Donald Trump says Georgia Senate runoffs are ‘MUST WIN!’

Donald Trump. Image via AP.

President Donald Trump broke his silence on the Georgia Senate runoffs in a Monday morning tweet.

“I strongly stand with Kelly & David. They are both great and MUST WIN!”

The lame-duck Republican President had said little about the runoff elections facing incumbent Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, even as political allies explained it away.

Trump’s tweet on Monday morning was a response to one from Loeffler from two days before, when she tweeted “We will ALWAYS stand with (President Trump.)”

Minutes after the President tweeted Monday, Loeffler offered another appreciation: “(Trump) has spent the last four years standing up for America. We’re standing beside him every step of the way.”

Whether this exchange of warm sentiments promises further engagement from the President has yet to be determined, but questions as to Trump’s engagement have come up in recent days, despite his narrow loss in the Peach State to Democrat Joe Biden.

One key ally who has been working to keep the Senate majority by engaging in Georgia, Senator Rick Scott, described a President who was alternately “optimistic” and “focused on his race” in recent days.

In Georgia Friday, for Loeffler and Perdue, Scott told a crowd in Forsyth County that the President was ultimately “optimistic” about the outcome of the race, though the Senator was coy about what such optimism entailed.

However, he revealed to Fox News that he did not speak to Trump as he suggested to the live crowd, but to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Despite not getting Trump on the line personally, the Senator and new chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said the President would do “everything he can” to help Loeffler and Perdue defeat their runoff opponents, Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

Besides being “still focused on his race,” Scott said Saturday the President is interested in “making sure all legal ballots get counted” and that “there’s no fraud out there.”

However, indications are that those lofty goals have been deflated by reality.

The President, in tweets this weekend, said that Biden “won” the race, but that it was rigged. In more recent tweets, the President holds that he “won the election.” There is no evidence of election fraud and Biden has already been declared the winner.

Trump’s ultimate utility as a campaign asset, meanwhile, may be hampered by his continued dismay at the Georgia manual recount process.

“The Fake recount going on in Georgia means nothing because they are not allowing signatures to be looked at and verified. Break the unconstitutional Consent Decree,” Trump tweeted Monday morning.

While the President and his immediate family’s plans regarding the Georgia runoffs are still being finalized, Vice President Mike Pence will be headed to the state this week. However, his events tend to be lower wattage affairs than those of the President.