Brian Kemp Pathetically Tries to Explain His Reversal on Trump

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp doesn’t think that Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in his state was a big deal, calling it a “distraction” in a Fox News interview.

Speaking to Fox & Friends on Thursday, Kemp was pressed by Steve Doocy to explain what happened between Trump and himself to resolve enmity between the two.

“Well, look, there was a little distraction, obviously, on their side when it came to Georgia. To me, that’s in the past,” Kemp said. “I have been saying that, guys, literally for over a year now, that I was going to support our nominee, that we had to win Georgia, the road to the White House runs through Georgia. And I still believe today, we cannot afford four more years of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.”

Trump attacked Kemp at an Atlanta rally earlier this month for refusing to overturn the 2020 election, saying, “He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”

Trump also attacked Kemp’s wife, Marty Kemp, for saying that she wouldn’t vote for Trump and would instead write in her husband’s name on the presidential ballot in November. At the time, Kemp responded on X, telling Trump to “leave my family out of it” and to stop engaging in “petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”

Kemp didn’t vote for the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee in June’s primary elections in Georgia but has endorsed Trump for November. However, Kemp’s office has said that the governor will be looking into ethics violations from three new pro-Trump members of the state’s election board, signaling that he may once again thwart Trump’s efforts to interfere in Georgia’s voting process.

Trump infamously told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” in January 2021. The Trump team’s efforts to stop democracy in the state resulted in felony charges for election interference against the former president and 17 co-defendants. The case is currently stalled thanks to Republican efforts to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as prosecutor, even though she originally filed the charges.

Even Donald Trump’s biggest allies admit that his social media posts are going over the top.

On Wednesday, Trump shared a series of frightening and outright offensive posts on his platform Truth Social, all before 10 a.m. The posts called for the imprisonment of Kamala Harris, Bill Gates, and Anthony Fauci, among other Democrats, as well as a military tribunal for former President Barack Obama. Multiple posts even referenced QAnon, including the far-right conspiracy group’s slogan “WWG1WGA.”

In response, former Trump campaign adviser David Urban, now a pro-Trump CNN analyst, called the erratic posting “terrible” and warned that the former president should cease with the ad hominem attacks. 

On Thursday, when asked by CNN host John Berman about Trump’s posts, Urban sarcastically replied that he was “loving it,” before encouraging Trump to stick to politics rather than threats or attacks against his opponents.

“What Donald Trump should be doing—and I’ve shared this with him and I’ll share it with him again every chance I see—stick to the issues,” said Urban. “If you want to attack Kamala Harris, please, let’s do so, but on the issue of immigration, on the porous border, and the failed economic plan of the Biden-Harris administration.”

Trump has had no filter on social media for many years, causing him to get banned from multiple platforms for inciting violence. But as his tone only gets more unhinged, his team is growing increasingly worried.

When making plans for his potential presidential transition, Donald Trump is looking to a right-wing think tank staffed by former members of his administration and MAGA acolytes. No, not to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—which has become the rock tied to the ankle of the Trump campaign—but the America First Policy Institute.

The group will create its own “America First Transition Project” to kick off Trump’s next term, according to a report from Politico published Thursday.

Earlier this month, Trump named Linda McMahon, the chair of the Trumpist think tank’s board, to co-lead his transition team—an announcement that came abnormally late in the election cycle. A former professional wrestling executive, McMahon previously served as the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s presidency, and then as chair of a pro-Trump super PAC that raised $83 million for Trump in 2020.

One lobbyist told Politico that AFPI was “in the driver’s seat” of the Trump team’s potential transition.

“AFPI is not becoming the transition,” another person familiar with the Trump team’s transition preparations told Politico. “But by virtue of how they are situated and that we are in a very late timeline for this work, AFPI and the transition may be a distinction without a difference.”

Kellyanne Conway, who chairs AFPI’s Center for the American Child, explained what the think tank had been working on since Trump’s last administration.

“For three and a half years, AFPI has focused on personnel and policy. It was formed by and is teeming with senior staffers from the first Trump Administration whose goal is to be ready on day one,” Conway explained. “Linda McMahon, Brooke Rollins and the team have planned with precision and executed with put-your-head-down type humility.”

Rollins previously served as Trump’s former Domestic Policy Council director.

