Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has a message for his fellow Republicans looking to win back the White House: “We cannot get distracted.”
“We have to tell people, No. 1, what we’re for. No. 2, that we’re going to be focused on the future and what we’re going to do for the voters in our state or the American people. And then, No. 3, we have to do a simple thing: We have to win,” Kemp told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday on “State of the Union.”
The governor’s remarks came a day after he’d told donors at a Republican National Committee retreat in Nashville that the GOP needed to move on from the 2020 presidential election. In his speech, Kemp offered a thinly veiled dig at former President Donald Trump and his continued election grievances, without naming him, saying, “Not a single swing voter will vote for our nominee if they choose to talk about the 2020 election being stolen.”
Trump, currently seen as the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, has repeatedly argued since leaving office that Republicans cannot succeed – either at the ballot box or legislatively – if they turn a blind eye to the past. But candidates who backed his false election claims did poorly in the midterm elections last fall in key swing states Trump will need to win back the White House in 2024.
Trump is also under a cloud of legal woes. In New York, a hush money payment to an adult-film star shortly before the 2016 election has resulted in his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury over his alleged role in the scheme. And in Atlanta, a select grand jury has investigated efforts by Trump and allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia in 2020.
“I can’t control what the judicial branch is doing or what a local prosecutor is doing in many ways, but what we can control … is what we’re focused on,” Kemp said Sunday.
“If we get…
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