Dueling Georgia rallies cap defining week for Biden, Trump campaigns

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump held competing campaign rallies on Saturday in battleground Georgia, days after Super Tuesday brought the long-anticipated, ugly rematch into hyperfocus.

The location of their dueling events was no accident. Biden’s rally in the Atlanta area was just a few miles from the Fulton County Jail, where Trump was booked last summer on charges in Georgia’s election interference case against him and a number of his allies. And Trump was shoring up his support in Rome, part of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district in the state’s conservative northwest.

Trump, who was scheduled to speak before Biden, took the stage minutes after the president wrapped his event 70 miles away. While Biden delivered a condensed version of his State of the Union address, Trump spent the first 10 minutes of his rally railing against the president’s Thursday night speech.

“Joe Biden should not be shouting angrily at America,” Trump said. “America should be shouting angrily at Joe Biden.”

Saturday’s split screen wraps a defining week in the 2024 race for the White House, as both Biden and Trump swept Super Tuesday contests and the president delivered a fiery State of the Union address hammering his predecessor. The flurry of activity, particularly from the Biden campaign, offers a glimpse into the pace and nature of the fight voters can expect to see play out over the next eight months.

The venue of the split-screen visit — Georgia — also underscores the bitter nature of the rematch between the two men in what is already shaping up to be a historically long general election. Biden became the first Democrat since 1992 to flip the state, winning it in 2020 by just 12,000 votes and delivering a brutal blow to Trump’s reelection effort and his ego.

“It can tell you a lot about a person who they keep company with,” Biden said, noting that Trump was nearby in Greene’s district and spent yesterday meeting with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian leader. “When [Trump] says he wants to be a dictator, I believe him,” Biden said.

But it was the issue of immigration that loomed over their visits. Shortly before Biden took the stage in Atlanta, he said in an interview with MSNBC that he regretted using the word “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the Venezuelan man charged with killing a Georgia nursing student, who authorities say entered the U.S. illegally. And as he rallied an energized crowd at an event venue in northeast Atlanta, Biden lit into Trump for the inflammatory rhetoric the former president has used to describe immigrants.

“Instead of celebrating the contribution of immigrants to our country, to our economy and our communities, Donald Trump calls them ‘vermin,’ ‘poison,’ ‘poisoning the blood of America,’” Biden said. “No one should ever doubt where my heart is.”

An hour and a half away, Trump met privately backstage with the parents and friends of Laken Riley, the slain nursing student. Speaking to the crowd afterwards, he hit Biden for mispronouncing her name on Thursday and praised Greene as “brave” for shouting “Laken Riley” during his speech. And he criticized the president for backtracking on the word “illegal,” as supporters in the crowd booed and held signs that read, “Say her name.”

“Now he was illegal, and I say he was an illegal alien. He was an illegal immigrant. He was an illegal migrant, and he shouldn’t have been in our country, and he never would have been under the Trump policy.” Trump said. “And Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.”

Both men stepped foot in the Peach State facing a number of challenges. Polls show that Americans are apathetic about the rematch. And although polls have shown Trump with a slight edge over Biden, both candidates are struggling to energize their base supporters. Biden has tried to shake lingering concerns among Democrats about his age, and for months he has faced blowback within his own party over his response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. He has been confronted by protesters calling for a cease-fire nearly every time he has appeared in public this year, and Saturday was no exception as his speech was briefly interrupted by a person shouting “genocide Joe.”

“I don’t resent his passion. There’s a lot of Palestinians who are being unfairly victimized,” Biden said as the person was escorted out of the venue, before returning to his planned remarks.

Despite his domination on Tuesday, Trump continues to show weakness in vital suburban areas that cost him the race four years ago. His legal challenges also continue to hover over his campaign, as it’s likely he will have to further drain his war chest for legal fees this summer.

While Trump for months has been trekking around the country to bolster his support with the Republican base, Biden’s campaign wind-up has been slower. As part of a post-SOTU blitz, this shifted on Friday when Biden’s team announced a $30 million ad buy and a slew of new travel as the president leans into an aggressive posture his team says he plans to carry throughout the general election.

Biden was in Pennsylvania on Friday and will head to New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan next week, while Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona and Nevada. The campaign also hired 350 new staffers and opened 100 offices across swing states.

Saturday kicked off the new ad buy, which will target battleground states, including Black and Latino-focused outlets and channels. The Biden campaign launched a new ad Saturday morning, in which Biden leaned into the age issue and touted the value of his experience in leading the U.S. through the pandemic, economic recovery and a number of other policy achievements.

“Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret,” the president said at the ad’s outset. “But, here’s the deal. I understand how to get things done for the American people,” he continued.

It concluded with a short cutscene, with Biden quipping: “Look, I’m very young, energetic and handsome.”