Donald Trump and Brian Kemp will survey Georgia's storm damage together

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 east Georgia to survey damage from Hurricane Helene.

It’s the first meeting of the two former foes 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 Kemp are set to deliver remarks Friday afternoon at the Columbia Performing Arts Center in Evans, a northwest suburb of Augusta.

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

Friday’s Trump appearance won’t be a campaign rally, but politics seems certain to factor into the briefing.

Kemp and his aides have said they are fearful of a repeat of the long struggle for financial aid that came after Hurricane Michael devastated much of South Georgia in 2018, which divided state Republicans. It took nearly a year of legislative wrangling to clear the way for the aid and longer still for it to trickle down to farmers.

The governor is pushing for immediate federal aid, but he also has to plan for the long-term response to the pummeling by Helene.

That’s why he’s directly lobbied Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris several times for federal support, and he’s expected to press Trump as well to lock in relief funds. No matter who wins, Georgia will still need longer-term help.

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

Trump also used the stop to slam 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 spent the weekend between the storm and his Georgia visit 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.

Harris and Biden have since visited storm-ravaged parts of the state — the vice president on Wednesday in Augusta and the president on Thursday in Valdosta.

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

The two Republicans have a rocky history, including Trump’s surprise endorsement of Kemp’s campaign for governor in the 2018 Republican primary runoff election against then-Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle. Shortly after Kemp’s refusal to call a special legislative session in 2020, Trump recruited former U.S. Sen. David Perdue to challenge Kemp in the 2022 primary race for governor.

Kemp recently said he left his ballot blank in the presidential primary, but he has always said he would support Trump if he became the Republican nominee. Kemp’s wife, Marty Kemp, said she wrote in her husband’s name in the primary election.

Things seemed to come to a tepid truce. Then the beef came to a head in August — and then quickly dissipated.

After what appeared to be a quiet period, Trump surprised many Georgia Republicans when he attacked Kemp and his wife at an August rally in Atlanta with remarks 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 the governor reversed course during several media appearances where he said he would back the former president 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.

(Staff writer Greg Bluestein contributed this article.)

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