Racing to win more metro Atlanta votes, former President Donald Trump kicked off the start of Georgia’s early voting Tuesday by pushing a dark view of Democratic immigration policy before a rowdy crowd at Cobb Energy Centre.
And he hurled insults at Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats during a Fox News town hall in Forsyth County, where he was pressed to sharpen his stance on abortion before an audience of women in the deep-red exurban area.
He used his late-night rally in Cobb County to excoriate Harris for what he described as an out-of-control immigration system, leaning heavily on an issue that helped propel him to the White House for the first time in 2016.
“The United States is now an occupied country, but on Nov. 5, 2024, that will be liberation day,” he said to cheering supporters, falsely suggesting later that entire communities were held captive by migrants in the country illegally.
“I will rescue every town across the country that has been invaded and conquered,” Trump said.
Trump’s calls for the largest domestic deportation program in U.S. history contrasts with Harris’ support for a comprehensive immigration overhaul that includes pathways to citizenship for some immigrants in the country without legal status and tougher border security policies.
Trump’s two-stop sweep through Georgia came as the campaign entered a new phase with the start of in-person advanced voting, as voters eager to make their voices heard quickly shattered records.
More than 300,000 Georgians voted early on the first day of the three-week period, setting a high-water mark for early voting at this stage in the race.
The visit came the same day Gov. Brian Kemp deployed his political network to make a significant push for the former president. The Kemp-aligned federal political action committee Hardworking Americans plans to fund a statewide digital, mail and text initiative to bolster Trump.
“Brian Kemp has done a really good job,” Trump said Tuesday of the governor he often attacked in recent years. The crowd greeted the praise with an ovation.
Both campaigns are shifting more of their focus to Georgia as polls show Trump and Harris knotted in a close race. The vice president plans to headline a Saturday rally in Atlanta, her fifth visit to the state since becoming the Democratic nominee.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Harris and her allies greeted Trump’s stops with their own blitz. The campaign launched a minute-long ad this morning on small-town radio stations in Georgia that highlights her running mate Tim Walz’s plans to improve the lives of rural Americans.
The Democratic National Committee hoisted billboards in metro Atlanta that blasted Trump’s anti-abortion stance, a theme echoed by Georgia Democratic leaders.
“He bragged that he’s the one who overturned Roe v. Wade,” U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock said of the 2022 ruling that reversed the constitutional right to abortion. “We ought to give him full credit for that, and we ought to make him pay for it at the polls.”
Trump brushed off Warnock’s comments.
“I don’t know this guy,” the former president said of Warnock, who beat Trump-backed Herschel Walker to win reelection in 2022, “but he got lucky as hell to win, I’ll tell you that much.”
Trump’s visit telegraphed his campaign’s closing strategy. Senior Republicans worry that split-ticket voters who helped give Biden the edge in 2020 — and then elected Jon Ossoff and Warnock to the U.S. Senate — could break against him again.
That’s why instead of setting his sights on the deeply conservative parts of rural Georgia he visited in the closing parts of the 2020 race, Trump is taking a different tack in this campaign.
He’s scheduled two stops in metro Atlanta over the next eight days, with a visit to a National Rifle Association convention in Savannah sandwiched in between.
In Forsyth County, Trump fielded questions from several of the 100 or so women in the audience, as well as host Harris Faulkner, during a Fox News town hall on “women’s issues” that will air at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
One of the most pointed questions came from a woman who identified herself as Pamela, who pressed Trump to explain his abortion stance.
“Facing the question of abortion, women are entitled to do what they want to and need to do with their bodies, including their unborn,” said Pamela, who like other attendees was instructed by organizers not to share her last name. “That’s on them, regardless of the circumstance. Some are necessary to save their own lives. Why is the government involved in women’s basic rights?”
Trump danced around an answer, noting that some states have loosened regulations since Roe was overturned in 2022. That led Faulkner to point out that some states, such as Georgia, have enacted laws that make it more difficult to get an abortion.
“It’s going to be redone,” he said. “You’ll end up with the vote of the people. And some of them, I agree, they’re too tough, too tough. And those are going to be redone because already there’s a movement in those states.”
Voters have supported preserving or expanding abortion access in every state where the issue has been on the ballot since 2022. But in Georgia, the question is unlikely to be put before voters because it requires two-thirds support in each chamber of the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Back in Cobb County, Trump devoted much of his sometimes rambling speech to immigration policy. But many of his supporters focused their remarks on pressing Republicans to cast their ballots early, and a digital sign urging Republicans to “make your plan to vote today” hung over the mainstage.
“They’re turning out in all the right places,” Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said of the soaring early turnout on Tuesday. “I think there’s going to be more crossover vote than the Democrats are expecting.”
