Cameron Joseph for VICE:
When President Trump arrives in Georgia on Saturday, he won’t be there just to rally for candidates who’ve embraced his election lies. He’ll be fighting for allies who could help him try to rig the election in 2024.ADVERTISEMENT
Trump is heading to the state to promote a slate of candidates who have echoed his false election claims. That includes congressman Jody Hice, who, with Trump’s endorsement, is favored to defeat Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Herschel Walker, who has echoed Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rhetoric and is the GOP front-runner to face Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
That rally comes shortly after his latest slew of endorsements of “big lie” acolytes—including a trio running for powerful offices in key swing states Trump narrowly lost last fall.
Trump seems to be looking to help cronies win from the top of the ballot on down, putting them in positions of power they could leverage to pay him back if he’s the nominee in 2024.
“Trump appears to be trying to stack various places in the election process with people who have expressed support for his false statements about the election being stolen,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California-Irvine. “The more people in power counting the votes who cannot be trusted to fairly count the votes, the greater the danger we’re in.”
A key reason that Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss failed was enough Republicans stood up to him at enough critical moments.