According to an early memo, the group’s staffers have done extensive research on the “management, personnel, policy, financial, and administrative” strategies behind running the federal government and conducted more than one thousand interviews with former administration officials. The group has reportedly analyzed every one of Joe Biden’s executive actions and drafted more than a hundred of their own proposed ones, according to Politico.

Because the group has 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, it does not disclose its donors, but it is well-funded, raking in $23.6 million in 2022. As a nonprofit, AFPI cannot openly support a candidate for office, and thus far it has not directly claimed any influence in the Trump campaign—possibly learning from the mistakes of the Heritage Foundation, from which Trump has tried and failed to distance himself.

But at the end of the day, AFPI isn’t so different from the conservative think tanks that have crashed and burned before it. While the official plan is still being built out, the group’s broad agenda hits on many familiar conservative beats. The group advocates to finish building Trump’s border wall, to deregulate the federal government and limit spending, as well as to increase oil and gas production.

The vehemently anti-union AFPI has attacked unions at the Veterans Administration and the Transportation Security Administration. McMahon has previously advocated for right-to-work laws, which would bankrupt unions by allowing non-union workers to enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining without paying “fair share” fees.

AFPI has also aligned itself with election deniers in Georgia and is currently backing a lawsuit against Fulton County by its own election board official Julie Adams, who is seeking a court ruling on whether her duty to certify election results is “discretionary, not ministerial, in nature,” according to the suit.

The Army has weighed in on the Trump campaign’s Arlington National Cemetery dispute, and it’s siding with the gravesite official.

A spokesperson for the Army said in a statement Thursday that the military organization believed the official had been “abruptly pushed aside” and “unfairly attacked” by Trump staffers.

“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the Army spokesperson said.

“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked,” they continued. “ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

The Arlington National Cemetery official who confronted the campaign filed a report over the potentially felonious behavior but declined to press charges, reportedly fearing possible retaliation from Trump’s rabid supporters, according to The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman. The army said it considers the matter closed.

The military’s judgment follows a multiday scandal for the Republican presidential nominee after he was caught red-handed Tuesday filming video in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where recent military casualties are buried. Campaign staffers reportedly launched into a verbal and physical fight with cemetery officials, who had asked the campaign to stop videotaping. Federal law prohibits politically related activities in the cemetery, including taking photos and videos in support of a political campaign.

The Trump campaign claimed that they had been given permission to videotape by the families of fallen service members, but unfortunately for Trump, that doesn’t change federal law.

Instead, the footage was immediately transformed into a social media–oriented campaign video, where Trump can be seen laying flowers down at a grave and taking photos with people while giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita torched the cemetery official after the incident was first reported, referring to her in a statement as a “despicable individual” and questioning her mental health.

Trump’s anti-military rhetoric has been a point of contention for the MAGA candidate in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the reputed Vietnam-era draft dodger came under fire for arguing that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to one of his billionaire donors was “much better” than the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor. That comment rubbed veterans the wrong way, who connected Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric to a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”

This story has been updated.

“Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie!”

Swedish pop supergroup ABBA are torching Donald Trump for using their music without permission during a campaign event in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Tuesday, demanding that the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign pull any footage of the rally that featured their songs.

Trump reportedly played several of ABBA’s greatest hits, including “Money, Money, Money”, “The Winner Takes It All”, and “Dancing Queen.” The event, which was geared toward a heavy Swedish demographic, also reportedly played a 10-minute clip of ABBA’s live performances, reported AFP.

The Swedes’ record company, Universal Music, told The Guardian that the campaign had not asked for permission to use the tracks and that footage from the event must be “immediately” taken down and removed.

“Together with the members of Abba, we have discovered that videos have been released where Abba’s music/videos has been used at Trump events, and we have therefore requested that such use be immediately taken down and removed,” a Universal spokesperson told The Guardian. “Universal Music Publishing AB and Polar Music International AB have not received any request, so no permission or license has been given to Trump.”

ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus told Swedish newswire TT that Universal would “[make] sure it is taken down.”

ABBA is far from the only musical group that’s gone after Trump for using their music to advance his campaign without their permission. In August alone, Trump has drawn fury from the Isaac Hayes estate, Celine Dion, and Beyoncé for the unauthorized use of their music during campaign events and advertisements.

But the roster of artists who have outright banned Trump from using their music is long and wide. They include Sinéad O’Connor, The Beatles, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Guns N’ Roses, Leonard Cohen, Queen, Prince, Pharrell, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty, the Village People, and Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler.