Brian Kemp Pathetically Tries to Explain His Reversal on Trump

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp doesn’t think that Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in his state was a big deal, calling it a “distraction” in a Fox News interview.

Speaking to Fox & Friends on Thursday, Kemp was pressed by Steve Doocy to explain what happened between Trump and himself to resolve enmity between the two.

“Well, look, there was a little distraction, obviously, on their side when it came to Georgia. To me, that’s in the past,” Kemp said. “I have been saying that, guys, literally for over a year now, that I was going to support our nominee, that we had to win Georgia, the road to the White House runs through Georgia. And I still believe today, we cannot afford four more years of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.”

Trump attacked Kemp at an Atlanta rally earlier this month for refusing to overturn the 2020 election, saying, “He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”

Trump also attacked Kemp’s wife, Marty Kemp, for saying that she wouldn’t vote for Trump and would instead write in her husband’s name on the presidential ballot in November. At the time, Kemp responded on X, telling Trump to “leave my family out of it” and to stop engaging in “petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”

Kemp didn’t vote for the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee in June’s primary elections in Georgia but has endorsed Trump for November. However, Kemp’s office has said that the governor will be looking into ethics violations from three new pro-Trump members of the state’s election board, signaling that he may once again thwart Trump’s efforts to interfere in Georgia’s voting process.

Trump infamously told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” in January 2021. The Trump team’s efforts to stop democracy in the state resulted in felony charges for election interference against the former president and 17 co-defendants. The case is currently stalled thanks to Republican efforts to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as prosecutor, even though she originally filed the charges.

Even Donald Trump’s biggest allies admit that his social media posts are going over the top.

On Wednesday, Trump shared a series of frightening and outright offensive posts on his platform Truth Social, all before 10 a.m. The posts called for the imprisonment of Kamala Harris, Bill Gates, and Anthony Fauci, among other Democrats, as well as a military tribunal for former President Barack Obama. Multiple posts even referenced QAnon, including the far-right conspiracy group’s slogan “WWG1WGA.”

In response, former Trump campaign adviser David Urban, now a pro-Trump CNN analyst, called the erratic posting “terrible” and warned that the former president should cease with the ad hominem attacks. 

On Thursday, when asked by CNN host John Berman about Trump’s posts, Urban sarcastically replied that he was “loving it,” before encouraging Trump to stick to politics rather than threats or attacks against his opponents.

“What Donald Trump should be doing—and I’ve shared this with him and I’ll share it with him again every chance I see—stick to the issues,” said Urban. “If you want to attack Kamala Harris, please, let’s do so, but on the issue of immigration, on the porous border, and the failed economic plan of the Biden-Harris administration.”

Trump has had no filter on social media for many years, causing him to get banned from multiple platforms for inciting violence. But as his tone only gets more unhinged, his team is growing increasingly worried.

When making plans for his potential presidential transition, Donald Trump is looking to a right-wing think tank staffed by former members of his administration and MAGA acolytes. No, not to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—which has become the rock tied to the ankle of the Trump campaign—but the America First Policy Institute.

The group will create its own “America First Transition Project” to kick off Trump’s next term, according to a report from Politico published Thursday.

Earlier this month, Trump named Linda McMahon, the chair of the Trumpist think tank’s board, to co-lead his transition team—an announcement that came abnormally late in the election cycle. A former professional wrestling executive, McMahon previously served as the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s presidency, and then as chair of a pro-Trump super PAC that raised $83 million for Trump in 2020.

One lobbyist told Politico that AFPI was “in the driver’s seat” of the Trump team’s potential transition.

“AFPI is not becoming the transition,” another person familiar with the Trump team’s transition preparations told Politico. “But by virtue of how they are situated and that we are in a very late timeline for this work, AFPI and the transition may be a distinction without a difference.”

Kellyanne Conway, who chairs AFPI’s Center for the American Child, explained what the think tank had been working on since Trump’s last administration.

“For three and a half years, AFPI has focused on personnel and policy. It was formed by and is teeming with senior staffers from the first Trump Administration whose goal is to be ready on day one,” Conway explained. “Linda McMahon, Brooke Rollins and the team have planned with precision and executed with put-your-head-down type humility.”

Rollins previously served as Trump’s former Domestic Policy Council director.

According to an early memo, the group’s staffers have done extensive research on the “management, personnel, policy, financial, and administrative” strategies behind running the federal government and conducted more than one thousand interviews with former administration officials. The group has reportedly analyzed every one of Joe Biden’s executive actions and drafted more than a hundred of their own proposed ones, according to Politico.

