President Donald Trump has continued a pressure campaign directed at Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to illegally overturn election results in the Peach State, even as the Republican governor has said those false claims have incited threats on his life and have turned his wife and three daughters into targets for angry conspiracy theorists.
Governor @BrianKempGA of Georgia still has not called a Special Session. So easy to do, why is he not doing it? It will give us the State. MUST ACT NOW!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2020
Kemp told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday that his daughter Lucy has received messages laden with hate and conspiracies surrounding the death of her longtime boyfriend, who was killed in a traffic accident earlier this month.
“If anybody has an issue with something I’ve done, they need to come see me and I’ll talk to them about it. They don’t need to bother my wife or my children or anybody,” Kemp said, after urging those making the harmful comments to emerge from behind their keyboards to engage him in genuine dialogue.
Even as Trump continues to spew falsehoods in an effort to intimidate Kemp to illegally do his bidding and reverse Trump’s decisive loss in the Peach State, Kemp told reporters that he somehow did not blame Trump for the threats against his life, adding, “as far as I know, my relationship with the president is fine.”
“I know he’s frustrated, and I’ve disagreed on things with him before,” Kemp said, noting that ultimately he was fulfilling his duty to “follow the laws and the Constitution and the Constitution of this state.”
Trump fired off yet another tweet just an hour later on Friday, again calling Kemp a “so-called” Republican and making groundless claims about elections in the state that have been repeatedly rejected in court.
The Secretary of State and Governor of Georgia, both so-called “Republicans”, aren’t allowing Fulton County to go through the vital Voter Signature Verification process. Also, they are not allowing Republican “watchers” to be present and verify! @BrianKempGA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2020
Last month, Trump called the Georgia governor a “clown,” predicted a loss for Kemp in the 2022 primaries and said he was “ashamed” for endorsing the GOP governor he once touted as an ally in 2018.
Kemp is just one of the Republican leaders in Georgia who has received the brunt of Trump’s attacks that have incited threats of violence from Trumps supporters over the president’s electoral defeat.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) reported similar threats last month, noting that his family had been “thrown under the bus” by Trump and he had no choice but to accept a state security detail as Trump unleashed a fury of tweets about him that fanned the anger of his base.
Raffensperger was unabashed in holding Trump responsible for the threats at a press conference announcing the results of a second recount of the vote in Georgia earlier this month, saying that Trump’s tweets were “the kind of language that is at the base of growing threat environment for election workers who are simply doing their jobs.”
On Thursday, Kemp seemed to also draw a line noting that while policy disputes were acceptable, threats that frightened his family were an entirely different matter.
“We’re just not going to go down the road of enticing violence — at least here in this state, as long as I’m governor,” he said.
