ATLANTA (AP) — Thousands of fans of former President Donald Trump packed the same Atlanta arena Saturday as Vice President Kamala Harris did four days earlier, as both campaigns push hard in a state that Democrats and Republicans see as up for grabs yet again.
Trump's 5 p.m. EDT event alongside his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, comes just days after Harris rallied thousands in the same basketball arena at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Taking the stage first, Vance credited Trump with “exposing a massive coverup of the president’s mental incapacity” during the fateful June debate that ultimately led to President Joe Biden 's exit from the 2024 campaign, before lighting into Harris as “a San Francisco liberal who is so far out of the mainstream” and someone he described as complicit in guarding Biden's true state from the public.
“Anybody who is too blind to see Biden's incompetence, or let's be honest, too dishonest to admit it, doesn't deserve to be commander in chief," Vance said. "Kamala Harris is not getting a promotion to the president of the United States.”
Both parties are focusing on Georgia, a Sun Belt battleground that just two weeks ago, Democrats had signaled they would sideline in favor of a heavier focus on the Midwestern “blue wall” states. Biden's decision to end his campaign and endorse Harris fueled Democratic hopes of an expanded electoral map.
“The momentum in this race is shifting,” Harris told a cheering, boisterous crowd on Tuesday. “And there are signs Donald Trump is feeling it.”
The Harris campaign issued a statement before Trump's rally predicting Trump would “likely ramble about crowd size, deny the 2020 election results” and “dedicate approximately zero time to discussing real solutions for the American people.”
Biden beat Trump in the state by 11,779 votes in 2020. Trump pressured Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to change the outcome. Trump was later indicted in Georgia for his efforts to overturn the election, but the case remains on hold while courts decide whether the Fulton County district attorney can continue to prosecute it.
In announcing Saturday's rally, the Trump campaign accused Harris of costing Georgians money due to inflation and higher gas prices, which have risen from pandemic-era lows at the end of the Trump administration. The campaign also noted the case of Laken Riley, a nursing student from the state who was killed while jogging in a park on Feb. 22. A Venezuelan citizen has been indicted on murder charges in her death.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly labeled Harris the current administration's “border czar,” a reference to her assignment leading White House efforts on migration.
But in recent days, Trump has lobbed false attacks about Harris' race and suggested she misled voters about her identity. Harris has stated for years in public life that she is Black and Indian American.
Michaelah Montgomery, a Black conservative activist in Atlanta, roused the overwhelmingly white crowd with another attack on Harris’ identity.
“She’s only Black when it’s time to get elected,” said Montgomery, who arranged Trump’s high-profile visit to a Black-owned Chick-fil-A restaurant earlier this year. “She chose her side and it wasn’t ours.”
At her rally in Atlanta, Harris called Trump and Vance “plain weird” — a lane of messaging seized on by many other Democrats of late — and taunted Trump for wavering on whether he’d show up for their upcoming debate, currently on the books for Sept. 10 on ABC.
Saying earlier that he would debate Harris, Trump has more recently questioned the value of a meetup, calling host network ABC News “fake news,” saying he “probably” will debate Harris, but he “can also make a case for not doing it.”
Late Friday night, Trump said he was pulling out of the ABC News debate because he will no longer face Biden, instead saying he would appear on Fox News on Sept. 4 in Pennsylvania with rules he called “similar” to his debate with Biden, but with a full audience instead of a mostly empty studio.
Harris spokesperson Michael Tyler said Trump “is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out.”
The fact that both Harris and Trump have been focusing resources on Georgia underscores the state's renewed significance to both parties come November. Going to Atlanta puts Trump in the state's largest media market, including suburbs and exurbs that were traditional Republican strongholds but have become more competitive as they've diversified and grown in population.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally who represents a northwest Georgia district, made an appeal to a diverse voter base on Trump's behalf in the critical state.
“This has nothing to do with our skin color, our gender, our politics," she said. "This is about our mission with our home state. Because let me tell you all: The road to the White House goes directly through the state of Georgia.”
Draic Coakley, a 23-year-old who works in the trucking industry and drove from Heflin, Alabama, just across the western Georgia border to attend his third Trump rally, said he believes Trump “sees people like me,” while “Biden and Harris, well, are part of what I think of as the elite.”
“President Trump may be a billionaire, but it’s okay to be rich,” Coakley said. “He gets us. He just gets us, and he gets the country.”
In a strategy memo released after Biden left the race, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon — who held the same role for Biden — reaffirmed the importance of winning the traditional Democratic blue wall trio of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania but also argued that Harris' place atop the ticket “opens up additional persuadable voters” and described them as “disproportionately Black, Latino and under 30” in places like Georgia.
Next week, along with her eventual running mate, Harris plans to visit that Midwestern trifecta, along with North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. On Friday, she will make another stop in Georgia.
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Meg Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina. Barrow can be reached at https://x.com/BillBarrowAP and Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.
