’m working hard to help provide those in a lot of ways and turn the Republican vote out.”
“It’s my belief that we cannot afford four more years of [President] Joe Biden and Kamala Harris or Kamala Harris and [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz, which I think would probably be worse than even Biden and Harris were,” Kemp said.
Kemp also told Fox News at the time that Trump’s tirade from early August “was a small distraction that’s in the past” and emphasized that Republicans “need to stay focused on the future. . . . We need to be telling people why they should vote for us, what we’re going to do to make things better than they are right now. And there’s a host of issues that I think you could contrast Kamala Harris and her record.”