Kemp takes aim at Trump, says GOP needs to be ‘focused on future’ to beat Biden
Rachel Schilke
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Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) plans on helping the Republican presidential nominee win Georgia, no matter who it is — but he appeared to take a swipe at former President Donald Trump, believing that the party should select a candidate that is “focused on the future.”
Kemp said in an interview with the Washington Examiner that rehashing the 2020 election results, a common pastime of Trump’s, would not be an asset in rallying Georgia voters to vote Republican.
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“We got to … be focused on the future. And I think if you know any candidate’s willing to do that, they have a chance of winning,” Kemp said. “But if they don’t, I think they’re going to have a very hard time, at least in Georgia, anyway.”
Georgia has felt the ramifications of people who claim the 2020 election was stolen. A special grand jury out of Fulton County released a report in February that determined at least one of close to 50 witnesses may have committed perjury.
The jury reportedly recommended multiple indictments related to conspiracy or racketeering, with hints that Trump himself may be included in the list of possible defendants.
Trump has continued to deny the 2020 election results, most recently refusing to admit defeat when he appeared on CNN’s town hall in New Hampshire.
“We did fantastically,” he said at the town hall regarding his previous administration and the 2020 election. “When you look at that result, and you look at what happened during that election, unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happened.”
Kemp has avoided answering questions for months about whether he will seek a presidential run in the future. He instead said that he is “committed” to securing a GOP win for the White House in 2024 and touted his role as a “true conservative” that defied Trump and his allies.
“I think the longer that things went on and the farther we got away from the election and from COVID, people realized that I was being a true conservative,” Kemp said. “I was following the law and the Constitution, and I simply gave people their right to choose to open their business or go back to work. And I fought for them when a lot of other people wouldn’t, and they remembered that.”
He added that he could not control Trump getting “mad at me” but that he could control the way “I governed, and standing by my principles and conservative values and just doing the right thing.”
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“We’ve got to give people a reason to vote for us, and we’ve got to stay focused on the future,” Kemp said. “And that’s what I did, and that’s why I got reelected — because I had done what I promised people, and I stood up and fought for them and told them what I was going to do if I got reelected. And that’s what I did.”
“My message to people has been the way you win states like Georgia and other swing states is you got to be for something, you got to focus on the future, and you got to win,” he said. “And there isn’t going to be a win in the White House unless we win Georgia.”