Because the group has 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, it does not disclose its donors, but it is well-funded, raking in $23.6 million in 2022. As a nonprofit, AFPI cannot openly support a candidate for office, and thus far it has not directly claimed any influence in the Trump campaign—possibly learning from the mistakes of the Heritage Foundation, from which Trump has tried and failed to distance himself.

But at the end of the day, AFPI isn’t so different from the conservative think tanks that have crashed and burned before it. While the official plan is still being built out, the group’s broad agenda hits on many familiar conservative beats. The group advocates to finish building Trump’s border wall, to deregulate the federal government and limit spending, as well as to increase oil and gas production.

The vehemently anti-union AFPI has attacked unions at the Veterans Administration and the Transportation Security Administration. McMahon has previously advocated for right-to-work laws, which would bankrupt unions by allowing non-union workers to enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining without paying “fair share” fees.

AFPI has also aligned itself with election deniers in Georgia and is currently backing a lawsuit against Fulton County by its own election board official Julie Adams, who is seeking a court ruling on whether her duty to certify election results is “discretionary, not ministerial, in nature,” according to the suit.

The Army has weighed in on the Trump campaign’s Arlington National Cemetery dispute, and it’s siding with the gravesite official.

A spokesperson for the Army said in a statement Thursday that the military organization believed the official had been “abruptly pushed aside” and “unfairly attacked” by Trump staffers.

“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the Army spokesperson said.

“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked,” they continued. “ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

The Arlington National Cemetery official who confronted the campaign filed a report over the potentially felonious behavior but declined to press charges, reportedly fearing possible retaliation from Trump’s rabid supporters, according to The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman. The army said it considers the matter closed.

The military’s judgment follows a multiday scandal for the Republican presidential nominee after he was caught red-handed Tuesday filming video in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where recent military casualties are buried. Campaign staffers reportedly launched into a verbal and physical fight with cemetery officials, who had asked the campaign to stop videotaping. Federal law prohibits politically related activities in the cemetery, including taking photos and videos in support of a political campaign.

The Trump campaign claimed that they had been given permission to videotape by the families of fallen service members, but unfortunately for Trump, that doesn’t change federal law.

Instead, the footage was immediately transformed into a social media–oriented campaign video, where Trump can be seen laying flowers down at a grave and taking photos with people while giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita torched the cemetery official after the incident was first reported, referring to her in a statement as a “despicable individual” and questioning her mental health.

Trump’s anti-military rhetoric has been a point of contention for the MAGA candidate in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the reputed Vietnam-era draft dodger came under fire for arguing that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to one of his billionaire donors was “much better” than the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor. That comment rubbed veterans the wrong way, who connected Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric to a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”

This story has been updated.

“Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie!”

Swedish pop supergroup ABBA are torching Donald Trump for using their music without permission during a campaign event in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Tuesday, demanding that the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign pull any footage of the rally that featured their songs.

Trump reportedly played several of ABBA’s greatest hits, including “Money, Money, Money”, “The Winner Takes It All”, and “Dancing Queen.” The event, which was geared toward a heavy Swedish demographic, also reportedly played a 10-minute clip of ABBA’s live performances, reported AFP.

The Swedes’ record company, Universal Music, told The Guardian that the campaign had not asked for permission to use the tracks and that footage from the event must be “immediately” taken down and removed.

“Together with the members of Abba, we have discovered that videos have been released where Abba’s music/videos has been used at Trump events, and we have therefore requested that such use be immediately taken down and removed,” a Universal spokesperson told The Guardian. “Universal Music Publishing AB and Polar Music International AB have not received any request, so no permission or license has been given to Trump.”

ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus told Swedish newswire TT that Universal would “[make] sure it is taken down.”

ABBA is far from the only musical group that’s gone after Trump for using their music to advance his campaign without their permission. In August alone, Trump has drawn fury from the Isaac Hayes estate, Celine Dion, and Beyoncé for the unauthorized use of their music during campaign events and advertisements.

But the roster of artists who have outright banned Trump from using their music is long and wide. They include Sinéad O’Connor, The Beatles, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Guns N’ Roses, Leonard Cohen, Queen, Prince, Pharrell, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty, the Village People, and Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler.

It turns out the fight between Donald Trump’s campaign staff and an Arlington National Cemetery official Monday was worse than we thought. The assaulted cemetery employee was a woman, and she didn’t want to press charges because she was afraid of retaliation from Trump supporters.

