Velsky starts now.

Hey, good morning. It's Saturday, August the 31st. It is 66 days until Election Day. And this morning, I got Georgia on my mind, a state that is crucial to our understanding of how this election is playing out both in

that state and nationally. For decades, Georgia, a decidedly red state, did not get much attention

in presidential politics. It was won easily by Republicans from Bob Dole in 1996 through Donald

Trump in 2016. But in 2020, Joe Biden broke that streak, winning Georgia by a tiny 0.2% margin.

And now this election cycle, Georgia's back in play. It's back as a swing state. It's back as a target of Trumpian mischief.

What we're seeing right now in Georgia is like a cross-section

of the presidential race at large from the creeping threats of Trumpism that are laying the

groundwork for post-election denial and chaos to the starkly different tactics that we're

seeing on the ground from the two presidential campaigns. After narrowly losing Georgia to Joe Biden in 2020, you will remember

Donald Trump was caught on a recorded phone call begging the state's top election official,

Brad Raffensberger, to find him enough votes to overturn the election. That phone call is now

a central piece of evidence in the ongoing Georgia election fraud case,

and Trump is giving off election interference vibes to his campaign in Georgia this year.

During a dizzying, digression-filled rally there earlier this month,

Trump bashed a popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp, for not overturning the results of the 2020 election,

and he blamed Kemp for his ongoing legal troubles in the state.

But there are some Georgia Republicans who are being singled out for praise by Donald Trump.

At a rally in the state earlier this month, he called out three Republican Georgia election board members by name,

because it's really likely the president would know those people's names, saying that they are

on fire and fighting like pit bulls. Well, those three pit bulls all questioned the results of the

2020 election when Trump lost, and they're now behind a new set of rules for this election cycle

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