President Donald Trump is planning to travel to Georgia next month to rally for two U.S. senators as control of the Senate hangs in the balance.
“I’ll be going there. I’ll probably be going on Saturday,” Trump told reporters at the White House in Washington on Thursday. “We’re looking for a site. We’re going to have a tremendous turnout, and we seem to always have a good turnout. The people are very disappointed that we were robbed. We were robbed. I won that by hundreds of thousands of votes. Everybody knows it.”
The White House later clarified to say Trump is planning a Dec. 3 trip, not a Nov. 28 one.
“You go down the streets, there are Trump/Pence signs all over the place. We won that by hundreds of thousands, Georgia, so they’re disappointed. I don’t want them to be disappointed,” Trump added.
Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) both failed to garner a majority of votes in their races, triggering runoffs with Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
Each state gets two seats in the Senate and the terms are staggered. The unusual situation in Georgia unfolded because of the retirement of Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), which led to Gov. Brian Kemp appointing Loeffler and her being sworn into office in January.
Loeffler and Warnock, a pastor, emerged from a free-for-all race that featured 21 candidates to battle in a runoff.
The other race is a normal one. Perdue is finishing his first term and hoping to win a second. Perdue was just shy of the majority, receiving about 90,000 more votes than Ossoff, a filmmaker.
Republicans are projected to have 50 seats in the next Senate, not including the Georgia seats. If the GOP wins just one, they keep control of the upper congressional chamber.
If Democrats win both seats and the White House, they'll effectively hold the Senate because the vice president can cast tie-breaking votes there.
High-profile Republicans have already been traveling to Georgia to rally with Loeffler and Perdue, including Vice President Mike Pence and Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.).
Aides to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said he plans on going to rally with Ossoff and Warnock at some point.
Democrats haven’t held a U.S. Senate seat representing Georgia since 2005. They’ve held control of the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the state legislature since 2004.
Biden won Georgia this year by about 13,000 votes, according to current results amid a second recount. Trump’s campaign has alleged irregularities and a number of poll observers have attested to witnessing fraud.
The runoff elections will take place on Jan. 5, 2021.
