WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump was in Georgia’s Cobb County on Wednesday, diving into one of the nation’s most closely watched political battlegrounds where Republicans are looking to flip a Senate seat in November.

The president and the GOP were hopeful his remarks at what was ostensibly an official White House event on the economy would boost Republican candidates in the Peach State with less than four months before the November midterm elections. Those candidates include Rep. Mike Collins, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who’s seen as a potential 2028 presidential contender.

About 40 minutes into the Marietta rally, Trump called Ossoff “terrible” and compared him with actor “Pinky Herman,” an apparent flubbed reference to comedy character Pee-wee Herman portrayed by Paul Reubens.

“John Ossoff and the congressional Democrats voted against securing our border. They voted against our massive tax cuts that you have. They voted against the Trump accounts for your children. They want to raise your taxes by a lot, not lower than we lowered your taxes,” he said.

“John Ossoff and the Democrat communists want to let the Marxists into power, bankrupt your families, and leave you totally undefended with wide open borders,” he added. “But we will not let that happen to our country.”

Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates Ossoff’s reelection race a “Toss-up.” A June 27-30 poll by data and research firm Wick found the Peach State’s senior senator at 46.7 percent to Collins’ 42.9 percent among likely voters.

Trump’s task Wednesday was to help Collins, who, according to Wick’s analysts, needs to “change how voters compare the candidates” on qualities such as costs, families and a Georgia-first message. Ossoff’s shift toward that messaging “appears to be registering,” the analysts noted.

Instead, speaking in a solidly conservative district, Trump told the crowd that Collins has “got the whole package” and “would bring so much — they call it pork, we call it money — but he’ll bring a lot of action back to your state.”

As is typical, the president did not stick to the economic message script. He began the event by criticizing alleged creeping “communism” from democratic socialist candidates, the Biden administration’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan, and hailing the risky military and law enforcement operation he ordered in Venezuela — a country that he contended “is now working with us to produce millions and millions of barrels of oil.”

Once he leaned into what polls show is most voters’ top issue, affordability, he blamed the previous administration.

“They tried to blame high prices on me. So, particularly, when I inherited this thing on Jan. 20, [2025], we had the highest inflation in many, many years. … I had nothing to do with it,” he said. “Every day, we’re fighting to put more money back in the pockets of the hardworking American families.

“And that’s why, with the help of our incredible Republican majorities in Congress, we’ve done so much. I proudly signed the great, big beautiful bill delivering the largest tax cuts in American history,” he added, reflecting a recent GOP-wide messaging shift on last year’s sweeping tax and spending law to emphasize its tax cuts and focus less on its new spending.

But minutes later, Trump had switched to talking about his contentious White House ballroom project. He gave only a few minutes to the event’s advertised topic — his government-seeded investment accounts named after himself — to tepid applause.

There have been few, if any, differences between Trump’s public campaign stops and his policy events over the course of his rollercoaster second term. Wednesday offered more examples of that blurred line, as rally tunes such as “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses played loudly inside the high school gymnasium.

The facility’s scoreboard read 45-47, a reference to Trump being the nation’s 45th and 47th president, and the times out and fouls boxes read, in order: 2-0-2-6.

Trump did hit on his emerging midterms attack line, warning to “U-S-A!” chants that some progressive Democratic candidates were “ communists” who, if elected, would bring “absolute squalor and turmoil and death.”

The Georgia stop came one day after a Politico report, citing sources close to the White House, described Trump as not all that interested in the midterms. Trump “doesn’t care about anything beyond SAVE, Iran, and the ballroom,” a White House ally told the news outlet, referring to the SAVE America Act, a GOP-crafted elections overhaul bill.

Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn said in the Capitol earlier Wednesday when asked if he thinks the president appears disinterested in November’s congressional races: “That’s my impression, yes.” (Cornyn lost a Republican primary in May to Trump-backed state Attorney General Ken Paxton.)

But Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the Republican Conference vice chair, said moments later that he saw Trump as “very passionate about the midterms.”

Trump did, however, complain near the end of his Marietta event about the Senate being unable to clear a 60-vote threshold on the SAVE America bill, directing criticism at Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

“Everybody call John Thune at the Senate. He’s the leader of the Republican Party. And tell them to get this stuff approved,” he told the crowd.

‘President’s delusions’

Trump’s criticisms of Ossoff came as the senator has emerged as a leading voice in opposition to his “rigged” 2020 election claims.

During a July 15 hearing, Ossoff repeatedly asked Jay Clayton, the president’s nominee for director of national intelligence, who won the 2020 election. Ossoff eventually said to Clayton: “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions?”

Democrats view Trump’s fixation on the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden, as a winning issue. Trump in Georgia urged rallygoers to “watch those [voting] machines” and told them to make the midterms “too big to rig.”

Ossoff and other Democrats have sought to frame Trump’s claims as an attempt to relitigate past elections — and possibly meddle in future ones — rather than trying to address voter concerns over high prices, health care costs and the president’s Iran war.

“If there’s one person who committed election fraud in Georgia, it’s Donald Trump when he dialed up our state’s senior most election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and tried to bully him in a recorded phone call to … find the exact number of votes Donald Trump needed to win in a state that he had lost,” Ossoff told CNN on July 15, referring to the aftermath of the 2020 race.

The president on Tuesday was asked whether his administration would move to punish China, which he accused during a July 16 primetime address of trying to “influence” the 2020 U.S. election. He mostly demurred ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s planned visit later this year.

“We’re going to talk to them about it. It took place a long time ago. I think China is maybe a little bit different today than it was then,” he said in the Oval Office. “But look, they do things. ... It’s not a one-way street.”

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