days with which to submit additional questions which will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response. i ask our witnesses to please respond as promptly as you are able. congress because the facing a friday deadline to avoid a government shutdown. a veto track from president trump. and efforts continue on another covid relief package, but so far, there is no specific bill in the schedule. congress is back on monday, and you can watch live coverage on c-span and see the senate live on c-span2. host: let's take a couple minutes and talk to greg bluestein, a political reporter at the atlanta journal-constitution, about what is going on in that senate race

and president from going down to campaign there. greg, good morning. guest: good morning. thanks for having me. host: good to talk to you again. greg, what do we expect to see from president trump tonight when he goes down to support senators david perdue and kelly loeffler? guest: well, there are very distinct paths he could take. i think we will see a blend of these two. first off, the republicans hope and pray that he does not go down there and say a vote for those two senators is a vote for him. because no one can rally the republican base quite like donald trump can. they need every republican they can muster to represent. what they fear will also happen is that he continues his grievances about november, his defeat in november, and he will also continue to intensify his attacks on republican officials georgia like governor kemp and secretary of state brad raffensperger.

host: what are georgia republicans thinking about this rally? are they asking republicans to show up? are they saying, well, you know, maybe we need to -- and keep in mind we are still in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic. what are georgia republicans telling their own party members? guest: they are encouraging a huge crowd. we are expecting thousands. the estimate i had yesterday from the campaign officials was between 3000 and 20,000 people. so it is a pretty broad range, but they have to. republicans in georgia, you loeffler andnator senator perdue have run so close to president trump, it's not like they could distance themselves from him even if they wanted to, and they don't want to, because they have to turn out the base. there is no republican in georgia more popular than donald trump. what better event could they have than having him come down and make that message personal? host: now, we know that there are people in president trump's

camp who say that the vote was rigged during the presidential election. are there republicans in georgia who are actually saying the same thing, that this last election was rigged, or is that all coming from out of state? guest: no, it has seeped into down into georgia. the false narrative of the rigged election and the stolen election has hit the grassroots in a major way. there was a rally a few days ago in suburban atlanta that i attended, thinking there was going to be just a handful of people, there was more than 1000 people. it was the biggest republican rally i had been to all year. did not involve vice president mike pence or president trump, and that is saying something. i interviewed dozens of people at that rally, and other events afterwards. most republicans plan still to vote, but some told me point blank that they are considering

weighing their options and believe the system is flawed, and they are worried about wasting the vote. host: i saw it reported earlier this week that democrats are pushing mail-in balloting for this election. i thought i read earlier that more than 1 million people had requested mail-in ballots for the runoff election. are you seeing that push only on the democratic side, or are republicans also now pushing mail-in balloting for this runoff election? guest: that's a great point. more than 1 million absentee ballots have been returned, which is a huge number in georgia, especially compared to pre-pandemic times, when you had a fraction of those. democrats won the absentee ballot in georgia by a wide majority, just like they did in many other states around the nation. and republicans won the election day vote in georgia, but the difference here is that with january 5, the weather could be

rainy, it could be icy, it could be just miserable out there in georgia. whereas in november, we usually have better weather. republicans are worried that if they rely only on election day voting, then it could come back to haunt them. now they are trying to push absentee balloting in more forceful way, but they have to go against years of denigration from president trump and some of his allies who have cast out doubt about the efficiency of absentee ballots. host: let's talk about some of those fraught relationships that we started out with in this conversation. do you expect republican governor brian kemp to be at the rally? what is the latest with president trump, given the president trump has started to attack him a little bit? guest: that's an open question on whether or not the governor

will go to this rally. my hunch is no, not just because of that relationship but unfortunately yesterday, there was a tragedy involving a young staffer, who is very close to the governor, who died in a traffic accident. cast a pall on events over the weekend. even before this, it was in doubt on whether the governor would show up, because the president has continued to attack him for not playing a more forceful role and essentially blocking the certification of georgia's vote. he has called on the governor to use emergency powers to do so, but state law does not allow for him to do it and use emergency powers. there is a provision in state law. the governor said, simply, i'm following state law by taking the steps he is taking. the president has also said he was ashamed to have endorsed brian kemp two years ago. it is just intensifying the civil war, this

infighting at a time when , republicans can ill afford it. elections are as close as they have ever been in georgia. host: we can pretty much assume that secretary of state brad raffensperger will not be there, given the back and forth between washington and himself over the counting and the certification of the votes in georgia. what is his state within the republican in georgia right now? guest: it is interesting, because while governor kemp has avoided firing back at president trump, secretary raffensperger has had a different angle. he has basically said that president trump has offered his own defeat in georgia by denigrating the absentee ballot. there's about 24,000 or so republicans who voted by absentee mail in the primary back in june in georgia and they did not vote in the november election. and so that is double the margin of joe biden's victory here in

georgia. he has taken a much more forceful tone. if he runs for reelection, which his office and aides say he is placed to do, he will almost certainly face a republican challenger in georgia in 2022. host: a final question for you, you have a senate debate coming up between kelly loeffler and a reverend are aware raphael warnock.ove raphael how close is that race and what do you expect from the debate? guest: this will be the sole debate of this runoff cycle, unless something dramatically changes. we are expecting them to hit all of the major issues fueling georgia voters, their top priorities were georgia voters, the pandemic, health care, and the economy. it will be a major moment in the campaign, and we are all looking forward here. host: we would like to thank greg, who is a political reporter for the atlanta journal-constitution, doing great work in georgia. thank you for coming on with us this morning. guest: thanks for having me. >> president trump will be in

georgia tonight. he will be speaking at a rally and whatever incumbent republican senators david perdue and kelly leffler who are both againstf elections democratic challengers. you can watch the rally live at 7:00 p.m. eastern. her, kelly loeffler and democratic challenger, rev. have a warnock, will debate. you can watch these events live online at c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. . with a discussion representatives mike johnson and jim of indiana. this is 45 minutes. >> good morning, everyone, and welcome to this ai conversation. i am robert doar, president of