GA Primary Day with C&B: Sen. David Perdue’s Final Argument

CLAY: We are joined now by former senator, current gubernatorial candidate David Perdue in the state of Georgia. David, appreciate you joining us. And I guess right off the top here, what are you anticipating seeing when the election results come in tonight and we all begin to check them out?

PERDUE: Hey, guys. It’s great to be with you. Hey, I think the best way to answer that is to look at what’s already happened. Georgia has a very liberal early voting period, contrary to what Biden and Stacey Abrams keep saying about Georgia being a voter-suppression state. We have 19 days of early voting. In those 19 days, 500,000 people, more than ever in Georgia, have come out to vote.

And the real story is that half of those people who have voted already did not vote in 2018. We think these are MAGA voters who voted in ’20 and ’16 when Trump ran and did not vote in ’18, and that are out there now because they’re so upset about the voter fraud that happened in Georgia what I think is happening today. We already have reports of a monster turnout today the weather is good across the whole state of Georgia and I really think there are so many people if it’s consistent with what I’ve seen in the last year and a half, it’s consistent with that, I believe we are gonna have a great turnout today and I’m very optimistic, contrary to what the polls have been saying for the last few weeks.

BUCK: David, you know, we talked to, you know, Herschel Walker before who’s as you know running on the Senate side, and I asked him about Georgia election integrity, how is that all as of today, right, without getting too deep into 2020, people had a lot of concerns, there were some problems and we’ve gotten some focus on the issue, right? The national media spent some time — or some in the national media spent some time on it. How are Georgia’s elections set up? Now, we know there’s really high turnout which is great so the story about Jim Crow 2.0 that Biden and the other Democrats were telling is just absurd, but are the elections in Georgia as secure as they should be? Should people feel confident?

PERDUE: Well, they should be confident enough to vote, and here’s why. In Virginia, 70% of their counties still use the ill-reputed Dominion machine, but Trump told them you can overwhelm the system if you get out and vote, and they did and they won a Republican governor in a Democratic state. In Georgia right now there are still things we need to do. I want to create a law enforcement agency dedicated solely to enforce election law.

That’s what Florida just did. I had brought this up in December before Florida did it and I really think this is the right thing to do. Right now, the state assembly has changed some of the rules. The drop boxes go inside. We’re not mailing out seven and a half million absence ballots without requests. We no longer allow these guys to give $55 million like Zuckerberg did into nine Democrat counties.

So there are things that make it better. We also know what the Democrats did. Look. The election in 2020 was clearly rigged and stolen. Even a judge is now saying in a court case that the evidence of fraud is compelling and he ruled to unseal the ballots. So this is what has the state divided. It’s why I ran. I just don’t think our current governor can pull the Republican Party together like I did in November 2020 and beat Stacey Abrams, and that’s our goal. Both the governor and I have one goal in mind and that is we cannot let Stacey Abrams be the next governor of Georgia.

CLAY: With that in mind, David, regardless of who wins this election, are you going to campaign either as the nominee or supporting whoever the nominee is if it’s current Governor Kemp to try to beat Stacey Abrams? Are you committed regardless of this outcome in the primary that she has to be beaten?

PERDUE: A hundred percent. I said that on the day I announced. My goal in doing this was not to beat Brian Kemp. It was to make sure Stacey Abrams is never governor of Georgia. I felt the best way to do that was to offer the Republican Party an alternative to a governor who has sold us out, has denied anything happened in 2020, and has covered it up since then and has divided the party. Now, if I’m wrong, I will absolutely be campaigning — one way or the other — with whomever is the nominee out of the Republican Party to make sure that we do not let the radical left from outside the state of Georgia come in here and steal this governor’s job the way they toll stole two Senate seats in in 2020.

BUCK: Speaking to gubernatorial candidate David Perdue down in Georgia. I wanted to let you, David, just react to (chuckles) the sound bite of Stacey Abrams getting a lot of attention. Here is what she said about your lovely state.

