Mm.

Uh, and, and, and your sort of mainstream Republicans want the answer which is, "I'm focused on the future, not the past." That's what Kemp said throughout 2022.

But some not-so-mainstream Republicans certainly went the other way.

Um, and most of them lost, like in 2022, but there are a few, especially in some down- down-ticket races, uh, that won.

I can tell you too, this, um, at the, at the Atlanta Press Club debate, um, for the secretary of state's job, because Raffensperger's seat is open.

He, he, he ran for governor, he lost, so that seat is open, but Republican Tim Fleming is going up against Democrat Penny Nolen Reynolds.

And, you know, the Democrat's running as someone who would be a stop to all this, who would, who would say no, who would, who would sort of reimpose force over, over what the state election board's doing.

Is, is there, like, a next person in line who will, you know, defend the election administration in the state?

[laughs]

Yeah, and I don't think there's any state that, where 2020 looms so, so, so large over everything that happens like Georgia.

And if you look back to the Georgia primaries, it was a litmus test in many of these primaries.

What, what would you have done in 2020? Uh, and, and, and your sort of mainstream Republicans want the answer which is, "I'm focused on the future, not the past." That's what Kemp said throughout 2022.

But some not so mainstream Republicans certainly went the other way.

Um, and most of them lost, like in 2022, but there are a few, especially in some down, down ticket races, uh, that won.

I can tell you too, this, um, at the, at the Atlanta Press Club debate, um, for the secretary of state's job, because Raffensperger's seat is open.

... becomes, like, who's gonna, is, is there, like, a next person in line who will, you know, defend the election administration in the state?

Mm

... and, and, and your sort of mainstream Republicans want the answer which is, "I'm focused on the future, not the past." That's what Kemp said throughout 2022.

But some not so mainstream Republicans certainly went the other way.

Um, and most of them lost, like in 2022, but there are a few, especially in some down, down-ticket races, uh, that won.

I can tell you too, this, um, at the, at the Atlanta Press Club debate, um, for the secretary of state's job, because Raffensperger's seat is open.

He, he, he ran for governor, he lost, so that seat is open.

But Republican Tim Fleming is going up against Democrat Penny Brown Reynolds.

... becomes, like, who's gonna, is, is there, like, a next person in line who will, you know, defend the election administration in the state?

What is that all about?

about?Yeah, well this is about the people that, uh, Mike Collins has surrounded himself with.

His son-in-law, uh, has promoted anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi conspiracy theories on social media, but he's also has a history of hiring folks as staffers or as, uh, or, or hir- or signing up folks as activists with white ni- w- with white nationalist backgrounds.

And so Senator Ossoff made that a key point of his debate appearance just last night, uh, pressing Mike Collins on this history, pressing Mike Collins on this background.

Uh, this is part of a really, a trend for Senator Ossoff.

Since the moment Mike Collins became the Rep- uh, Republican nominee, Senator Ossoff called him a bigot, said that he was anti-Semitic.

You know, said that there's more to come in this story and, and we've seen a lot of it so far.

How so?

Tell me what's going on.

Yeah, remember, um, this Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who's on the other s- side of that infamous phone call demanding that he find exactly enough votes to overturn the 2020 election, and there are three members of the majority of the five-member state election board who Donald Trump called his pit bulls for democracy at a rally two years ago.

So, um, this is the internal division in Georgia between Republicans that is still raging.

You know, there's probably no state where the shadow of 2020 election looms larger than Georgia, even six years after the vote, and this is yet the latest example of that 2020, um, shadow still looming large.

Um, w- what is Raffensperger doing this time, having been on the receiving end of Trump's direct appeal to fraudulently steal the election?

You know, well, that's a great question because Brad Raffensperger, he's still paying the price for that refusal in, in many ways.

He ran for Georgia governor this year, came in third place in the Republican primary.

There's a significant number of MAGA Republicans who still hold that out against him.

But does it feel that way on the ground? I don't want to get carried away as a national politics guy here.

It does, to a degree, right? Look, anything can happen the next couple months, so there's still a lot of campaign to go.

But when you have...

Republicans here in Georgia themselves saying, not just privately, but more and more saying it publicly, that they're kind of writing Mike Collins off, or if they're not writing him off, they're distancing himself from them.

They're running their own campaigns in the case of Rick Jackson, the gubernatorial.

We just interviewed Attorney General Chris Carr, who said, look, we can't ignore the numbers.

They are what they are.

The choice is Mike Collins, who I don't know if I trust because I've heard some bad things about him.

