In Georgia, Trump was on message — until he wasn’t
It’s hard to say why President Donald Trump won’t just take the win.
He came to Rome on Thursday to deliver a speech on the economy, where he was quickly lauded by officials on stage as something between the greatest president in our lifetimes or the greatest president in the history of everything, ever.
“Beside me is the greatest president in our country’s history,” said Clay Fuller, the Republican who Trump has endorsed to replace former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in the upcoming special election in the 14th District.
Fuller followed other glowing remarks from Ambassador Herschel Walker; Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who has Trump’s endorsement for governor; and U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, who does not have his endorsement for his challenge to U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff.
Andrew Saville, the president of the Coosa Steele facility that hosted Trump in Rome, praised the president as a business owner benefiting from the 50% steel tariffs that the president has imposed.
“You did it. You’re making America great again,” Saville said. “You’re making all of these guys more in their wages and we couldn’t be more than happy to call you ‘Mr. President.’”
When the president was on stage and speaking from the teleprompter, he stayed safely on message, well inside the lines of the White House political team’s new plan for him, focused on the economy and affordability ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“Under the last administration, every economic policy punished American workers and businesses like this one, rewarding those who outsource to foreign nations,” Trump read. “Under the Trump administration, our policy is the exact opposite.”
But off the teleprompter, the president veered into made-up accusations, wild tangents and the one subject he just can’t let go — the 2020 elections in Georgia.
Between introducing U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach and Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper, Trump asked if everyone in the audience had seen the FBI raid of the Fulton County election hub.
“They’re trying to stop anybody from looking at the ballots,” Trump said of Fulton County leaders. “You know why? Because they cheated like dogs.”
While he was talking up his own tariffs, the president hammered the U.S. Supreme Court for hearing a challenge to the legality of tariffs without congressional approval.
“To think I have to be in the United States Supreme Court for many, many months waiting for its decision on tariffs,” Trump said. “Without tariffs, this country would be in such trouble right now.”
At one point, he trailed from tariffs to transgender sports and voter ID laws.
“This is like men playing in women’s sports, transgender for everybody. And I have a new one to add, voter ID,” he said. “The Democrats don’t want to give us voter ID because they want to cheat.”
Even when Trump was talking about the economy, the intended topic of the speech, he claimed he’d solved inflation and called the entire concept of affordability a media “con job.”
“Airfares, hotels, car payments, rent, sports, events, groceries — everything’s down!” he said.
But there in lies the problem for Trump and all of the Republicans praising him and seeking his praise in return. Is “everything down” in terms of prices for Americans? Of course not. Anyone who has been to a grocery store or tried to buy tickets to a concert lately can tell you that.
And are tariffs the thing saving the economy or are they holding it back? Basic consumer items are more expensive than they’ve ever been, largely because of the tariffs American have to pay on top of the cost of imported goods like shoes and clothes. And did Trump really win in 2020, as he said again Thursday? Republican leaders in Georgia answered that over and over in 2020 when they certified the election for Joe Biden instead.
Republicans may really believe that Trump is the best president in their lifetimes, but they should be savvier than to go along with everything he says. Because the president may be able to sell his claims to a crowd full of fans in a deep-red district, but just saying something from a podium in Rome doesn’t make it true for everybody else.
About the Author
Patricia Murphy is the AJC's senior political columnist. She was previously a nationally syndicated columnist for CQ Roll Call, national political reporter for the Daily Beast and Politics Daily, and wrote for The Washington Post and Garden & Gun. She graduated from Vanderbilt and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
