The White House continues to shower attention on Georgia as it seeks to shore up the electoral prospects of President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. David Perdue.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, met with Perdue for a public “conversation” Tuesday afternoon in Acworth. They touched on the president’s pandemic response, economic record and plans for a “great American comeback” if he’s reelected.
“We all know what’s at stake Nov. 3,” Trump told about 80 supporters gathered at the Cowan Historic Mill. “That’s why we are fighting so hard. We will leave it on the field to make sure our president, my father, secures four more years.”
Her visit comes as polls show the president and Perdue locked in tight races with their Democratic opponents, Joe Biden and Jon Ossoff, respectively. And it came on the second day of early voting in Georgia, with tens of thousands of people waiting in line to cast their ballots.
The president’s daughter is the latest top Republican to visit the state in recent weeks — a sign Georgia has become a toss-up state in a slugfest of an election.
Donald Trump Jr. visited Savannah and Kennesaw on Monday. Vice President Mike Pence fired up conservative evangelicals in Atlanta two weeks ago. The president himself visited Atlanta recently in an effort to appeal to Black voters, and he will return Friday for a rally in Macon.
Biden also has targeted Georgia, sending his wife, Jill, to Columbus and metro Atlanta on Monday. It was the campaign’s first in-person visit to Georgia during the pandemic.
On Tuesday, Ivanka Trump began her visit to downtown Acworth with a stop at Pizza by Fuscos, chatting with the owners about how the business has fared during the pandemic.
Later, she spoke about a wide range of issues with Perdue at the historic mill. Among other things, they agreed COVID-19 is the top issue in the final weeks of the campaign. Not surprisingly, both said the president has not gotten enough credit for his actions to stem the pandemic.
Trump said the president has led “the most extraordinary public-private mobilization since World War II” to increase the nation’s supply of ventilators and speed the development of vaccines.
“His leadership saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Perdue added. “The Democrats will never give us credit for that.”
Fresh off a debate with Perdue, Ossoff was, indeed, giving Republicans no credit Tuesday.
“More than 210,000 Americans are dead from a virus David Perdue compared publicly to the common flu while he privately bought up stock in a manufacturer of vaccines,” Ossoff said in a statement to supporters Tuesday. “He’s shown no empathy for hundreds of thousands of families who have lost so much. He’s taken no personal responsibility for lying to us and downplaying the threat.”
Perdue has said the trades were handled by advisers who operated independently, and he later announced those third-party aides would no longer trade stocks in individual companies on his behalf. One of Perdue’s ads also notes that the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee have cleared him of wrongdoing.
Such exchanges are likely to continue in the runup to the Nov. 3 election. Early voting in Georgia runs through Oct. 30, including a Saturday on Oct. 24.
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