How did the fight over that legislation play out?

Yeah, this has been part of a broader debate in Georgia for decades about whether or not to legalize gambling.

The lottery was, was legalized after a epic fight and helped fund a very popular scholarship called the Hope Scholarship that allowed folks with B averages to go to school tuition-free, like, like me.

I was a Hope Scholar.

But a part of it that never went forward was, of course, the broader gambling.

Casino gambling's still outlawed in Georgia, and sports betting's still outlawed in Georgia, and they're...

Sometimes they're taken as a whole fight.

How are you watching this come November, um, writ large? Do you think there's incentives for them to continue to invest in the general?

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Tennessee two zero one two.

Is this something that, that we're hearing inside of rallies as sort of a motivating factor here?

You are.

There are Democrats who are hoping to make Mike Collins the anchor on the re- entire Republican ticket.

You know, Keisha Lance Bottoms had just actually left that event, and she said Governor Kemp picked wrong.

Mm.

He was kinda leaning into, like, the Democratic activism.

But then within weeks, kinda shifted his message more towards a more friendly, more mainstream argument about bringing jobs to the district, bringing more investment, tech savvy investment to the district.

And then listen, when he, when he announced for US Senate against David Perdue, very few people gave him a shot when he got in the race.

I think it was in 2019, in that 2020 race.

But that race ended with this epic double header, uh, runoff, 'cause Senator, uh, well, Reverend Raphael Warnock was also in the race against Kelly Loeffler.

Jon Ossoff going up against David Perdue.

What's he been like as a senator?

Can you talk a little bit about what you think is pushing that and why in Fulton County?

Yeah.

I mean, one reason why Fulton County is it's the bluest bastion in Georgia.

Democrats can't win without huge turnout in Fulton County.

But these complaints, these concerns have been vetted and looked at and debunked in many ways over and over again.

But on the Republican side of the line, there's still a deep division.

There's many others, very MAGA aligned, who parrot the president's lines about election fraud in Georgia.

What's so interesting about this is in 2020, the southern state of Georgia elected two Democrats, and that doesn't happen by accident.

What are they capable of in light of the accusations that Trump made tonight?

Yeah.

Well, they're capable, and for the last few years they've been pushing rules and, and regulations within Georgia, um, to restrict and to change the processes of election ballots in Georgia.

Um, but we also have, uh, the secretary of state's office and the state legislature that has served as somewhat of a check.

Um, we've seen a battle in Georgia over QR codes and vote tabulating machines that has gone even into a special session with, uh, lawmakers essentially kicking the can, uh, kicking it down to tw- to, to next year.

Um, so it, it's, it still remains remarkably difficult in Georgia to change some of these rules, uh, because the state election board's, uh, overall, uh, discretion has been limited by the secretary of state's office and by the state legislature.

But I would say, too, that, you know, election deniers and those who pushed Trump's false claims of a rigged election in Georgia in 2020, they still hold positions of power throughout Georgia government, uh, local government, uh, state Geo- Georgia Republican Party, and even the top levels of Georgia's statewide ballot.

Do you think that tonight's address might reignite a fight over Fulton County?

Do we know what it's about?

Yeah, well, it's about these pending comments from President Trump.

We don't know exactly what the president is going to say, but we know in Georgia, the sentiment for a lot of people, Republicans and Democrats, is here we go again.

I mean, this is the state where it seems like we cannot get out of the shadow.

Is there any state more in the shadow of 2020 than Georgia is with this ongoing federal probe of ballots in Georgia's biggest Democratic stronghold with folks who have worked to overturn the election in the middle of Georgia politics on the Republican side? And of course, now the prospect of this big Trump speech in 2020 in the middle of the midterm election that could decide control of the U.S.

Senate.

What sort of evidence might the president be trying to compile from the state of Georgia if that is in fact the direction he's going?

I mean, that's the big question here in Georgia, is that what hasn't been looked at intensely, right? There's been multiple audits, recounts.

[laughs]

...

Democratic incumbent running in a, in a race in a state that Donald Trump won in 2024.

But that's the, that's the mood on the ground.

And Governor Kemp, he didn't just endorse Derek Dooley, he kind of almost created him from whole cloth as a candidate, at least.

Um, recruited him, drafted him, surrounded him with his team, helped clear the field for him, all that, and tried to get Donald Trump to stay on the sidelines, and that worked until Sunday.

And so now it's a battle over electability with both candidates saying that they're the only candidates who can beat Jon Ossoff in November.

