Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp wasn’t exactly received warmly at this weekend’s convention of the Georgia Republican Party. With criticism of Kemp from former President Donald Trump presumably in mind, attendees loudly booed the governor as he attempted to deliver his remarks. Once Kemp mentioned Georgia’s economic re-opening, the crowd’s reaction turned into applause — but their dislike of him on an individual level already seemed pretty clearly established. In theory, GOP infighting could help further boost Democrats if Republicans refuse to coalesce around certain candidates.
Check out the boos that Kemp faced in the footage below:
A brutal reception for @GovKemp at the state GOP convention, where activists are still infuriated he refused to illegally overturn Trump’s November defeat. #gapol https://t.co/EWxpQCwpJm
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) June 5, 2021
In the time between last year’s presidential election and Joe Biden’s inauguration as president this January, Kemp faced pressure — including from Donald Trump himself — to intervene in the process for the sake of trying to get Biden’s win overturned. Biden won Georgia, securing the first victory in the state for a Democratic presidential nominee since the 1990s. More broadly, Trump has also accused Kemp and other Republican leaders of presiding over an initially security problem-plagued electoral system in Georgia, despite the fact that no meaningful evidence of systematic electoral security problems in the state — or anywhere else in the country — has ever emerged in connection to last year’s election.
Notably, Georgia reporter Beau Evans shared that, at the Georgia GOP convention this weekend, a video message from Trump himself played, with the former president saying — in reference to his false claims of widespread election fraud — that “we’re going to get things back in place, and it’s going to be soon.” Trump was recently reported to be privately pushing the idea that he’s going to be reinstated as president by August of this year, and this video message seems to support that reporting. In other words, a former United States president is seemingly harboring a fantasy of seeing the current U.S. government overthrown. That’s not great!
Fmr. President Donald Trump has a video here thanking supporters and says “strange things happened” in the 2020 election:
“We’re going to work together, we’re going to get things back in place, and it’s going to be soon.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/Mt1KyHoFrA
— Beau Evans (@beauvans) June 5, 2021
