Trump touting ‘EPIC Rally’ as he returns Saturday to the key battleground of Georgia

Former President Trump returns to the campaign trail on Saturday.

Trump's heading to Georgia, a crucial battleground in the 2022 midterm elections which may ultimately decide whether Republicans win back control of the Senate, to hold his first post-Labor Day political rally.

But for the former president, the trip also appears to be personal.

Georgia is one of handful of states where now-President Biden narrowly edged Trump to win the White House. And it’s a state where Trump has unsuccessfully tried – and continues to try - to overturn the 2020 election results. It’s also a state where the former president has vowed to defeat an incumbent conservative governor and a Republican secretary of state for refusing Trump’s calls to decertify the results.

"Are you ready for my EPIC Rally in GEORGIA?" Trump wrote this week in a fundraising email to supporters. And he emphasized that "Georgia is critical to our efforts to take back the House and Senate in 2022, and then the White House in 2024, which is why this rally is so important to me."

Republicans view Sen. Raphael Warnock – who won election by a razor thin majority in Georgia’s twin Senate runoff election in January – as one of the most vulnerable Democrats running for reelection next year. The GOP needs a net gain of just one seat to win back the Senate majority they lost when they were swept in the Georgia runoffs, and Warnock’s seat is one of four they’re aiming to flip from blue to red in the midterms. And two members of Congress from Georgia are on the GOP’s large list of vulnerable House Democrats running for reelection next year, when Republicans need a net gain of just five seats in the 435-member chamber to recapture the majority.

As Fox News first reported earlier this week, Herschel Walker will join Trump and speak ahead of him at the rally, which is being held at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry, in the central part of the state.

Trump earlier this month endorsed his longtime friend and former professional and college football star, who after the repeated urgings of the former president, launched a Senate campaign late last month.

Some advisers in Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s orbit had initial misgivings about the former president’s endorsement of Walker - a Trump ally with strong name ID in Georgia, but a first-time candidate who’s untested and comes with baggage that could be used by his opponents, putting in jeopardy the GOP chances of flipping the crucial blue Senate seat red.

Asked this week about Walker’s appearance at Saturday’s rally, Warnock told Fox News "... (Read more)

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