He will lose the Atlanta Metro in unprecedented fashion, and we have to hope he doesn't take everyone else down with him." Why does [laughs] Trump keep picking these terrible candidates?

What, what is the state of that, of play in that race right now?

Yeah, well, Mike Collins is the Republican frontrunner, um, but he's going against Buddy Carter, another congressman, and Derek Dooley, a former football coach, backed by Governor Brian Kemp.

So right now, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's looking like, um, it's gonna be Mike Collins versus either of those two opponents in a potential June runoff, and the question here is what Governor Kemp's clout will, will look like because the governor has gone all in for Derek Dooley.

He's campaigned all over the state the last month or so.

It's like a tag team special between the two of them, and the governor says only an outsider can hope to beat Jon Ossoff, th- that basically another congressman like Mike Collins or Buddy Carter has no chance against the Democratic incumbent.

That, that's how strong Republicans see Jon Ossoff's chances in November are right now.

Is that an assessment that you agree with?

with?It looks like, look, I mean, uh, uh, according to AJC polls, Jon Ossoff has high approval ratings, of course, not just from Democrats, but also the independent swing voters who will help decide this election.

What do you, what do you make of it?

Yeah.

And I like what you said about Jackson-curious voters because, I mean, to say that he upended the, the Georgia Republican race for governor is like an understatement.

I mean, he just completely, unbelievably, um, overhauled it, right, with his surprise entrance.

And I think he got in back in February, um, because Burt Jones, the, the front runner, the Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor, hadn't really walled him off, right? He was at twenty five, twenty two percent in a lot of polls, well ahead of his rivals, but still like sixty percent or seventy percent of undecided voters.

He hadn't, like, sealed the deal.

So Rick Jackson saw an opening.

Mm-hmm.

And I wonder, um, what bigger piece of Marjorie Taylor Greene's either life or, um, career or, uh, conscience this is a part of.

Yeah, Nicole, I, I just have to keep reminding myself that this was one of the most devoted Trump loyalists, not just in Georgia, but around the nation, someone who might have been his most visible champion in Congress.

And now she's saying at best, the President shrugged at death threats lobbed her son's way, and at worst, you know, almost sanctioned them.

I, I was at a campaign event in her old district just last night.

It was for, uh, a candidate for US Senate.

But I, I, I took the chance to just talk to folks there about her legacy in that district.

You know, of course, there was already a special election to replace her.

Mm

But, but talk to me about where Democrats are in Georgia at the moment.

Yeah.

Look, this is the most competitive nation, at least one of the most competitive, uh, states in the nation.

Jon Ossoff is the only Democratic incumbent in the Senate running in a state where Donald Trump won just, you know, in 2024.

So, uh, Jon Ossoff comes into this cycle as particularly vulnerable.

At the same time, though, he has had the wind at his back as well.

He's raised a lot of money.

He wasn't saying that he's going for Marjorie Taylor Greene, uh, voters, but, but he's gotta do something to get above 37% on Tuesday.

Who are the people in that crowd, and are they there cheering on what he's saying? Because theoretically, these are the people, literally, who voted for Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Greene....

Yeah, Stephanie, it's interesting, 'cause the people in this crowd were there more for, for Donald Trump than anyone else.

Um, some of them got there at 5:00 AM, 4:00 AM in the morning, they were waiting in line.

Um, I, I, you know, interviewed about a dozen or so as they walked through the doors, asking them about other races, governor, Senate, Congress, and many of them were still undecided.

They were just there to support the president.

So, um, you know, when it came to the feud with Marjorie Taylor Greene, they overwhelmingly took President Trump's side.

And quickly, I know I'm bombarding you, the state election board, what is the situation here? Are the, are the board and Fulton County on opposite sides?

Right

... that, that it could happen.

They're not, they're saying it's going to happen, but they're also not, uh, explicitly ruling it out.

And this is exactly the fear that Democrats and voting rights advocates in Georgia had, even as the, the FBI raid of Fulton County's election s- hub was going on, was that this would, that would be s- be used as a pretext to take over Fulton County's election.

And frankly, way back in 2021, when this underlying voting, uh, law passed in response to Donald Trump's narrow victor- narrow defeat, I should say, in Georgia, um, that law, that, that, that sort of, um, allowance in the law for the state election board to take over a local election, um, uh, process, was the number one fear for critics of that law.

