Georgia primary election tests Trump's hold on the GOP

Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman discusses the Georgia Republican gubernatorial primary and what it says about the split in the GOP.

Video Transcript

JARED BLIKRE: Well, Rick, another thing President Biden is trying to do is help some of his cohorts get elected or reelected in Congress, and we've got some primaries going on. What are you seeing there?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, the big one today is in Georgia, and this is really going to be more about Republicans than about Democrats because President Trump in the governor's race there has backed former Senator David Perdue. Perdue became an election denier saying Trump deserves-- Trump won and all that kind of stuff.

Brian Kemp is the guy, very conservative governor running for reelection. He's the one who said get out. He told Trump get out of our election. Our election is correct. And remember Trump lost Georgia, even though it's generally a red state. Trump did lose Georgia, and those two Senate seats flipped from Republican to Democrat, and that gave Democrats control of the Senate, which was very unexpected. So that gave them that tiny one-seat majority.

So Trump is backing Perdue, and Perdue is miles behind. He's almost certainly going to lose. So Trump's guy is going to go down in flames. And, you know, Trump-- some of Trump's candidates have won, so Trump still has some heft in the party. But I think the split we're seeing in the Republican Party is the Trump people just keep talking about 2020. They don't say, here's what we need to do for the future. They're just-- they're just like, we're still on the bandwagon. We're still trying to overturn the 2020 election. I mean, there's got to come a point when voters, even Republican voters, are like, what else you got?

JARED BLIKRE: That's why-- I ask myself that all the time.

RICK NEWMAN: Why are we still talking about 2020?

JULIE HYMAN: I mean, I know that there has been so much attention paid to who are his candidates? and who are not his candidates? and how are they doing? And I do have to wonder how much that's really going to matter when he's running again.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, the main-- well, I think that's why it does matter because I'm not convinced at all that Trump will run for president in 2024, and I think one of the things that Trump is probably doing is seeing how much power does he still have. If Trump candidates swept all their Republican races in the primaries this year in the midterms and then they won in the general elections in November, then Trump would say I still got it. I'm still king of the party, and I can get the nomination and probably win.

If we see Trump-backed candidates petering out, which could be happening-- I think it's still too early to say. But then Trump might say, man, I don't have the same grip on the party that I used to, and maybe my message doesn't resonate the way it did in 2016.

JULIE HYMAN: And I'm sure there will be some creative reason why he's not running for 2024--

RICK NEWMAN: It'll be somebody else's fault.

JULIE HYMAN: --in that case.

Thanks so much for coming in. Good to see you in person.

JARED BLIKRE: Yes. Yes.

RICK NEWMAN: Good to see you guys.

JULIE HYMAN: Please--

JARED BLIKRE: Come back. Visit us.

JULIE HYMAN: --don't be a stranger.

JARED BLIKRE: Visit us.