ATLANTA– The effort to make peace between Donald Trump and the powerful Republican governor of Georgia began in a sprawling neo-Victorian mansion in the exclusive Atlanta enclave of Buckhead.
It was at an Aug. 9 fundraiser hosted by former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler that fellow party member Lindsey Graham approached Gov. Brian Kemp. Graham, the South Carolina senator and longtime confidant of the former president, had already planned to attend the fundraiser.
Now Graham had a new goal: to try to alleviate the situation years of tension between Trump and Kemp jeopardizing the GOP’s chances in the crucial 2024 battleground.
Graham and Kemp met privately at Loeffler’s home. And in the weeks that followed, Graham and others familiar with the matter say, allies of both men orchestrated the two-part détente that went public last Thursday to the surprise of many political observers.
First, Kemp did an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, another Trump ally, in which he said, “We need to send Donald Trump back to the White House.” Moments later, Trump took to his social media site to praise Kemp for his “help and support.”
A genuine alliance, if it holds, could benefit both men: Trump may need help from Kemp’s storied political operation to win back Georgia in a close race with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, while Kemp is looking to curry favor with Trump’s supporters for a future run for the U.S. Senate or the presidency in 2028. Kemp attended a fundraiser for Trump on Thursday and may attend more campaign events with less than 70 days to go until Election Day.
Trump still claims falsely that he won Georgia on unproven and debunked claims of voter fraud, something he consistently cited during the campaign. And Kemp, who refused to stop the certification Trump’s loss four years ago has repeatedly spurred him on to move on.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions about what happened, but referred to his post on Truth Social in which he said of Georgia: “A win is so important to the success of our party and, more importantly, our country.”
Days before the fundraiser at Loeffler’s home, Trump mocked Kemp and his wife, Marty, at a packed rally in Atlanta. In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Graham described what he told Trump afterward.
“You’re not going to win Georgia this way,” Graham said. “And Georgia is yours to lose.”
Graham played the diplomat.
Six days earlier, Trump had spent 10 minutes at a campaign rally in Atlanta criticizing Kemp for failing to support his false theories about voter fraud. He also accused the governor of failing to stop a local prosecutor from prosecuting him and others for trying to overturn the election results after he lost the state four years ago.
“He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor,” Trump said of the second-term Kemp, who was re-elected in 2022 after beating firmly Trump’s hand-picked Republican challenger, David Perdue, in the GOP primaries. “Little Brian. Little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”
Trump also criticized Marty Kemp, who said in April that she would put her husband’s name on her ballot in November.
Kemp fired back, posting a message on X: “I am focused on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats. I will not engage in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”
“You should do the same, Mr. President, and leave my family out of it,” Kemp’s message concluded.
Graham said in an interview that he spoke to the campaign after the attack and recalled saying, “There is no excuse for this.”
At Loeffler’s mansion, Graham, Gov. Kemp and Marty Kemp met privately, and Graham also spoke with several of the governor’s top aides about navigating tensions that have built since the 2020 election. Their conversations were detailed by Graham and another person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to make the private conversation public.
The urgency of the talks has been heightened by Harris’s entry into the race. Georgia has become competitive again with President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race and a resulting surge of Democratic enthusiasm. Republicans worry that Harris, who is running to become the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as president, has energized people of color and younger voters in ways that Biden could not.
Kemp told Graham he would continue to support the former president, even though he didn’t appreciate Trump’s comments about the rally. Graham tried to focus on shifting the relationship between Trump and Kemp in a “more positive direction,” one of the people familiar with the conversation said.
That meeting set the stage for the next two weeks of trial. Others who spoke with Kemp included Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate.
“The way I approached my conversation with him was, ‘I’m not going to convince you to change your mind about the president, just as I’m not going to convince the president to change his mind about you. But you guys agree on 90 percent of the things. You can put aside all your personal differences,'” Vance told NBC News. “And I think there were probably 150 people who delivered that message to both the president and Brian Kemp, and I’m glad that (Kemp) got to a good place, but I don’t take any responsibility or credit for it.”
Graham does. He said he consulted with Trump about the message praising Kemp. And he and others worked to strategically place Kemp’s praise.
“We worked to get Kemp on Hannity, where we know Trump would see it,” Graham said.
Cody Hall, who heads Kemp’s political organization, confirmed that the governor attended a fundraiser for Trump on Thursday.
Hall said Kemp’s political organization, Hardworking Georgians, is working for Trump and the Republican ticket in several competitive House districts, primarily in the Atlanta suburbs. Hall said the organization has not expanded statewide, in part because it lacks the money needed for such an effort.
“But plans can change,” Hall said.
At least one Kemp supporter, Alec Poitevint, said he had heard days before Kemp appeared on Fox that Trump and Kemp were patching things up. Poitevint is a rare Republican who has maintained good relations with both Kemp and the Trumpier parts of the Georgia state party. Despite his support for Kemp, the Trump-dominated Georgia party chose Poitevint as a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
“I had a feeling before that something was moving,” he said this week. “Governor Kemp and Trump are both very popular in Georgia.”
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.