Brian Kemp Weighs In On Trump, DeSantis In 2024 GOP Primary

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp again played coy during an interview Monday night on whether he will enter the GOP presidential primary.

The second-term Republican told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that he’s “certainly not running for president” but then immediately added: “But there’s always doors open in politics, depending on how things play out. And we’ll see what happens.”

When asked if he thought anyone could beat former President Donald Trump, Kemp said that the race is stagnant at this point, but that he takes current national primary polls with “a grain of salt.”

“You’re fixing to be in the dog days of August,” Kemp said, adding that there was “still a long way to go in the race.”

When asked what he thought about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Kemp said that he has talked to his campaign and they are “doing a lot of really good things, a lot of good things on the ground. And they’re in it for the long haul.”

“His numbers were so high, before he got in, in some ways he didn’t have anywhere to go,” he said. “And now he’s gotten in a stagnant place, but they’re making a lot of changes.”

Kemp, who said he will support whomever wins the GOP nomination, said that Republicans must win in 2024 and that in order to that the candidates must be focused on future, not the past. Trump could win Georgia in a general election, because Biden is deeply unpopular and has been “such a bad president,” Kemp said. But he warned that if Trump keeps focusing on what he considers the stolen 2020 election, he could easily lose the 2024 presidential election.

“I mean, for goodness sakes, it was two and a half, three years ago now,” he said. “The American people want to know, what are you going to do for me to help me offset the bad policies of Joe Biden?”

WATCH:

Trump pressured him to overturn the election, call a special session (even though he couldn’t), said he was ashamed he’d ever endorsed him and blasted him as “hapless.” But Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp says he’ll still work to get the GOP nominee elected, even if it’s Trump. pic.twitter.com/A1LYYMbM9n

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 18, 2023