ATLANTA (AP) — The effort to make the peace between Donald Trump and Georgia’s powerful Republican governor began in a sprawling neo-Victorian mansion in the exclusive Atlanta enclave of Buckhead.

It was at an Aug. 7 fundraiser hosted by former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler that fellow Republican Lindsey Graham approached Gov. Brian Kemp. Graham, the South Carolina senator and longtime confidant of the former president, was already planning to attend the fundraiser.

Now, Graham had a renewed purpose: to try to ease years of tensions between Trump and Kemp that endangered the GOP’s chances in a crucial 2024 battleground.

Graham and Kemp met privately at Loeffler’s house. And over the coming weeks, say Graham and others familiar with the matter, allies of both men arranged the two-part détente that played out publicly last Thursday to the surprise of many political watchers.

First, Kemp did an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity — another Trump ally — in which he said, “We need to send Donald Trump back to the White House.” Moments later, Trump went on his social media site to praise Kemp for his “help and support.”

A true alignment, if it lasts, could benefit both men: Trump may need the help of Kemp’s renowned political operation to win back Georgia in a tightly contested race with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, while Kemp wants to be in the good graces of Trump supporters for a future run at the U.S. Senate or the presidency in 2028. Kemp attended a fundraiser for Trump on Thursday and could join more campaign events with less than 70 days before Election Day.

Trump still argues falsely that he won Georgia based on unproven and debunked claims of voter fraud, something he brings up consistently on the campaign trail. And Kemp, who refused to stop the certification of Trump’s loss four years ago, has repeatedly pushed him to move on.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions about what happened but pointed back to his post on Truth Social in which he says about Georgia, “A win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country.”

Days before the fundraiser at Loeffler’s house, Trump mocked Kemp and his wife, Marty, at a packed rally in Atlanta. In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Graham described what he told Trump afterward.

“You’re not going to win Georgia this way,” Graham said. “And Georgia is yours to lose.”

How a meeting in Buckhead launched the détente

Graham was playing the diplomat.

Six days earlier, Trump had railed for 10 minutes against Kemp during the Atlanta campaign rally for not supporting his false theories of election fraud and blamed the governor for not stopping a local district attorney from prosecuting him and others for their efforts to overturn the election results after his loss in the state four years ago.

“He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor,” Trump said of the second-term Kemp, who won reelection in 2022 after soundly beating Trump’s handpicked Republican challenger, David Perdue, in the GOP primary. “Little Brian. Little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”

Trump also criticized Marty Kemp, who had said in April she would write in her husband’s name on her ballot in November.

Kemp shot back, posting on X, “My focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats — not engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”

“You should do the same, Mr. President, and leave my family out of it,” Kemp’s post concluded.

Graham, in an interview, said he talked to the campaign after that attack and remembers saying, “There’s no excuse for this.”

At Loeffler’s mansion, Graham, Gov. Kemp and Marty Kemp met privately and Graham also spoke to some of the governor’s top staff about moving past the tensions that had simmered since the 2020 election. Their discussions were detailed by Graham and another person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the private conversation.

Adding urgency to the talks was Harris’ entry into the race. Georgia has become newly competitive with President Joe Biden’s departure from the race and a resulting wave of Democratic enthusiasm. Republicans are worried Harris, who is running to become the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to serve as president, has energized people of color and younger voters in ways that Biden couldn’t.

Kemp told Graham that he would continue supporting the former president, even if he didn’t appreciate Trump’s rally comments. Graham tried to focus on shifting the Trump-Kemp relationship into a “more positive direction,” one of the people familiar with the conversation said.

That meeting began the process over the next two weeks. Others who spoke to Kemp included Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.

“The way that I approached my conversation with him was: ‘I’m not going to convince you that you should change your mind on the president in the same way that I’m not going to convince the president that he should change his mind on you. But you guys agree on 90% of the things. You can put whatever personal differences aside,’” Vance told NBC News. “And I think there were probably 150 people delivering that message to both the president and Brian Kemp, and I’m glad that (Kemp) got to a good place, but I don’t claim any responsibility or credit for it.”

