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Atlanta’s ritzy suburb of Buckhead: This is where Georgia’s rich and beautiful live. You look down on Frankie Allen Park and the Penley Art Gallery on Buckhead Avenue from outrageously expensive apartments.
Buckhead’s Young Republicans are having a pre-Christmas campaign party here, with champagne and cocktails and speeches from party leaders. Amanda McGuy stands in the midst of the crowded gallery space – willowy, in a dark red cocktail dress, like most of the guests without a face mask.
Of course, the November 3 presidential election was a sham, says Amanda McGuy. Electoral fraud everywhere you looked.
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Amanda McGuy is 38 years old, African American and an ardent Trump admirer. Trump was right when he called the Republican governor of Georgia an idiot and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s election chief, a fraud: Both had recognized Joe Biden’s razor-thin election victory because the elections had gone completely correctly, as they explained after three recounts. Both lied, claims Amanda McGuy, that they themselves were part of the Democratic election plot.
Republicans want a majority in the Senate
Trump and his lawyers are still doing everything they can to overturn Georgia’s election results – so far in vain. Last weekend, Trump put Georgia’s campaign manager under pressure in an hour-long phone call – he was supposed to find the almost 12,000 votes that wrongly went to Joe Biden, Trump pushed, according to the telephone recording that was leaked to the “Washington Post”. The mood is heated among Republicans. They cannot put up with Joe Biden’s election victory and now at least want to win the two senator seats in Georgia.
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US President Donald Trump has put transatlantic relations to the test with his policies. With Joe Biden, the relationship could also improve on the big political stage.-
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Philip Spandorfer is also an ardent Trump supporter – like him, every voter in Georgia knows what January 5 is about: a majority in the Senate. That’s why the “Doctors for Trump” fight for every vote. Philip Spandorfer is a doctor – and one of the very few who wear a face mask here with the Young Republicans.
Philip Spandorfer – white doctor’s coat, stethoscope around his neck – does not believe that Donald Trump has downplayed the pandemic. Instead, he made sure that annoying regulations were eliminated and that everything was done to develop the vaccine. That is the legacy of Donald Trump’s political leadership, says Spandorfer: almost a miracle.
The Democrats only used the pandemic and the whole mask magic as a political weapon against Donald Trump to win the election, says Spandorfer.
Georgia became a political theater of war
Against the background of the debate about the alleged electoral fraud, Georgia, with its runoff elections for the two senator seats, has become a virtual theater of political war. Democratic candidates Jon Ossof and black preacher Raphael Warnock have been declared a national socialist threat by Republicans and incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
The Republicans have only one problem: By doubting the election result, Donald Trump has also sowed doubts among Republican voters about the correct conduct of this Senatorial election in Georgia. Christian Zimm fears that this could reduce turnout and cost votes. He is 26 years old, a recent law graduate and President of the Young Republicans of Buckhead. You can’t fight against electoral fraud and campaign at the same time, says Christian Zimm.
Zimm doesn’t think Donald Trump’s attacks on the party establishment are driving a wedge in Georgia’s Republicans as Trump’s best idea. Christian Zimm told Deutschlandfunk what he didn’t say at the Republican party the night before: In order to really challenge elections, you need solid evidence. But there isn’t.
Trump – renewed candidacy expected in 2024
Christian Zimm, president of the Young Republicans of Buckhead, Atlanta, sounds as if he would like to talk about post-Trump Republican reorganization. But Zimm is certain: Trump will remain with the Republicans. On the first day of Joe Biden’s presidency, Donald Trump will claim his party’s nomination for 2024.
And any Republican who stands in his way risks committing political suicide.
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