DALTON, Georgia (CN) — At a get-out-the-vote rally for Georgia's Senate runoff elections, President Donald Trump told supporters Monday evening that he would work against Georgia officials who have not worked with him to undermine the results of the race he recently lost in the state.
“I'm going to be here in a year and a half and I'm going to be campaigning against your governor and your crazy secretary of state,” Trump said to cheers from the crowd at the rally in Dalton, Georgia.
The president’s comments come as Georgia Republicans hope to turn out supporters in Tuesday’s runoff elections. The stakes are Georgia’s two seats in the U.S. Senate and control of the chamber as a new administration takes charge.
Trump expressed displeasure with the U.S. Supreme Court, which said he lacked standing to bring some of his lawsuits challenging the election, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who appointed Senator Kelly Loeffler a year ago but was absent from Monday’s rally.
“I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you,” Trump said. “I hope that our great vice president, our great vice president, comes through for us. He's a great guy. Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much.”
Trump spoke to supporters at the Dalton Municipal Airport with Marine One parked behind him.
GOP emails sent before the event billed it as a victory rally. But Trump painted a dire picture should David Perdue and Loeffler’s challengers, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, respectively, should win the state.
“If we don't do something fast, there will never be another fair election in America,” Trump said. “We're known for elections and now we're being laughed at all over the world about this last election. And you've got to swarm it tomorrow.”
At the rally, Loeffler briefly took to the microphone to say she planned to object to the certification of the electoral college vote on Jan. 6, the day after voters will decide her fate in the chamber.
“We're going to get this done,” Loeffler said. “Look, this president fought for us. We're fighting for him.”
Northwest Georgia has historically offered Trump and Republicans a bastion of support.
Additionally, it has a personal connection for Trump as his second wife Marla Maples grew up in the Dalton area and he even visited the city with her in the early 1990s.
This time, Trump came to the hills of northwest Georgia days after audio of a call showed him asking the Georgia Secretary of State, and cajoling and threatening the election official, to “find” 11,780 votes — the margin he narrowly lost the state during the general election.
He touched down in northwest Georgia the same day U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Byung Pak announced his resignation, effective the same day. Trump appointed Pak in 2017.
According to the website Talking Points Memo, Pak had previously signaled he planned to leave his office on Inauguration Day.
Trump baselessly claimed there were thousands of instances of improper and illegal voting in the state by margins wide enough to affect his reelection efforts.
But those claims were already rebutted by Gabriel Sterling, a top official with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, at a press conference earlier that day he dubbed “anti-disinformation Monday.”
Saying the president’s team is seemingly intentionally misleading people, Sterling said the Georgia Secretary of State’s office has better data than the president.
These claims are easily proved false, Sterling said, “Yet the president persists.”
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