here are the comments made by democratic
gubernatorial candidate stacey abrams at
a fundraising event on saturday where
she was pushing back on governor brian
kemp's frequent claim that georgia is
ranked best in the nation for business
i am tired of hearing about being the
best state in the country to do business
when we are the worst state in the
country to live
now
somebody's going to try to politifact me
on this so let me contextualize
when you're number 48 for mental health
when you're number one from maternal
mortality
when you have an incarceration rate
that's on the rise and wages that are on
the decline then you're not the number
one place to do to live
okay and then there's that but wait hold
my beer moment here is what
republican gubernatorial candidate david
perdue said in
response to that
did y'all see what stacy said this
weekend
said that george is the worst place in
the country to live
hey she ain't from here let her go back
where she came from she doesn't like it
here
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the only thing she wants to be president
united states she doesn't care about the
people in georgia that's clear
you know when we saw in 18 what she did
and what she said or kind of a blue wave
we're going to do it with documented and
undocumented workers you know i don't
think a lot of people in georgia
understood when she told black farmers
you don't need to be on the farm and you
she told black workers in hospitality
and all this you don't need to be she is
demeaning her own race when it comes to
that
willie i i don't know where to start
with that i mean
no endorsement from low energy don is
going to erase all the things that
happened there uh he he got replacement
theory in there
he got the fascist refrain of go back to
where
you came from
in there and here you have an old white
millionaire uh being indignant
that black people
might quote get off the
farm not sure
what to do with that like this is this
is just this is this this
is not
a dog whistle
this is like a a fog horn
blaring
and
it's it's a foghorn through a megaphone
i guess but again
even an endorsement from low-energy dawn
is not going to
erase uh the horrors of
this and said all that to the cheers of
the crowd inside that bar by the way
sitting next to peter navarro former
trump advisor there as well so he's got
at least somebody uh supporting him from
the trump administration uh strongly you
know elise you grew up in the south um
you you know what politics are like in
those states but the environment now is
such that you can say something like
that out loud which is just that was a
breathtaking 30 seconds or whatever it
was from david perdue and get cheers in
your state now the other side of that is
he's likely going to lose by 20 25
points tonight
it's just embarrassing he's digging
himself a deeper and deeper hole and
just wallowing in it when
it's not looking so good for him today
you know donald trump might be very
confident giving his bathrobe
predictions over the phone since he's
you know too busy to fly in on his
private plane now that's really if you
can't even be bothered to go somewhere
when you actually have a plane one state
away that's really an investment in the
candidate
but you know stacy abrams actually is
from mississippi originally i believe
and mississippi would love to claim her
and she can happily go back there and
please organize and do what you did in
georgia for the state of mississippi but
you look at david perdue and it's what
does he want his legacy to be his legacy
is that he blew a senate race because he
went in too deep with donald trump and
now he did this whole embarrassing race
for governor that
why just what was the point and so he's
just going to say these racist dog
whistles and that's what his legacy is
going to be and not you know a senator
from georgia it's just really
embarrassing yeah i mean the racism is
shocking that the guy is going to finish
his career this way
uh and just just blatantly racist
statements and
you know one thing john heilman
just for our viewers that have never
ventured into the deep south uh it's uh
it's important for them to realize
because sometimes
people look at the south as being
one big state one big area they are not
georgia actually as i uh elise and i
were joking before about how you know
georgians uh it used to be and we found
out that i think elise the guy tweeted
at us it was agricultural commissioner
who was responsible for
the the name the empire state of the
south that's what georgia used to be
called i will tell you
uh there is a big difference between
georgia and alabama politically at least
on the margins
what what georgia conservatism is
georgia republicanism is versus say
alabama mississippi louisiana arkansas
it is far different i i only say that as
a footnote here that that even if david
perdue thought that his racist dog
whistles were going to catch traction uh
he's even in the wrong southern southern
state to even get a small group of of of
voters going after him because georgia
is is far different than many other
southern states well joe you know this i
mean for a long time you know atlanta uh
known as the city too busy to hate you
know as a state that you know it has a
atlanta one of those cosmopolitan cities
in the in the country so demographically
nothing like a lot of uh of more much
more heavily rural states like some of
the ones that you mentioned there are
obviously parts of georgia south georgia
uh and north georgia that are a lot like
mississippi and alabama but there is
this giant metropolis in the middle of
the state and a giant suburban sprawl
around atlanta that changes everything
in terms of how you have to politic
there and that's true the republican
party as much as it is in the democratic
party is the case that a bunch of the
states you mentioned before uh other
southern states are not battleground
states georgia is now as as
much a battleground state as
pennsylvania at the presidential level
so this is a state of wrap at shape
state with rapid demographic change
taking place and where the country club
republicanism uh that dominates the
georgia the atlanta suburbs has been the
core of how you win a republican primary
and it's why david perdue this kind of
appeal
actually hurts him more than it helps
him with the kind of republican regulars
who right now are embracing brian kemp
and we've seen reporting reporting this
over and over again uh where suburban
republicans uh dying to to get back to a
comfort a comfort level with the party
saying things like uh i happily
supported donald trump in 2016. i
happily support him in 2020. i still
like president trump just fine but i
don't care who he's for in this race
brian kemp is good enough for me he's a
person of our state and you see that is
part of what is driving this thing here
the ability of republicans to
distinguish between what they say about
donald trump and how they decide to vote
in a contested republican primary and i
think that's one of the things that's
going to be a real sign of how that is
one of the lessons of this primary
season is republicans increasingly being
able to make those distinctions in their
minds we'll see that on display in
georgia today
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you