US President-elect Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, still scheming to reverse his election defeat and lashing out at Republicans who have refused to endorse his efforts, converge on Georgia this evening for dueling rallies on the eve of runoff votes that will decide control of the US Senate.
Mr Trump, a day after the release of a recording of the outgoing president that rocked Washington DC, is to host a rally in the rural city of Dalton for Republican incumbent senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Mr Biden, who takes over the White House on January 20, is to campaign in Atlanta, the Georgia capital, for the Democratic challengers, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
Ms Loeffler, who was appointed to the Senate in December 2019 after the serving senator resigned for health reasons, is taking on Mr Warnock, the 51-year-old African-American pastor at the Atlanta church where the Martin Luther King Jr once preached.
Mr Perdue, 71, a former CEO of Dollar General who was elected to the Senate in 2014, is running against Mr Ossoff, the 33-year-old head of a television production company.
Georgia has been reliably Republican but Mr Biden beat Mr Trump by nearly 12,000 votes in the Peach State in the presidential election and polls have the Senate races neck-and-neck.
Republicans hold 50 seats in the Senate and a victory in just one of the runoff races would give them a majority and the ability to thwart Mr Biden's agenda.
A Democratic sweep would result in a 50-50 split in the Senate with Democrats holding the tie-breaking vote in Vice President Kamala Harris.
Mr Biden is expected to speak around 9.30pm Irish time, while Mr Trump is scheduled to take the stage in the evening in Dalton.
US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has described a phone conversation by President Donald Trump with Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as a 'bald-faced, bold abuse of power' | Read more: https://t.co/QNNbqjwvfx pic.twitter.com/sJtWbTyFRO
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) January 4, 2021
Ms Loeffler is expected to attend Trump's rally while Mr Perdue, who is in quarantine after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19, is expected to show up virtually.
Supporters of the president began gathering hours before the start of his rally with stands selling "Stop the Steal" signs.
The Georgia rallies come a day after The Washington Post published a shocking recording of a telephone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
On the tape, Mr Trump tells Mr Raffensperger he wants to "find 11,780 votes" - one more than Mr Biden's margin of victory in Georgia - and makes vague threats he could face "a big risk" if he fails to do so.
Mr Trump repeatedly and falsely claims during the hour-long conversation that he won Georgia, an assertion refuted in recounts and in the courts.
"There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated," the president tells Mr Raffensperger.
Mr Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, rebuffs Mr Trump's claims telling him: "Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong."
Ms Harris, the vice president-elect, slammed Mr Trump's call during a campaign stop in Georgia on Sunday as a "bold abuse of power."
Two Democratic members of the House of Representatives, Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice, asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to open an investigation of Trump, saying he had engaged in "a number of election crimes" in his call with Mr Raffensperger.
"The evidence of election fraud by Mr Trump is now in broad daylight," they said.
The Georgia elections are being held one day ahead of certification by Congress of the Electoral College votes that determine the White House winner.
Certification is generally a formality but more than 100 Republican members of the House and about a dozen Senate Republicans have said they plan to raise objections.
At least one House and one Senate member needs to lodge an objection to certification to send it to the floor for debate and a vote.
A vote would be doomed to failure, however, in the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-majority Senate, where a number of Republican senators have acknowledged Biden's victory and said they will not contest it.
