ATLANTA (AP) — President joe biden and former president donald trump On Saturday, fresh off a landslide victory on Super Tuesday that almost guaranteed a rematch in November, he held dueling rallies in Georgia, warning of dire consequences for the country if his opponent were re-elected to the White House.
The state was a pivotal battleground in 2020 — a battleground that President Trump found himself in four years ago. was indicted here for his push “Please find 11,780 votes” and overturn Biden's victory — and both parties are gearing up for another close race in the state this year.
Mr. Biden began his speech at a rally in Atlanta by saying that Mr. Trump was traveling across the state with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. fire brand A lawmaker who rose from the fringes of the party to the forefront. “You can tell a lot about the people you hang out with,” Biden said to applause. Biden noted that the previous day, Trump hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has rolled back his country's democracy, at his club in Florida.
“If he says he wants to be a dictator, I believe him,” Biden said of Trump. “Our freedoms are literally on the ballot this November.”
Biden hosted the rally at Pullman Yards, a 27-acre arts and entertainment complex in Atlanta. Pullman Yards is a former industrial site that will be endorsed by three political groups, each representing Black people: Collective PAC, Latino Victory Fund, and AAPI Victory Fund. , Latino, Asian American, and Pacific Islander voters. The groups had announced pledges of $30 million to mobilize voters on Biden's behalf.
Meanwhile, President Trump has slammed Biden on the border, blaming him for the death of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia. Laken Riley last month. An immigrant who entered the United States illegally from Venezuela has been arrested and charged with murder. He hosted Riley's family at a gathering in Green's hometown of Rome.
“What Joe Biden did at our border was a crime against humanity and the people of this country, and it will never be tolerated,” Trump said, pledging the largest scale of deportations in history. “What a shame,” he said.
Before the rally, Biden said: expressed regret Trump's use of the word “illegal” in reference to Riley's alleged murderer during his State of the Union speech drew further criticism from the Trump campaign.
Trump, who took to the stage just as Biden was still speaking in another part of the state, skewered the president by demanding an apology and saying, “Are we crazy?” Ta.
“I say he was an illegal alien. He was an illegal immigrant. He was an illegal immigrant. And he shouldn't have been in our country and never was under Trump policies. “Let's go,'' he said to loud cheers.
President Trump also highlighted the very thing Biden had criticized him for, saying, “I had dinner last night with Viktor Orbán, a great gentleman from Hungary,'' and during the State of the Union address, Mr. Riley He praised Greene for yelling at Biden about the incident, calling her “very brave.” ”
Trump's rally supports hundreds of people in prison for their role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, when thousands of Trump supporters tried to stop the electoral count and overturn the 2020 presidential election It began with a message asking participants to stand up in order to do so. University voting.
The intensity of the rhetoric foreshadowed a grueling eight months of campaigning in the state.
“We're in a real battleground state right now,” said Rep. Nikema Williams, an Atlanta Democrat who is also the state party chair.
“With your votes, we will win Georgia in an epic landslide,” President Trump declared Saturday, repeating his lies about the 2020 election.
Once a Republican stronghold, Georgia is now so competitive that the two parties can't agree on how to describe today's divide. “It's a 52-48 vote,” said Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who controls state government. “We're neither blue nor red,” Williams countered, but said “periwinkle,” pointing to Biden's 2020 victory and Georgia's Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. This is an argument in support of Democratic senators being sent to Washington.
At the very least, both Biden and Trump agree that they each have their own paths to victory, and that there are many obstacles along the way.
“There are a lot of good reasons for Mr. Biden's numbers, and we can certainly talk about them. So it's a situation where Mr. Trump absolutely wins the race,” Kemp said in a statement sponsored by Punchbowl News. said in a recent forum. “I think it's possible he could lose the race. I think it's going to be a lot tougher than people think.”
Biden's lead in 2020 was about a quarter of a point. Warnock won the 2022 Senate runoff election by three points. Kemp was elected by a 1.5 percentage point margin in 2018, but widened that margin to 7.5 percentage points in his 2022 reelection bid, resulting in a crushing defeat in the battleground state.
In both races, Democrats held significant advantages in the heart of the Atlanta metropolitan area, where Biden will vote Saturday. Democrats also performed well in Columbus and Savannah, as well as a handful of rural, majority-black counties. However, in other rural areas, small towns, and the smallest cities such as Rome, Republicans prevailed.
More than 3,000 people packed into the event center at Trump's rally Saturday in the Appalachian foothills city to hear the former president speak. His campaign handed out signs featuring Laken Riley's likeness.
Candice Duvall, of Hampton, Georgia, wore a white “Trump 2024” T-shirt, a gold wallet that read “Trump,” one earring that read “Never Surrender,” and the other. She wore earrings with a picture of Trump on them and declared: Her candidate “is going to save this country.”
She accused Biden of fumbling to pronounce Riley's name during Thursday's State of the Union address.
“It happened right here in Georgia. It hits home for us too. We know why it happened. We know why,” she said, adding that the influx into this country He added that too many immigrants do so.
Duvall said he thinks Trump is attracting voters who previously didn't like him because they “now understand the differences” with Biden.
“If someone gives you a sirloin and then takes it away and gives you a hamburger, you're going to want to eat sirloin again,” she said.
But the same State of the Union address criticized by Republicans also served as a source of momentum for Biden, who publicly challenged President Trump's commitment to democracy, America's allies, the middle class, and women's reproductive rights. Ta.
Supporters saw his spirited performance as allaying concerns about his advanced age of 81 years. Biden accused the 77-year-old Trump of having “the oldest ideas” and vowed to exact revenge on his opponents if the former president returns to the White House.
___
Price reported from Rome, Georgia. AP writers Bill Barrow and Jeff Amy in Atlanta, Jill Colvin in New York, and AP White House correspondent Zeke Miller in Wilmington, Delaware, contributed to this report.
