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(Reuters) – President Donald Trump will speak with Republican U.S. senators in Georgia on Saturday who are facing the January runoff, but some members of his party worry he could do more harm than good by focusing on personal complaints about his defeat in the November 3 elections. .
Trump has repeatedly and without proof claimed widespread fraud in the November elections, a claim rejected by state and federal officials, including in Georgia, that Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to run in a generation.
The outgoing president has also lashed out at Republicans who have refused to back up his claims, such as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Counts from across the state, including a detailed hand-held review of some 5 million ballots, revealed no significant irregularities.
Trump’s penchant for making his political rallies all about him – and now, about his claims that the US electoral system is rigged – has raised concerns among some Republicans that his appearance in South Georgia could end up rejecting. to the voters.
“If you spend most of your time talking about the two candidates, how wonderful they are, what they have accomplished,” it might help, said Matt Towery, a former Republican lawmaker from Georgia who is now a political analyst and pollster.
“If you talk about them for 10 minutes and spend the rest of the time telling everyone how terrible Brian Kemp is, that will only make things worse.”
The January 5 runoff that will pit the two Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, against Democratic hopefuls Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, will determine which party controls the United States Senate. Democrats would need to win both seats to deny Republicans a majority they could use to block much of Biden’s legislative agenda.
Earlier this week, two attorneys who were involved in legal challenges to Biden’s victory, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, explicitly told Trump supporters not to vote in the second round unless Republican state leaders acted. more aggressive way to annul the results of the presidential elections.
Trump’s attacks have prompted passionate reprimands from election officials of both parties, including Gabriel Sterling, the Republican manager of Georgia’s voting systems, who this week blamed the president and his allies for threats of violence against election workers and officials. .
“I think the rhetoric that they are involved in now is literally stifling the vote,” Sterling told Reuters on Friday.
Trump’s refusal to budge has forced Loeffler and Perdue to walk a fine line. Even when they warn voters of the dangers of a Democratic majority in the Senate, they will not say that Biden won the White House and will echo Trump’s attacks on Raffensperger.
On Friday, Trump posted on Twitter that the best way to guarantee a victory for Perdue and Loeffler is to uncover the fraud and declare him the winner.
“The spirits will soar and everyone will rush to VOTE!” he wrote.
Trump’s attacks could hurt senators with voters in two ways, said Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.
By undermining faith in the process, Trump could convince some of his supporters that there is no point in voting in January. At the same time, his attacks on Kemp and other officials could discourage moderates who would otherwise be inclined to support the rulers.
“The more Trump talks about the presidential elections and criticizes the way they were conducted here, the bigger the problem for Senate candidates and the more likely he is to reduce enthusiasm among a segment of the electorate,” Abramowitz said. said.
Vice President Mike Pence held a rally in Savannah on Friday to support Perdue and Loeffler and was greeted with chants of “stop the robbing” from attendees.
“I know we all have our doubts about the last election, and actually I hear some people say, ‘Just don’t vote.’ My countrymen, if they don’t vote, they win,” Pence said.
Former President Barack Obama held a virtual event with Warnock and Ossoff at the same time. Biden said Friday that he will also travel to Georgia at some point to campaign with Democratic candidates.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax in Princeton, NJ; Editing by Scott Malone and Sonya Hepinstall)
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