The New York Times reports that the woman filed an incident report with the military, but opted not to proceed further with law enforcement authorities at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia, which has jurisdiction over the cemetery. Trump and his campaign have been scrambling to explain away the physical altercation, posting a message of thanks from a military family, blaming the cemetery official, and even accusing her of having a “mental health episode.”

Taking photographs or video at a military cemetery for political purposes is prohibited under federal law, particularly in Arlington National Cemetery’s Section 60, where recent military casualties are buried. After participating in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns on the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack in Afghanistan, Trump visited Section 60 with family members of Marines killed in the attack—and with cameras. The cemetery official tried to stop Trump’s campaign staffers from filming and taking photos, leading to them pushing the official and calling her names.

It turns out that the official’s concern was warranted, after Trump released photos and a video of his visit to Section 60, which was supposed to be private and closed to the press. The family of Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano, whose gravesite was shown in those photos, issued a statement saying that they did not give permission for the grave to be filmed or used by the Trump campaign.

“[A]ccording to our conversation with Arlington National Cemetery, the Trump campaign staffers did not adhere to the rules that were set in place for this visit to Staff Sergeant Hoover’s gravesite in Section 60, which lays directly next to my brother’s grave,” said Marckesano’s sister Michele in the statement. 

“We hope that those visiting this sacred site understand that these were real people who sacrificed for our freedom and that they are honored and respected accordingly,” she added.

One politician who was with Trump at the cemetery on Monday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox, apologized on X (formerly Twitter) for using photos from the section in a campaign email.

“This was not a campaign event and was never intended to be used by the campaign,” Cox wrote. “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent. My campaign will be sending out an apology.”

The Trump campaign, however, has not. Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance accused the media of blowing it out of proportion.

“Apparently somebody at Arlington Cemetery, some staff member had a little disagreement with somebody,” Vance said. “And they have turned — the media has turned this into a national news story.”

The more the Trump campaign refuses to acknowledge even the appearance of disrespect at a military cemetery, as well as the possible violation of federal law, the more likely the incident won’t go away, especially given Trump’s dismal reputation with military veterans. 

Donald Trump’s polling in Sun Belt states should have the former president shaking in his boots, according to one political analyst.

Fox News released polling Wednesday from Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina, which found that Kamala Harris had significantly tightened the gap across the key states. Harris is now leading Trump by one point in Arizona, and two points in Georgia and Nevada. Trump has maintained a one-point lead in North Carolina, where the race is now considered to be a toss-up.

The polling indicates that Harris has expanded the Democratic voting map since entering the race, putting the Sun Belt states back in play for potential Democratic victories. President Joe Biden previously trailed Trump in each of these states.

During an appearance on CNN Wednesday night, political analyst Astead Herndon said that the Trump team ought to be scared by these numbers.

“This should be an alarming fact for the Trump campaign, and I think the trend line has been so consistent, if they are not alarmed there’s probably something wrong there,” Herndon said.

“Because Donald Trump has campaigned the last month—has been flailing, has not found a consistent attack against Harris, has not found a way to break through a news cycle, and has spent his time bringing [in] RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, people who don’t expand his tent to the voters he’s bleeding by this moment,” Herndon said, noting that Trump had failed to grow his vote share, in comparison to Harris.

Herndon noted that the poll results showed the impact of the massive small dollar donations Harris has received since joining the race, which allow her to defend her blue territories while also expanding into regions such as the Sun Belt states. With Biden as the candidate, that region might’ve been a lost cause.

“It’s Donald Trump now that is under both the political and financial pressure—again, most of which is of his own making—to be able not to have the ground game that he should at this point,” Herndon said.

But if Team Trump is panicking, they’re dealing with it their usual way: denial.

The Trump campaign promptly issued their own corrections for the Fox News polls, claiming the news organization has an “awful track record” when it comes to taking accurate polls.

“It’s that time of year again: Fox is releasing atrocious polling,” the statement said.

The campaign published their own “unskewed” results, which had been adjusted based on the differences between Fox’s projected margins in those states in 2020, and their final margins after Election Day. According to the Trump campaign’s math, Trump is miraculously ahead in Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.

The Trump campaign has repeatedly disseminated “unskewed” polls adjusted based on the difference between election results and recalled votes of respondents, or how they claim to have voted four years ago—a metric that is widely considered to be unreliable.

Earlier this month, the Trump campaign attempted to do the same thing to warp New York Times/Siena polling from the Sun Belt states that found Harris was leading Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50 percent to 45 percent. The poll also found that Harris had passed Trump in North Carolina, leading him 49 percent to 47 percent, and that she had significantly narrowed the former president’s lead in Georgia and Nevada.

