Pressing to turn out his conservative base in the closing days of the campaign, Donald Trump traveled to metro Atlanta on Monday to make a direct appeal to the mostly white, evangelical voters he needs to win in great numbers to return to the White House.
At back-to-back events at a church in Powder Springs and on the campus of Georgia Tech, the former president berated Democratic policies before a crowd of pastors and revved up an audience of thousands at McCamish Pavilion by mocking Vice President Kamala Harris.
To cheers from the Atlanta audience, he made fun of Harris’ speaking style while saying her agenda was chock-full of “radical left lunatic policies.” He also accused the Democratic nominee of running a “campaign of demonization” against him.
Trump has cranked up his attacks on Harris as the election nears, using increasingly dark language about liberating an “occupied” nation. Democrats, meanwhile, have escalated their warnings that Trump would embrace an authoritarianism mindset should he win.
During the Georgia Tech rally, the Republican tried to turn that argument on its head, labeling Harris a “fascist” days after his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, told several media outlets that Trump met that despotic definition.
After falsely accusing Harris of characterizing voters who don’t support him as a “Nazi,” Trump told the crowd he was the “opposite of a Nazi.” And then: “She’s a fascist, OK? She’s a fascist.”
The rally came a day after Trump delivered his closing message at Madison Square Garden in New York, where speakers preceding him lobbed vulgar and racist insults at Harris and her Democratic supporters.
One Trump loyalist dubbed Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” while others labeled Jewish people as cheap, mocked Palestinians and called Harris the “devil,” “the Antichrist” and a prostitute with “pimp handlers.”
The tone was more muted at Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion, where a mix of hard-core Trump supporters and curious students lined up hours ahead of his rally. Still, many Trump allies who took the stage tried out some of their best red-meat pitches with the rowdy crowd.
U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, R-Jackson, said Trump’s rally Sunday was so successful the famed Manhattan venue should be renamed “MAGA Square Garden.” Like his favorite politician, Collins went on to attack the media as peddlers of “lies, smears and hate.”
Also drawing loud applause was U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick, who reminded the audience that he attended Georgia Tech and then posited that Trump should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for keeping the U.S. out of foreign wars.
And Trump adviser Stephen Miller invoked the death of Laken Riley, the nursing student who was killed while jogging on the University of Georgia campus. A Venezuelan national who authorities say was in the country unlawfully is charged with her killing.
“There is one thing you can do,” Miller said, “and that’s to vote, vote, vote for Donald Trump and send him back to the White House so he can seal that border.”
As for Trump, he made few mentions of the Sunday rally that dominated political discussion. Waxing nostalgic about his three White House campaigns during his rambling remarks, Trump boasted that he could have filled up the Manhattan landmark “10 times” had it been larger.
Turnout turned up
More than 3 million Georgians have already cast ballots, and campaigns say the final week of early voting could be the biggest yet. It can be dangerous to make sweeping conclusions about the record-smashing in-person turnout, but both campaigns have reason to be optimistic.
Turnout in some deep-red rural and exurban counties is running ahead of key Democratic strongholds, and the overall electorate skews older and whiter. But voter participation in some left-leaning areas is starting to catch up, and Democrats happily note that women hold a double-digit advantage among early voters.
The latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Trump in a tight race with Harris, who held two rallies in vote-rich metro Atlanta last week and is pressing for back-to-back Democratic presidential wins in Georgia for the first time since Jimmy Carter was on the ballot.
Trump’s visits to metro Atlanta continued his trend of focusing on the densely populated region rather than targeting the more rural — and deep-red counties — where he staged rallies during the final stretch of the 2020 campaign.
At a faith summit earlier Monday in Powder Springs, Trump looked out at the audience of roughly 1,000 clergy members packing the Worship With Wonders Church and quipped, “That is a lot of religion out there.”
He was then asked by his spiritual adviser, televangelist Paula White-Cain, to describe his faith to the audience. He launched into a barbed critique of Democrats, saying the country is heading “in the wrong direction now” with less focus on faith.
At Georgia Tech hours later, Trump repeated his vow to conduct a mass deportation of people in the U.S. illegally while promising stricter border controls and stiff tariffs on some foreign goods to encourage more domestic manufacturing.
Unlike past Trump rallies in Georgia, where venues reached full capacity, Trump’s campaign only filled the lower bowl of McCamish Pavilion and part of the upper deck. Hundreds left before he finished his remarks. Some attendees were Trump stalwarts, others curious about the former president’s message.
“I can’t even imagine enough people voting for Kamala Harris,” said Larry Harrison, a Lawrenceville retiree who said he has no doubt Trump will carry Georgia. “If they really know about her record and her history, I just can’t see it, unless they want four more years of inflation and illegal immigration.”
Christian Villarreal, a Marietta student who attends Tech, is a rare undecided Georgian. As he and a clutch of friends entered the arena, he said he came with an open mind.
“I’m giving Trump a few hours to state his case, and if I agree with him, I’ll vote for him,” Villarreal said, adding he’s looking for “more kindness” from the candidates. “I know Trump is very boisterous and can be very dramatic, but I’m looking to see if he has a more holistic view of the race.”
Story by Greg Bluestein and Tia Mitchell, The Atlanta Journal Constitution.
