Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto Wednesday night that he will support former president Donald J. Trump in 2024, if Trump decides to run for president again and becomes the Republican Party nominee.
“Absolutely, I’m going to support the nominee,” Kemp said. “As I said, again, I worked very hard for the president. I think his ideas … will be part of our party for a long time in the future. And Republicans, we need to have a big tent. I mean, there’s a lot of great ideas out there.”
Kemp acknowledged that while the pair might not always get along, “the president deserves a lot of credit,” and that “he’s not going away.”
The governor made his comments despite a vicious battle with the former president over November’s election results. Kemp eventually took the side of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who demanded that Trump accept the election results and leave office “quietly.” Georgia’s Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) also encouraged Kemp to move away from Trump.
Trump’s campaign battled with the state over election results, especially as they pertained to absentee ballots. As of Thursday, legally-required chain of custody documents for more than 400,000 absentee ballots submitted by drop box on November 3 have not been produced by the state. Biden was declared the winner of Georgia by just fewer than 12,000 votes.
Late in November, Trump said he was “ashamed” that he endorsed Kemp for governor.
Earlier this week, Trump said that his support for Kemp during the 2018 gubernatorial primary was “an endorsement that hurt us.”
“I endorsed him, he ended up winning the election and he certainly was not very effective for the Republican Party, to put it nicely,” Trump said.
Trump also called for Kemp to resign in December, which Kemp brushed off by saying he was focused on the state’s January 5 U.S. Senate runoff elections.
In those elections, both incumbent Republicans, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, were unseated by Democrat challengers, giving Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Kemp said he supported Trump in 2020 and then Kemp supported all of the changes to the election laws (Abrams consent decree). All Kemp is saying is that he can repeat 2020 again.
Governor checked which way the wind was blowing. It is not blowing in his direction. How can he and Ratburger believe things were above board when there is still so many unanswered questions about ballots in the election.