Donald Trump continues to attack Brian Kemp as top Republicans in Georgia seek peace

Georgia Republican leaders are trying to move past Donald Trump’s renewed attacks on Gov. Brian Kemp. The former president isn’t letting them.

Hours after Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon tried to shift the focus away from the nasty rift within the Republican Party, Trump unloaded again on the governor during a Thursday news conference.

“In Pennsylvania, I have great relationships. In Georgia, I do, too, but unfortunately not with the governor,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question. “I’ve never understood it. When you get somebody elected, they’re supposed to like you.”

On whether their tattered relationship can be fixed, Trump was noncommittal: “I hope we can repair it, but if we don’t, the people are still the people and they’re going to vote.”

It came as a new poll conducted by a bipartisan firm showed a deadlocked race in Georgia between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris and highlighted Kemp’s high approval ratings in Georgia.

Trump revived their long-running fight at his Atlanta rally on Saturday, when he again blamed the second-term governor for his 2020 defeat and criticized Kemp’s wife, Marty, for refusing to endorse him.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Since then, senior Republicans have been forced to grapple with a political dilemma they thought was behind them, as they confront new questions about how they could support Trump even as he attacks the state’s top Republican.

The Trump-Kemp drama is nothing new, but it had quieted after Kemp trounced Trump’s handpicked GOP recruit in 2022 and defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams a few months later.

Now, it has reemerged at a treacherous moment for Republicans as Democrats grow more optimistic about capturing Georgia for the second consecutive White House race.

Kemp, for his part, has stayed mostly tight-lipped about the feud aside from a terse message urging Trump to focus on Harris rather than stoking the once-dormant tiff. Friday, while speaking at an event organized by conservative commentator Erick Erickson, Kemp did not mention Trump by name, referring to him instead as the “GOP nominee” and discussed his concerns about how the “distractions” of the internal rift could affect this year’s presidential election.

Over much of the year, Kemp has taken steps to calm the waters. Although he reluctantly acknowledged he cast a blank ballot this year in Georgia’s presidential primary, he said he would vote for Trump in November and pledged to marshal his resources to help the GOP ticket.

Trump’s most recent broadsides against Kemp undercut efforts by top state Republicans to frame Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her new running mate, as too liberal and out of touch for Georgia.

At a Trump campaign event Thursday in Buckhead, Jones downplayed the ongoing rift.

“Look, I’m great friends with both the governor and the president. And while I always want my friends to be friends, that doesn’t always happen,” Jones said.

“Gov. Kemp is our second-term governor. He’s not on the ballot this November,” Jones said. “The battle is on the presidential race. That’s what we’re going to focus on.”

Still, when pressed about Trump’s attacks, Jones didn’t dispute it was a growing headache for the campaign even as he sounded an optimistic note.

“Those things, you wish they wouldn’t happen and sometimes they do happen in campaigns,” the lieutenant governor said. “And the good thing is we have the opportunity to bridge the gap between our two leaders.”

Senior Republicans have reason to hastily heal the internal fissures. Several prominent election analysts this week shifted Georgia into the “toss-up” category, citing the shifting political ground after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race.

And a new poll by the bipartisan team of Fabrizio Ward & Impact Research released Thursday showed the race between Harris and Trump in Georgia is within the margin of error.

The same poll also underscores why Trump’s fight with Kemp is so dicey. The governor is more popular than Trump and every other politician polled, with 61% of those surveyed approving of his job performance, compared with roughly one-third who don’t.