ATLANTA — President Donald Trump supporters rallied in cities across the country Saturday, including in Atlanta, cheering him, and jeering the election results.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the State Capitol. The demonstrators are encouraging the president to challenge the election results in the courts.
One of the president's supporters is Governor Brian Kemp. It was Trump’s endorsement of Kemp in 2018 that helped put Kemp in the Georgia Governor’s office. For now, Kemp is refraining from joining the Trump demonstrators who are alleging election fraud.
The demonstrators lined both sides of Washington Street in Downtown Atlanta, on the west side of the Capitol, waving large American flags and Trump flags, sharing a megaphone to make speeches, and cheering drivers who passed by honking at them in support.
“This is our first time protesting ever in our lives,” said Delaney Labrecque. “And it’s because we feel like we have nothing else we can do. I mean, we cannot let them steal this election away from the American people and we’re standing here fighting.”
“This isn’t stopping and it’s only going to get bigger,” said Daniel Labrecque.
There was a different sight in other places around the city where Biden fans showed their support. In Midtown, cheering and clangs from pots and pans being hit - similar to the nightly rounds of applause for frontline essential workers early on in the pandemic - echoed up from apartment buildings. And at Atlanta's well-known rainbow crosswalk at the intersection of 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue - the heart of Midtown - people flooded into the streets to celebrate.
Kemp tweeted that votes in Georgia are still being counted.
“The fight is far from over, especially with two U.S. Senate races (in Georgia) looming, and the balance of power in the Senate at stake," the governor said.
Georgia GOP Chair David Shafer said Saturday that that is his focus, too -- keeping the Senate in Republican control in the Biden administration.
And Shafer pointed out that Georgia voters will decide that, in the runoff elections on January 5.
“Our effort will be fully focused on making sure that Republicans are elected to both of these seats,” Shafer said. “Control of the Senate will be critical to restraining him (Biden) and his administration from some of the radical promises they made during the course of the campaign.”
And everyone outside the Capitol Saturday afternoon would agree to that.
“I’m afraid that Joe Biden is a Trojan Horse for far more left policies than he would articulate himself,” said Huff Croxton.
Kemp will now be figuring out how to establish a working relationship with Democrats in the White House, to make sure Georgia continues to receive all the federal support the state will continue to need in the months and years ahead.