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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump tore into Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia during a July 22 speech in the battleground midterm state, attacking him as a "Democrat communist" as Republicans work to defeat the one-term senator in November and maintain control of the Senate.But the president didn't quite land his punchline."He reminds me of Pinky Herman. Did you ever see 'Pinky Herman?" Trump said in his remarks at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, intending to mock Ossoff by referencing the 1980s television and movie character "Pee-wee Herman" played by the late actor Paul Reubens.Trump later got it right in his lengthy speech as he talked up U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, Ossoff's Trump-endorsed Republican challenger who was absent from the event."Maybe the most important man in this room right now is not here. His name is Mike Collins and he's going to beat Pee-wee Herman," Trump said.Republicans see Georgia as perhaps their best opportunity to flip a Democratic-held Senate seat in the November midterm election as they look to maintain their 53-47 seat advantage. Democrats need to keep the Peach State blue for any realistic shot of taking control of the Senate.Recent polling shows Ossoff maintaining a slight lead in the race for a seat he won in 2020, when fellow Democratic Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock and former President Joe Biden also won their races. It was a clean sweep for Democrats, marking a political shift in a southern state that voted solidly Republican since the 1990s."Jon Ossoff and the Democrat communists want to let the Marxists into power, bankrupt your families and leave you totally independent with wide open borders. But we will not let that happen to our country," the president said in his speech, which was billed as an official White House visit to tout new Trump accounts for newborns but felt more like a campaign stop.Trump told his supporters, "I fought Ossoff before, and as you know, we won," referring to a 2017 special election for a Georgia congressional seat that Ossoff narrowly lost. "He's not respected at all in Washington. You don't even hear his name mentioned," the president said. "He's not even a factor."The Ossoff campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Collins, a close ally of Trump and a congressman since 2023, issued a video ahead of Trump's speech saying he couldn't attend the event because of congressional obligations in Washington.Trump's trip to Georgia came on the heels of a primetime speech he gave July 16, warning Americans of election vulnerabilities and alleging, without new evidence, that China tried to influence the outcome of the 2020 election. It was an effort to sow mistrust in U.S. elections ahead of voting in the midterms."Make it too big to rig and watch those machines," Trump said in his speech in Georgia.The FBI this year opened an investigation into the 2020 election results in Georgia, which Trump has long baselessly claimed he, not Biden, won. Weeks after his 2020 loss, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state's top election official, asking him to "find 11,780 votes," enough to make him the winner in Georgia.Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
