Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hit the road for Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia on Friday, urging Georgians to “crush” the vote in their January runoff to avoid another “rigged election.”
“Georgia, we need you to not just show up Jan. 5, not just to win, but to crush it,” Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, told a crowd of supporters in Marietta.
“We need you to crush it and to send that message, the loudest message that we can, that no, we will not implement at all socialism in America,” Palin said.
As have other high-profile Republicans who’ve campaigned for Loeffler and Perdue in recent weeks, Palin tried to bolster President Donald Trump’s baseless contention that the Nov. 3 election in Georgia was “rigged” while encouraging Georgia voters to turn out to vote for the Jan. 5 election.
The runoff between Perdue and Loeffler and Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock will determine control of the Senate. Republicans will have a 50-48 majority going into the new Senate term. If the Democrats win both seats, they’d effectively have a majority because Vice President Kamala Harris could cast tiebreaking votes.
Appearing before Palin at the event was Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told the crowd: “We all know for a fact that Joe Biden did not win Georgia. We know that Georgia re-elected Donald J. Trump.”
Asked by NBC News why she was repeating election conspiracy theories that have already been debunked by multiple courts and Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state, Greene said: “Those aren’t conspiracies that have been debunked. Those are real things that happened and they haven’t been debunked.”
She also defended her past support of QAnon conspiracy theories, saying: “I’ll never apologize for looking up other information. I have no apology there.”
Biden is heading to Georgia on Tuesday to rally support for Ossoff and Warnock.
Two Democratic officials said Biden is sharing staff members and financial resources with Ossoff and Warnock.
The Biden campaign, in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee, has already spent about $5 million in the runoff races so far and has raised nearly $10 million for the Democratic challengers, the officials said. The Biden campaign is also paying for around 50 staffers to continue working in Georgia and shifted a dozen more data analytics and technology staffers to help the campaigns.
Former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate — and “Star Trek” super fan — Stacey Abrams, meanwhile, is holding a virtual fundraiser for Ossoff and Warnock on Saturday featuring the stars of various iterations of the sci-fi show.
Vice President Mike Pence’s office announced he’d be returning to Georgia on Thursday to campaign for Loeffler and Perdue at two rallies.
Trump, meanwhile, took to Twitter to suggest that Loeffler and Perdue could lose, so Republicans need to keep him in office to prevent Democrats from packing the Supreme Court — even though he lost the 2020 electoral vote by an amount he called a “landslide” in his 2016 victory and lost the popular vote by 7 million votes.
“I will not, under any circumstances, Pack the Court!” Trump tweeted.
