Trump to meet with former foe, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, for the first time since 2020 election dispute

Former President Donald Trump appears to be burying the hatchet with Republican Georgia Gov.Brian Kemp as the two former foes are slated to appear together for the first time since 2020 on Friday. Trump and Kemp, who’ve sporadically been at loggerheads since President Biden’s 2020 Peach State election victory, will visit Evans, Ga., to receive a briefing on the devastation of Hurricane Helene and deliver remarks to the press, according to the former president’s campaign. The visit will mark Trump’s second trip to storm-ravaged Georgia this week. The 45th president surveyed storm damage and spoke with local officials and first responders in Valdosta, Ga., on Monday. The state is one of seven battleground states in the 2024 presidential election cycle. The tiff between Trump and Kemp started shortly after the 2020 election, when the governor refused to call a special legislative session to overturn the election results in the state. Trump declared in a post-election interview with Fox News that he was “ashamed” to have endorsed Kemp in his 2018 GOP gubernatorial  primary race. “I understand why he’s frustrated,” Kemp told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time, shrugging off the former president’s anger.

“He’s a fighter.” Trump would later call Kemp a “fool” and a “clown.” The former president went on to endorse ex-Sen.David Perdue (R-Ga.) in an attempt to primary Kemp out of office in 2022. “Brian Kemp is a turncoat, a coward, and a complete and total disaster,” Trump said at a March 2022 rally for Perdue.“Before we can defeat the Democrats, socialists and communists … we first have to defeat the RINO sellouts and the losers in the primaries this spring,” he added, referring to Kemp as a “Republican in name only.”Trump’s political action committee spent more than $3 million in a failed attempt to unseat Kemp from the Governor’s Mansion.

Perdue lost to Kemp by 52 percentage points. In 2023, with T...