Trump rivalry with Ossoff looms over visit to Georgia

President Trump’s budding rivalry with Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) is looming over his upcoming visit to the Peach State on Wednesday, as the president ramps up his rhetoric on election security ahead of the midterms. 

Trump is slated to talk about affordability during his visit to Georgia, which would be welcome news for Republicans.

Republican strategists have concerns that the president is not focused enough on the issue, a top priority for voters in an election year where inflation has been rising as a result of the Iran war.

But in Georgia, the issue of election security may also be at the front of Trump’s mind given his focus on the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and what he contends is fraud in U.S. elections.

Trump has long claimed he won Georgia in 2020, a state where he lost to former President Biden by 11,779 votes. The president called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, and asked him to recalculate the results and find “11,780 votes” that would have made Trump the winner of the state.

That call took place just a few days before Ossoff won his election to the Senate in a runoff race.

Hours before Trump addressed the nation on Thursday about the issue of election security and fraud, Ossoff — widely seen as a potential Democratic contender for the 2028 presidential election — was on the attack, arguing Trump’s call was an example of election fraud.

“If there’s one person who committed election fraud in Georgia, it’s Donald Trump when he dialed up our state’s senior most election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and tried to bully him in a recorded phone call to quote find the exact number of votes Donald Trump needed to win in a state that he had lost,” Ossoff told CNN’s Jake Tapper during an interview last week.

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