With Harris’s newfound edge, it seems that Trump should spend less time cooking the books, and more time getting his ground game together.

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance doesn’t seem to know what the other half of his ticket is up to.

Speaking before a crowd in the battleground state of Wisconsin for a fourth time Wednesday night, the Republican vice presidential pick attempted, once again, to brush off Donald Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery debacle. According to Vance, Trump was wrongly booted from the military burial ground, since it wasn’t as if he was filming a “TV commercial at a gravesite.”

Except that’s exactly what Trump was doing.

“You’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite,” Vance said to “the media.” “He was there providing emotional support to a lot of brave Americans who lost loved ones they never should have lost, and there happened to be a camera there, and someone gave them permission to have that camera there.”

Trump utilized the footage for a campaign video where he can be seen laying flowers down at a grave and taking photos with people while giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

Trump was caught in the act on Tuesday while filming the stunt in Section 60 of the cemetery, where recent military casualties are buried. Campaign staffers reportedly launched into a verbal and physical fight with cemetery officials, who had asked the campaign to stop videotaping. Federal law prohibits politically related activities in the cemetery, including taking photos and videos in support of a political campaign. And just because the families there gave permission doesn’t change that.

The Arlington Cemetery official that confronted the campaign filed a report over the felonious behavior but declined to press charges, reportedly fearing possible retaliation from Trump’s rabid supporters, according to The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman.

Now that Kamala Harris has agreed to sit down for her first interview since President Biden dropped out of the race in July, Republicans are suddenly claiming she’s not doing it right.

Harris is sitting down for a joint interview with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, that will air at 9 p.m. Thursday on CNN. Republicans are trying to use the joint interview to claim that Harris is running scared and can’t talk to the press on her own.

“Her handlers don’t even trust her to survive a softball CNN interview, so Coach Walz is going to chaperone,” said Jesse Watters on Fox News.

“They know Kamala Harris can’t get through an interview all by herself,” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders similarly told Fox & Friends on Wednesday. “It’s clear that her own team and her own party thinks she needs a babysitter.”

“Tim is there to help prop her up and if it gets awkward or she starts giggling or looking … crazy, then he’s gonna interrupt and take over. And then they’re gonna go back and stop the tape and retape that question to make sure she looks fantastic,” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, best known for murdering her puppy, parroted on Newsmax.

There’s just one very giant problem with their argument: Joint interviews are hardly out of the ordinary. In fact, it’s customary for the presidential and vice presidential nominees to be interviewed together immediately following the convention. Even Trump did it himself.

Though it is notable that Harris has not yet taken an interview, saying Walz is “chaperoning” her or “babysitting” her is weird and misogynistic. After watching Harris at the Democratic National Convention, claiming that she is incapable of sitting down for an interview without a man by her side doesn’t make sense. The line of attack seems like a holdover from Republicans’ attacks on Joe Biden. But on Harris, it just doesn’t play.

In his new book, Donald Trump threatens billionaire and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with prison.

Save America, set to be published next week, includes a photograph of Zuckerberg and Trump at the White House. Underneath the photo, Trump wrote that Zuckerberg “would come to the Oval Office to see me” and “bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.”

Trump went on to pin some of his election conspiracies on Zuckerberg, and gave him a serious warning.

“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me. We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump (or perhaps his ghostwriter) wrote.

It’s not the first time Trump has threatened the Meta mogul with prison. In July, he called out “ZUCKERBUCKS,” saying a Trump administration would “pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time.”

Zuckerburg responded by sucking up to Trump, calling him “badass” for raising his fist following the assassination attempt against him at a Pennsylvania rally. And earlier this week, Zuckerburg wrote to Congress expressing regrets over “demoting” ​​the 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, waiting for fact-checkers to review it, drawing a gleeful response from Trump on Truth Social.

“Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!). IN OTHER WORDS, THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED,” Trump posted on Tuesday.

Needless to say, imprisoning the owner of a social media platform because he’s not doing what you want is a clear First Amendment violation. Trump still angrily insists that the 2020 election was rigged against him, claiming that massive voter fraud coupled with collaboration between the news media and social media fixed the results. And he won’t commit to accepting a 2024 election outcome in which he loses, as his cronies make moves to sabotage November’s election in Republicans’ favor, taking over key election posts in battleground states. Democrats will have to be vigilant as Election Day nears, perhaps looking at Georgia as an example, where even leading Republicans are looking to ensure a fair process.