Senate Republicans are beginning to worry that Trump’s false allegations could depress voter turnout.
Donald Trump’s sustained attacks on the integrity of Georgia’s presidential election tally are threatening the Republican Senate majority — and GOP senators are starting to fret.
Even as the key battleground states have certified their results and Trump’s legal challenges are crumbling, the president is refusing to let go of his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and fight to overturn the election results. Moreover, the official presidential transition is already in motion, and President-elect Joe Biden received his first presidential intelligence briefing on Monday.
But Republicans are increasingly seeing Trump’s posture as not just rhetoric. They view it as a self-serving quest that could imperil the GOP’s grip on the Senate by depressing turnout in two runoffs races that will decide which party controls the upper chamber. And they are publicly hoping he will refrain from pushing his false fraud claims when he visits the Peach State this week to campaign for Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
“Making an allegation without having facts to back it up could be detrimental to his long-term legacy,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said flatly.
“I would hope when the president is in Georgia Saturday he talks about the importance of turning out the vote,” added Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of GOP leadership. “And I think what he says on that trip will probably matter more than what he’s said up until now.”
Republicans believe Trump’s involvement is key to motivating their voters for the Jan. 5 runoffs. But there are already signs that Republicans are trying to avert a collapse in Georgia, where the candidates and outside groups are raising millions.
Advisers to the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., are launching a super PAC aimed at turning out supporters in the runoffs — some of whom are calling for an all-out boycott of the races. And over the weekend, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tussled with a Trump backer who claimed the twin Senate races had already been “decided,” essentially echoing the president’s claims of voter fraud.
“It does no good if they self-fulfill a prophecy of refusing to vote, and lose the legacy that the president provides,” Rounds said when asked about the boycott that some of Trump’s supporters are plotting.
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Donald Trump’s sustained attacks on the integrity of Georgia’s presidential election tally are threatening the Republican Senate majority — and GOP senators are starting to fret https://t.co/N95i9qFu9y
— POLITICO (@politico) December 1, 2020
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