Trump to visit storm damage in Georgia with Gov. Kemp

Maya T. Prabhu, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Oct 3, 2024

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ATLANTA — Former President Donald Trump and Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday will make their first appearance together since before the 2020 election, traveling to Evans to survey damage from Hurricane Helene.

It’s the first time the two former foes will appear since Trump attacked Kemp for his unwillingness to call a special legislative session in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, in which Trump was narrowly defeated by now-President Joe Biden.

Trump and Biden are set to deliver remarks Friday afternoon at the Columbia Performing Arts Center.

Last week, Hurricane Helene ripped through Georgia, bringing 100-plus mile winds and catastrophic flooding to the region, and leaving more than a dozen people dead.

On Monday, Trump visited Valdosta to survey storm damage. At the time he falsely accused Biden of doing being “very nonresponsive” to Kemp’s calls for assistance in the days after the storm.

Trump also used the stop the slam Vice President Kamala Harris for holding fundraisers in California after the storm hit. Harris went straight to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees federal recovery efforts from disasters, after landing Monday in Washington.

Trump, meanwhile, spent the weekend on the campaign trail: He held events in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over the weekend, and he stopped in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to watch part of the Georgia-Alabama game from a luxury suite.

Both Harris and Biden have since visited storm-ravaged parts of the state — Harris on Wednesday and Biden on Thursday.

A spokesman for Kemp did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The two have sparred off-and-on for years until things came to a head — and then quickly dissipated — in August.

After what appeared to be a yearslong quiet truce, Trump surprised many Georgia Republicans when he attacked Kemp and his wife with remark so brutal that some Republicans at the time predicted it could cost Trump the state in November.

Kemp initially told Trump he had crossed a line, but reversed course on several media appearances where he said he would back Trump despite their past differences.

Then, three weeks later, Trump did an about-face, thanking Kemp for his “help and support.” Just like that, it seemed, the on-again-off-again feud was off again.

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