His own worst enemy
Thousands of Trump fans and Republicans waited hours, some staking out their spots in line last night, to hear from the former President and his running mate, J.D. Vance, as the Georgia State University Convocation Center held its second Presidential rally in a week.
After jettisoning Biden, the Democrats have tightened their race in Georgia against Trump. With Biden as the nominee, Georgia was beginning to look more like the red wall it’s been since Clinton won the state in 1992 rather than a swing state it has seemed to recently become, but recent polling has shown that is no longer the case and the Peach State may once again be in play for Democrats.
What has happened in the last 24 hours has only made it more difficult for Trump to win Georgia, and thus win the Presidential election.
In the day leading up to Trump’s Atlanta rally, Georgia Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon released a bizarre and typo-filled letter to former Georgia Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan. While Duncan’s decision to endorse “anyone but Trump” has been criticized by both myself and Scot Turner, McKoon’s letter, which read somewhere between a David Shafer campaign hit piece from the 2018 primary Shafer would eventually lose to Duncan and typical MAGA rhetoric, quickly went personal against Duncan. What McKoon’s letter (and the eventual response from Duncan) did was take the news cycle off of any positives that could have been gained from the Trump visit, and make the media story about more GOP infighting with McKoon weakly demanding that Duncan stop calling himself a “Republican.”
McKoon’s letter played extremely well with the MAGA base of the party with one person texting me about my criticism, “There you go again…people are celebrating the move.”
However, at this point in the campaign with Trump the nominee and less than 100 days left before the November election, Josh McKoon and the Georgia Republican Party need to be focused on winning over skeptical Republicans and swing voters, not making personal attacks against Geoff Duncan and threatening him with silly sanctions that cannot be enforced. What’s more, McKoon’s little freak-out about Duncan only adds more credence to Duncan and his crusade as a threat to Trump’s chances of winning Georgia.
However, today, before his Atlanta rally, Trump showed the biggest threat to him winning Georgia is, in fact, Donald Trump himself.
A little more than a month ago, Donald Trump seemed to have it all together. Between a debate performance that exposed in ways the Democrats could no longer hide the ineptitude and mental decline of President Joe Biden, to a more controlled and more discipled messaging by him, Donald Trump was slowly bringing the factions of the Republican Party back together in a winning coalition. Then came a would-be assassin’s bullet, and in mere seconds, Donald Trump brought near complete unity back to the Republican Party.
With bandage on his ear, Trump walked into a revived and re-energized Republican National Convention strong with a united Republican Party, and, with Trump himself focused on his message at the convention; “unity.”
However, in a historic move, immediately after the RNC, the Democrats got Joe Biden to bail on his own re-election and circled their wagons around VP Kamala Harris…and Trump has not seemed to be able to adjust his campaign to respond as Harris has tightened the gap and brought enthusiasm back to the Democratic ticket.
While still fumbling to regain his footing, Donald Trump then decides hours before he is supposed to speak to Georgia voters, that the best way to continue his message of “unity” and win Georgia is to personally attack Republican Governor Brian Kemp, First Lady Marty Kemp, and Sos. Brad Raffensperger.
And so the unity built by an attempted assassin’s bullet and a fantastic and inspiring Republican National Convention evaporates in a matter of moments.
Social media was quick to react. Peach Pundit’s Editor Emeritus Erick Erickson said on X.com, “The Trump rally in Atlanta makes it more likely Kamala Harris wins. He’s his own worst enemy.”
Jay Morgan, former Executive Director of the Georgia Republican Party, while praising Kemp’s record, was also critical of Trump’s oddly timed attack:
Why Trump chose to go after Brian Kemp at a time when Trump should be focused on defeating Kamala Harris can only be answered by Donald Trump. While Kemp hasn’t been the most vocal Trump advocate, he has clearly shown that he had put aside the personal and professional attacks Trump and his allies heaped on him in the wake of his 2020 loss and was focused on defeating the Democratic ticket, even traveling to the Republican National Convention with that message.
As bizarre as McKoon’s message to Duncan was, unlike Kemp, criticism of Duncan in GOP circles was at least deserved.
Many Republicans in swing districts, including Scott Hilton who is trying to keep the North Fulton State House seat he won back in 2022 after narrowly losing it to a Democrat in 2020, have posted their support of Kemp in the wake of the Trump comments.
Kemp’s statement stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s in that it shows statesmanship while Trump has, once again, shown himself to be ridiculous. And despite his attacks against Kemp, Trump will benefit from Kemp’s political operations as it works to turn out Republican voters to win legislative seats, some of whom will naturally vote for Trump as well.
In the meanwhile, given the events of the past 24 hours, if Trump/Vance does lose Georgia, then Trump and McKoon will only have themselves to blame…though I’m quite sure they will once again, just like in 2020, pass the buck with conjured fantasies about “stolen elections” to absolve themselves of their own failure.
