Georgia lieutenant governor says Trump claims will hurt GOP candidates in runoff

Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) said Sunday that he is worried President Trump’s continued claims that he won an election he lost will hurt the state’s Senate GOP candidates in their Jan. 5 runoff by making GOP voters less likely to turn up at the polls.

Duncan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that it was “encouraging to listen to the president champion the conservative strategies” of the senators at his Georgia rally. But the lieutenant governor said Trump’s messaging about the election being “rigged” was “concerning” to him.

{mosads}“I worry that this continuous, you know, fanning of the flames around misinformation puts us in a negative position with regards to the Jan. 5 runoff,” he said. “The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process. They’re only hurting it.”

“I worry that we’re handing off a playbook to the Democrats for Jan. 5, and certainly I can’t think of a worse playbook to hand off over the last, you know, four to five weeks,” he continued.

When host Jake Tapper asked if the president’s continued attacks against Georgia GOP officials upset him, Duncan, who supported Trump in the election, answered, “Absolutely it disgusts me.”

“It’s not American,” he said. “It’s not what democracy’s all about.”

“The troubling part to this is, I think, short term, this chaos creates some doubt around Jan. 5, and are we gonna get enough Republicans to show up to vote?” Duncan added. 

Several Georgia Republicans who backed Trump in the presidential race are now facing backlash from the president for not supporting his unsubstantiated claims that widespread voter fraud cheated him out of a victory in the state.

Georgia officials have conducted recounts that have not changed the results showing Joe Biden defeated Trump in Georgia, but that has not put an end to Trump’s claims.

The Georgia runoff races will determine which party has control of the U.S. Senate. Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) will face Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff, while Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) will go against Democratic Rev. Raphael Warnock.