Donald Trump has “the moral compass of an axe murderer”, a Republican opponent in Georgia said, discussing the former president’s legal predicament in the southern US state and elsewhere but also his continuing dominance of the presidential primary.
“As Republicans, that dashboard is going off with lights and bells and whistles, telling us all the warning things we need to know,” Geoff Duncan told CNN on Monday.
“Ninety-one indictments,” Duncan said. “Fake Republican, $8tn worth of debt [from his time in the White House], everything we need to see to not choose him as our nominee, including the fact that he’s got the moral compass of a … more like an axe murderer than a president.
“We need to do something right here, right now. This is either our pivot point or our last gasp as Republicans.”
Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia when Trump tried to overturn his defeat there by Joe Biden in 2020, an effort now the subject of 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges.
Trump also faces charges for – and denies wrongdoing over – election subversion at the federal level (four counts), retention of classified information (40) and hush-money payments to a porn star (34).
Many observers suggest the Republican party will be on a path to destruction if it picks Trump to face Biden again next year.
Trump dominates national and key-state polling, apparently suffering only minor damage after skipping the first debate – in Wisconsin last week – and indicating that he will skip all subsequent contests.
Most observers expect Trump to lose a presidential election to Biden. But polling returns close contests and also shows most Americans think Biden is too old, at 80, to serve a second term.
Trump is 77 but fewer respondents think he is too old. Many more, however, think he is corrupt.
Describing “a two-plus-year crime spree from coast to coast”, Duncan said Trump’s roster of wrongdoing was “like some sort of Ponzi scheme of lies”.
Trump is due to face a procession of trials in the election year, including in a civil defamation case in which the former president has been adjudicated a rapist.
Duncan told CNN: “When you have four trials to have to compete with on a calendar, you’re not gonna be able to, you know, skip certain days because it’s your birthday, or skip certain days because you’ve got a nail appointment, right?
“You’re gonna have to actually go face the music.”
• This article was amended on 1 September 2023. An earlier version said Geoff Duncan told CNN that there would be "a trillion dollars’ worth of debt”; this should have said $8tn.