What are Republicans saying about all of this? How's it playing with voters there? Are they concerned at all about a backlash against the measures that look like voter suppression, um, in the way that we've seen before?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, because you go back in Georgia 2018, even 2020, voting rights and, and, and, uh, access to the, to the ballots, um, and i- integrity was a big part of the debate.

And it had not been as big of a part of the debate until that FBI raid.

What exactly is the grounds for this f- search warrant to begin with? And then we can get into Tulsi Gabbard's role.

Yeah, uh, and you're right, there's two things going on.

There's this close election, and there's strange- something strange going on, but the grounds, um, really, local officials say there are no grounds.

This is an election that is done and behind us, right? Um, six years ago now.

Um, but yet, you know, these false claims of election fraud still persist, and it's been one of the fixations from not just the president, but also his allies, to sow doubt and concerns about that 2020 election.

And, you know, as shocking and surprising as it was, the, the timing of the raid on the Fulton County election site, um, also-...

the, uh, f- leaders here have been preparing for that, right? It, it has been something that the president has hinted at since he recaptured the White House.

Joe Biden won the state of Georgia." So I'm curious, this morning, how is Secretary of State Raffensperger, how is Governor Kemp, both of whom rebuked Donald Trump back then, despite the fact they are Republicans who said they supported him generally, how are they responding to what's going on right now?

Greg, what has been the reaction in Fulton County? They have been over this so many times at this point.

Yeah, it's like deja vu.

It's a replay of everything, not just the last year, but the last five or six [chuckles] years here in Georgia.

We fought this fight, um, Republicans backing up Democrats, saying, "The election's over.

Move on." You know, Georgia was the home of Brad Raf- is the home of Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp, the secretary of state and governor, who both said Republicans should look beyond 2020 and towards the next election, rather than dwelling on the past.

But we're also the home of other Trump allies who continue to look at the past, and the reaction here has been a mix of exhaustion, shock, I would say surprise, but also not surprise in a sense, too, because this has been telegraphed for almost a year now.

You know, so a lot of local officials were expecting this shoe to drop.

Greg, today you wrote, "Could the FBI raid in Fulton County set the stage for a takeover of the country's elections?" Yikes! What's the answer to that?

Greg, what's going on?

Well, a lot's going on, but there's even more questions that we don't know the answers to right now.

But what we do know is about 700 boxes were, were obtained by the FBI, seized by the FBI, um, at the Fulton County office yesterday.

Um, Fulton County officials have dreaded this for the last year.

There were rumors a year ago that this would happen.

Um, so they've been on alert for a long time, although it came as a surprise that the day was yesterday, even a- even after Donald Trump has been repeatedly kind of hinting at this for a while.

Even in Davos, he talked about, um, some sort of, you know, action being taken soon.

W- what is their role in all this? I mean, they're, they're the last signatures on the certification.

She is totally a creature of this MAGA movement, and she is, um, not just leaving, but, but describing it as certain that they'll lose, certain that she'll be asked to defend Trump from impeachment.

Yeah, we see her as the living, breathing embodiment of MAGA in Georgia because she rose to power at the height of the MAGA movement, right? She wins election in 2020 running on Donald Trump's imprimatur, his, his very brand.

And then when she gets to office, she runs as, she competes as his biggest defender, his, the most loyal that MAGA can be.

Even when she veered away from some of his stances, she, she cast it as, "Oh, he's just getting bad advice." It's not he did anything wrong.

He's just getting bad advice from the wrong people around him.

And yet the last year, we've seen this break one after ano- after another that really heightened not just during the, the shutdown showdown but also, of course, over the Epstein files.

And now the question that we're asking in Georgia, and I know it's being asked around the country is, what does she do next as well?

And what do you understand about the threats that she and her family faced?

Tell us who this woman is.

is.Yeah. Well, she is the walking, living embodiment of MAGA policies until just a few weeks ago really.

I mean, when she ran for office for the first time in 2020, I met with her really down the street from where I live in suburban Atlanta, and she was a long-shot contender against an incumbent Republican who ended up winning an open House seat, uh, that she switched to a few months later, and was always one of Donald Trump's most loyal lieutenants.

That's why this is ...

You know, as, as hard to swallow this is for, for the national audience, in Georgia, it's almost inconceivable because she is MAGA.

You know, she is Donald Trump's most loyal lieutenant in Georgia, his, his fiercest defender.

And this was not an overnight break, but over the last few weeks, we've seen this, this divorce steadily, steadily s- ... you know, the, the two of them steadily separate th- themselves from each other until it reached this sort of climax over the last few days with an open split.

So isn't she more MAGA than he is?