A week and a half after Donald Trump Jr. announced that he tested positive for COVID-19 — and spent his quarantine flooding Twitter with asinine statements and quashed conspiracy theories — he decidedly joined senior advisers from his father’s reelection campaign for an exciting new project: Don Jr. will now lend his chaotic energy to a GOP super PAC in the hopes of getting voters to participate in Georgia’s Senate runoffs — and to quell the confusion created by their own party, of course.
Starting this week, the newly-formed group, Save the U.S. Senate, will air commercials aimed at mobilizing Trump supporters across the southern state with Don Jr. front and center as the face of the operation. These ads will run in the lead up to Georgia’s Senate runoff election on January 5, which will decide whether the Republican or Democratic party will hold the key government branch.
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The super PAC is overseen by Andy Surabian and Taylor Budowich, former senior advisers in Trump’s reelection effort and aides to Don Jr. The ads, according to their group, are intended to target Trump loyalists and will air only on conservative radio and television stations statewide. In a one-minute radio ad obtained by Axios, the super PAC uses audio of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer telling a crowd of Democratic supporters, “Now we take Georgia, and then we change the world!” followed by Don Jr. saying, “Don’t let Chuck Schumer and the radical left succeed!” Cool!
One of the biggest concerns the super PAC is attempting to address is misinformation and confusing messaging coming from the Republican party. Growing numbers of Trump supporters are talking about boycotting the runoff election based on conspiracies espoused by the president himself. Trump has spread unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud and criticized Georgia’s Republican leadership for not doing enough to intervene in the state’s ballot counting. But now it looks like that effort is working against him, and Jr. is trying to clean up his mess to help get Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue reelected.
“No, the 2020 Election was a total scam, we won by a lot (and will hopefully turn over the fraudulent result), but we must get out and help David and Kelly, two GREAT people. Otherwise we are playing right into the hands of some very sick people,” Trump initially tweeted. Then, during a Sunday morning appearance on Fox Business, he said that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp had “done absolutely nothing” and that he was “ashamed” that he had endorsed him in his 2018 campaign. So which is it? Vote for Republican candidates because the system works or don’t bother because it’s rigged?
As a result of all the confusion coming from the outgoing president's Twitter account, Trump supporters are using hashtags like #CrookedKelly and #CrookedPerdue to show their disdain for the runoff and its candidates. Some are even calling for fellow voters to write in the president’s name instead. This unintended side effect may just tip the Senate elections into the hands of its two Democratic candidates: Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
With just a little over a month until the runoffs, we’re not sure how much Don Jr. can do with this super PAC to undo all of his father’s incessant accusations that the election process is rigged. One thing is certain, they can't have it both ways: It can't be a rigged and the only way to save the GOP.