(FreedomBeacon.com)- Now that he’s secured the Republican nomination for governor in Georgia, Brian Kemp is making his next move — looking to call a truce in his feud with former President Donald Trump.
Trump has been a very vocal critic of Kemp and his administration, which started when Kemp chose Kelley Loeffler as his pick for a U.S. Senate seat without conferring with the then-president first. Trump’s distaste for Kemp his warp speed, though, following the 2020 presidential election, when the Georgia governor refused to overturn the results of his state’s election in Trump’s favor.
Ever since then, Trump has attacked Kemp publicly on numerous occasions. That hit an apex recently, when the former president backed Kemp’s challenger for the Republican nomination — former Senator David Perdue.
That didn’t go so well for Trump, though, as Kemp crushed Perdue by 52 points in last week’s Georgia Republican primary. Kemp now advances to the general election in November against Democrat Stacey Abrams, who he narrowly defeated for governor four years ago.
Some of Kemp’s main allies are reportedly trying to broker a peace deal between Trump and Kemp now that the latter is the official nominee for the Republican party in Georgia.
While many of these aides don’t believe that Trump will go as far as officially endorsing Kemp for Georgia governor come the fall, they hope that he’ll at least back down from his sharp criticism.
Having Trump on their side would be great, the aides told local media outlets, but at the very least, they’d like him to not be outwardly against Kemp. This will be very important, as Trump is likely to visit Georgia on multiple occasions in the lead-up to the midterm elections, as two other candidates that he endorsed — Burt Jones and Herschel Walker — won their respective primaries.
One of the people who’s heading up what is being referred to as Operation Outreach is a long-time aide for Perdue, Derrick Dickey. In fact, Dickey is apparently well respected and trusted within Trump’s inner circle, so he’s hoping to be able to convince the former president to back off on the Kemp attacks.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that the group that is hoping to get Trump to back off are hoping that they can convince him based on the fact that Kemp never “once said a bad word” about the former president — even if he didn’t do his bidding exactly as he wanted.
Many experts believe that a full reconciliation isn’t likely, especially after former Vice President Mike Pence headlined a rally for Kemp before the primary election.
Trump himself apparently signaled that he’s not yet ready to back down on his attacks on Kemp when he sent a message out to his supporters that read:
“Something stinks in Georgia.”
That message was accompanied by a link to a story that claimed there was election fraud that occurred in Georgia during the primary election.