Graham does. He said he consulted with Trump about the message praising Kemp. And he and others worked to have Kemp deliver his praise in a strategic venue.

“We worked to get Kemp on Hannity where we know Trump would see it,” Graham said.

The path forward

Cody Hall, who leads Kemp’s political organization, confirmed the governor attended a fundraiser for Trump on Thursday.

Hall said Kemp’s political organization, Hardworking Georgians, is working for Trump and the Republican ticket in a number of competitive state House districts, mostly in the Atlanta suburbs. Hall said the organization hasn’t expanded statewide in part because it doesn’t have the money needed for such an effort.

“But plans can change,” Hall said.

At least one close Kemp backer, Alec Poitevint, said he began hearing that Trump and Kemp were patching things up days before Kemp went on Fox. Poitevint is a rare Republican who has maintained good relations with both Kemp and the Trumpier parts of the Georgia state party. Despite his support of Kemp, the Trump-dominated Georgia party elected Poitevint as a delegate to the Republican National Convention.

“I had felt earlier that things were in motion,” he said this week. “Gov. Kemp and Trump are both very popular in Georgia.”

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This story has been corrected to reflect that the fundraiser where Graham and Kemp met was on Aug. 7, not Aug. 9.

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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

A new college football season, featuring widespread conference realignment and an expanded playoff, has a familiar look to it at sportsbooks, with perennial powers from the SEC and Big Ten sitting atop the odds to win the national championship.

Georgia and Ohio State have separated themselves from the pack as the consensus national title favorites ahead of the season. The Bulldogs are +300 at ESPN BET, followed closely by the Buckeyes at +325. Oregon (+700) and Texas (+900) are the only other teams with odds shorter than +1000.

Georgia and Ohio State account for nearly 50% of the bets that have been placed on ESPN BET’s title odds and are among eight teams that are odds-on favorites to qualify for this season’s 12-team playoff. Oregon (-350), Texas (-240), Notre Dame (-170), Penn State (-150), Ole Miss (-140) and Alabama (-115) also are odds-on favorites to reach the playoff at ESPN BET.

“All of our most popular teams to make the playoffs are pretty much exclusively in the SEC,” John Murray, executive director of the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas, told ESPN.

Ole Miss, Alabama, Tennessee and Texas A&M were among the teams that have attracted the most interest from bettors to make the playoffs, Murray added.

Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel (+600) is the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy. Gabriel moved ahead of Georgia quarterback Carson Beck (+850) and into the role of Heisman favorite in July. In the last 15 years, the preseason Heisman Trophy favorite has won only once (Marcus Mariota in 2014), according to ESPN Stats & Information.

“We definitely don’t want to see Dillon Gabriel win the Heisman Trophy,” Murray said. “That’s a concern.”

Former Georgia running back Kendall Milton has been picked up by the Cincinnati Bengals after his initial stint with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Just like college football, the NFL regular season is starting to creep up and NFL organizations are making their final roster moves before games start being played. Preseason wrapped up this past weekend and teams began announcing which players were waived from the roster. Former Georgia running back Kendall Milton unfortunately was one of them as the Philadelphia Eagles released him from the roster, but a new NFL team has picked up the former Bulldog.

On Thursday it was announced that the Cincinnati Bengals had picked up Milton to join the practice squad. Cincinnati selected former Georgia offensive tackle Amarius Mims in the first round of this year’s NFL draft and now Milton will be reuniting with his former teammate.

Milton had some shining moments with the Eagles during the preseason. He did what he did best as a Bulldog by methodically picking up solid yards with each and every carry he earned. In his first game, he finished his game with nine carries for 39 yards while averaging 4.3 yards per carry. He had the most carries and rushing yards in the entire football game.

Georgia had numerous players waived by NFL teams this week and it can be assumed that Milton will not be the only former Bulldog that finds a new home in the professional football league.

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