Trump makes Harris, Brian Kemp focal point of attacks at Georgia rally

Former President Trump went on the attack against Vice President Harris at a campaign rally in Atlanta Saturday, after Harris campaigned at the same venue earlier this week. 

“We have to work hard to define her,” Trump said, speaking to supporters at Georgia State University. The former president then appeared to backtrack, saying “I don’t want to even define her.”

“I just want to say who she is. She’s a horror show,” he added. “She’ll destroy our country.”

The former president hit numbers on a slew of issues from the economy to immigration to her record as a prosecutor. His latest attacks on his opponent, including claiming she had a “low IQ,” come after he vowed to “unleash hell” on Harris at the rally in a post online Friday. 

“At this time tomorrow, Crooked Kamala’s worst nightmares come true,” Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social.

In a statement responding to the rally, former George Lieutenant Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) referred the former president as “unhinged” and “angry.”

“If you were able to see through Donald Trump’s incoherence and vindictiveness tonight, you saw a Donald Trump who does not care about uniting this country or speaking to the voters who will decide this election,” Duncan said in a statement on behalf of the Harris campaign. “Millions of Americans are fed up with his grievance-filled campaign focused only on himself. Tonight we heard a particularly unhinged, angry version of the same Donald Trump that Georgia rejected in 2020.”

Hours before the rally Saturday, Trump backed out of a Sept. 10 debate with Harris on ABC News. Instead, he proposed a Sept. 4 debate on Fox News. Harris, who was officially nominated Friday to top the Democratic ticket in November, said she is sticking with the ABC debate originally planned to be between Trump and President Biden.

The vice president was not the only focal point for Trump’s attacks Saturday, however. Prior to the rally online and in front of the Atlanta crowd, the former president lashed out at the Peach State’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

“Under these kinds of woke, radical, left policies, Atlanta is like a killing field and your governor ought to get off his a– and do something about it,” Trump said during the rally, also attended by his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio.)

The GOP nominee went on to say Kemp is “very bad for the Republican Party.”

Earlier Kemp urged Trump to focus on unity in a post on social media platform X, after Trump hit the governor for his policies on the economy and combatting crime in Georgia.

“Brian Kemp should focus his efforts on fighting Crime, not fighting Unity and the Republican Party! His Crime Rate in Georgia is terrible, his Crime Rate in Atlanta is the worst, and his Economy is average,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that the Republican governor would not have been able to defeat his former Democratic gubernatorial opponent Stacey Abrams without his endorsement. 

“He and his wife didn’t think he could win. I said, ‘I’m telling you you’re going to win.’ Then he won, he was happy, and his wife said, ‘Thank you Sir, we’ll never be able to make it up to you!’ Now she says she won’t Endorse me, and is going to ‘write in Brian Kemp’s name.’ Well, I don’t want her Endorsement, and I don’t want his,” the former president added.

Kemp responded on X, saying he was focused on defeating Democrats in November, not “petty” insults.

“My focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats — not engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past,” he wrote. “You should do the same, Mr. President, and leave my family out of it.”

Trump and Kemp have had a tumultuous relationship in recent years. After Biden flipped Georgia in 2020, the governor forcefully pushed back against Trump’s election fraud claims. 

The former president has repeatedly attacked him since and Kemp said he did not vote for Trump in Georgia’s Republican primary in May. 

Story was updated at 9:43 a.m. ET