Trump-Kemp feud bubbles over at Atlanta rally
ATLANTA - Former President Donald Trump did not hold back his criticism of Gov. Brian Kemp in his Atlanta rally speech on Saturday at the Georgia State University Convocation Center.
This is just the latest spark in the controversy in the feud between the two Republican figures.
Trump attacked Kemp on his social media site Truth Social before his rally and said Kemp should be "fighting Crime, not fighting Unity and the Republican Party." He also criticized Kemp’s wife, Marty, for saying she would write in her husband’s name for president this fall instead of voting for the Republican nominee.
RELATED: Trump-Vance Atlanta Rally Recap: Supporters turned away, Kemp attacks, Kamala Harris, Laken Riley
At Saturday’s rally, Trump assailed Kemp in a roughly 10-minute tirade, blaming him for his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden and for not stopping a local district attorney from prosecuting him and several associates for his efforts to overturn the results.
"He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor," Trump said. "Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy."
Responding on X, Kemp told the former president to "leave my family out of it," urging him to stop "engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past."
In a state where every vote counts like Georgia, some Republican strategists are concerned to hear the two Republican Party leaders go at it, worrying that it could lead to a loss of the edge they need to win.
Republican political commentator and member of the Georgia Gang Phil Kent says Trump is upset by the fact that a Kemp appointee on the Georgia elections board is stopping three other members of the board from implementing what they call "election integrity laws."
"According to the Trump folks that I've talked to and GOP people I've talked to, there was a spark that started just recently because of the state election board. And there are three new members on there. Conservatives, they want to do some election integrity rules. But the chairman is a Kemp appointee. And there seemed to be some resisting from that person," Kent said.
During the rally, Trump praised the election board members and disparaged Kemp's appointee, Kemp himself, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
"They don't want the vote to be honest. In my opinion, they want us to lose. That's actually my opinion. And we can't let that happen because if we lose Georgia, we lose the whole thing and our country goes to hell," he told the crowd.
Kent says that kind of disunity in the Republican Party may end up hurting Trump's chances in Georgia.
"Of course, what does that do, let’s say, for the math of the election in November? You want to be adding rather than subtracting votes," he explained.
However, the political commentator is taking an optimistic view and hopes the two leaders will call a truce.
"I think there's going to be an effort by both sides to smoke the peace pipe," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.