Georgia governor says he would ‘absolutely’ back Trump as 2024 nominee despite former president’s calls for his resignation

Georgia governor Brian Kemp has said that he would “absolutely” support Donald Trump if he became the 2024 Republican nominee, despite the former president calling for his resignation late last year.

During an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on Wednesday, Mr Kemp, 57, a Republican, was asked by the host if he would support Mr Trump if he was the GOP presidential nominee for the 2024 election.

“Absolutely, I’m going to support the nominee,” Mr Kemp immediately responded, adding: “As I said, again, I worked very hard for the president. I think his ideas ... will be part of our party for a long time in the future.

“I mean, there’s a lot of great ideas out there. We’re not always going to get along, but I think the president deserves a lot of credit and he’s not going away.”

Mr Kemp’s comments came just three days after Mr Trump strongly suggested during the closing speech of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he will run for president again in 2024.

Mr Trump also criticised Mr Kemp during an interview with conservative news outlet Newsmax following his address at the conference on Sunday, claiming that his support of the governor during his runoff election in 2018 was “an endorsement that hurt us.”

He claimed that Mr Kemp was in “in last place or just about in last place” at the time of his endorsement, adding: “I endorsed him, he ended up winning the election and he certainly was not very effective for the Republican Party, to put it nicely.”

Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised Mr Kemp in the months since 3 November’s national election, after he became the first Republican to lose Georgia in nearly 30 years when he was defeated by President Joe Biden.

Although Mr Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election in November, Mr Trump repeatedly falsely claimed that there was widespread voter fraud and pressured Mr Kemp into overruling the state’s results.

After Mr Kemp and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger refused Mr Trump’s demands, the then president repeatedly publicly criticised them and later called for the governor to resign.

Speaking to Fox News in November, Mr Trump said that he is “ashamed” that he endorsed Mr Kemp for governor in 2018, before then describing him as “hapless” the following day.

While in December, Mr Trump tweeted that Mr Kemp “should resign from office,” and called for the governor to face a primary challenge during a rally that was supposed to raise support for the Republican candidates in 6 January’s runoff Senate elections.

Mr Kemp tried to stay away from the public feud, labelling it a distraction from then Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler’s campaigns for the crucial runoff elections in Georgia to decide what party had control of the Senate.

Speaking about Mr Trump’s calls for his resignation in late December, Mr Kemp said: “As far as me getting primaried, I could care less about that right now,” and added: “The biggest thing we all need to do, regardless of what you think about what’s going on in Georgia, we’ve got to support David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.”

Mr Perdue and Ms Loeffler went on to lose the primary election to Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and reverend Raphael Warnock, handing control of the Senate to the Democrats.