Global Courant
Trump is also under investigation in the state over whether he broke the law when he asked Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the more than 11,000 votes he needed to win the state in 2020, in a recorded telephone conversation.
The public booed Raffensperger when Trump mentioned his name.
Several attendees wore stickers with a red line over the words “voting machines,” indicating they believed the 2020 election had been stolen.
Kemp and most of Georgia’s statewide elected officials were missing from the event. Raffensperger told Fox News Saturday afternoon that their absence was intentional. He said statewide office holders were not invited.
Republican Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones was there — and frequently had to answer questions about why. (He joked it was because the people there liked him so much.)
Another person present was conservative Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor, R-Ga., who brought the former president to the stage for brief remarks.
Trump also leaned into many of his standard themes of his rallies, about immigration, crime, and even how the country needs him – and only him – to fend off World War III.
“I will prevent World War III. … Without me it will happen”, he said. “And this will not be a conventional war with army tanks going back and forth and firing at each other. This will be a nuclear war. This will be destruction – perhaps destruction of the entire world. I will prevent it. No one else can say that. “
Some speakers avoided Trump’s denunciation altogether, focusing their remarks on more traditional Republican favorites such as criticism of federal spending, Biden and the administration’s response to Covid, but there were still plenty of fiery defenses of Trump days before his arraignment scheduled for Tuesday in Miami.
“If you want to get to President Trump, you have to go through me and 75 million Americans just like me,” former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake told Georgia Republicans Friday night. “And most of us are card-carrying members of the (National Rifle Association). That is not a threat, that is a public service announcement.”
The script is flipped, at least for now, for most of Trump’s political enemies within his own party. For conservatives across the country, impeachment against Trump represents not the delivery of justice, but rather an armed Justice Department headed by President Joe Biden, using it to target his political opponents.
“The weaponry of federal law enforcement represents a deadly threat to a free society,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main rival, tweeted Friday. “For years we have witnessed an uneven application of the law depending on political affiliation.”
“Why so zealous about chasing Trump yet so passive about Hillary and Hunter,” he added.
Pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down had people outside the arena handing out pamphlets about DeSantis’ record, the Florida governor’s only presence at an event filled with people wearing Trump merchandise and carrying signs in support of the former president.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Georgia GOP convention.John Bazemore/AP
Trump has drawn criticism from a handful of Republicans since the indictment, most notably Chris Christie. The former New Jersey governor is formulating his own presidential bid as a mission to take down Trump. He said the details of the Trump indictment were “devastating.”
But for the most part, Republicans have vocally supported Trump, or tried to walk a tightrope by expressing concern about what’s in the indictment but clinging to their belief that the Justice Department is “armed” .
“It is unacceptable that sensitive information, which could undermine our national strategy, has been so carelessly handled by current and former members of the executive branch,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, RS.D, who was a Trump critic in the past. . “I am concerned about the Justice Department’s decision to pursue this case against the former president at a time when our current president has also admitted to possessing documents in his absence.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been feuding with Trump since refusing to halt certification of the 2020 election results, said he was “deeply distressed to see this charge moving forward” and called it a “sad day for America”. in remarks at the North Carolina Republican Convention Saturday.
Amid the firestorm, Trump’s campaign is moving ahead in anticipation of a bump in the polls, as it did briefly in September after federal agents searched his Mar-a-Lago home as part of the investigation of classified documents, and again in March when Trump was indicted in New York on charges that he falsified business documents related to hush money he paid to allegedly cover up business ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Hours before the start of the Georgia event, Trump’s campaign released a poll showing him leading DeSantis 44-21 in Iowa and declaring Trump the “clear front-runner” in the state seen as key for DeSantis if he wants to build early momentum to knock Trump off.
Trump was also scheduled to speak Saturday night at the North Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention.