ABRAMS: When you’re number one for 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 live!

BUCK: Not the number one place to live, David.

PERDUE: Well, I made the comment that I’d buy her a ticket to go back to wherever she wanted to go to if she doesn’t like living here.

BUCK: (laughing)

PERDUE: Really railed about that. I also said it would, probably, have to be a private jet because she doesn’t fly commercial anymore she’s made so much money.

CLAY: (laughing)

PERDUE: So I think this is — what we’re up against, she hates Georgia, she hates America, she is right in there with the most radical element of the Democrat Party, we now see the madness of the Biden administration and how the Democrat platform is failing America again. This is… We had eight years of it under Barack Obama and we had eight years of the lowest economic output in U.S. history, the world was more dangerous because Obama cut military spending by 25%.

And now Biden has taken this to new levels. We were energy independent for God’s sake, guys, and they’ve given that away. We had Putin under control with our sanctions. They gave that away. We had the Iran nuclear deal eliminated, had them moving backwards, and now they’re talking about redoing that. We had Kim Jong-un backward. And, oh, by the way, we had NATO beginning to pay their fair share — and we had China neutralized much in the Far East.

So in one year, two million illegal immigrants. We’re paying $5 a gallon for gas now in Georgia, not $2 the way it was when Trump was there. And, by the way, in Afghanistan, nobody wanted out of Afghanistan more than Donald Trump. But we had a plan. I was part of that on Armed Services Committee. But, you know, in the last 18 months of Donald Trump’s administration not one person died, not one American died in Afghanistan. So this is a Biden administration that we need to get out, and to do that we’ve gotta get a Republican conservative in the White House in ’24, we got get the Senate majority back this year, and the only way to do both those things is to win this run against Stacey Abrams in the fall, make sure she’s not the governor of Georgia.

CLAY: We’re talking to Republican governor candidate David Perdue. I’m fired up still, especially as these numbers are coming in on the total voters, as you referenced earlier in your interview. Should Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred have to apologize to everybody in the state of Georgia for the idiotic decision he made to pull the All-Star Game out of Atlanta?

PERDUE: Well, I think he’d be in a long line. I think the Delta chairman, I think Coca-Cola chairman, I think Stacey Abrams, I think Joe Biden, I think the head of the Democratic Party —

CLAY: Yep.

PERDUE: — all these people that jumped to the conclusion that this was a racist vote suppression bill that our state legislature passed is outrageous. Yes. Major League Baseball should have to apologize. And, oh, by the way, they should uproot their schedule and bring the next All-Star Game back to Atlanta, Georgia. This cost small business hundreds of millions of dollars! This is on the back of Stacey Abrams. She made a political play and damaged people here in the state.

If you can’t tell I’m passionate about this, then let’s get face-to-face ,’cause I am so upset of what Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden perpetrated on our state. Look, our rules for voting are more liberal than Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, for God’s sake, and New Jersey and New York! I can make that case. So my bottom line to the voters of Georgia right now, guys, is this:

If you’re as upset as I am about how our RINO Republican career politicians like Brian Kemp and others have sold us out, allowed them to steal the elections in 2020, did nothing about it and now is covering it up and suppressing evidence. This is your only chance to fight back. So please stand with us, get out and vote, today is the last day to make a difference. So I’m pretty excited that people are doing that right now. The evidence today is that we have a monster turnout going. I think it will condition through 7 o’clock tonight and then we’ll see the turnout. But one way or the other, we’re not gonna let Stacey Abrams run for president from the state of Georgia. I can guarantee you that.

BUCK: Candidate for the governor’s mansion in Georgia, David Perdue. David, thanks for coming to hang out with Clay and Buck. Appreciate it, sir.

PERDUE: I love you guys. Thanks, man. Take care.

BUCK: He has excellent taste in radio so —

CLAY: No doubt. Amen on that.

BUCK: — that’s something in his favor for sure.