Fox News: Trump Team 'Pissed Off' with Kemp Over Candidate Pick in Georgia's Senate GOP Primary Battle

Trump and Kemp “aren’t on the same page” in the Georgia Senate race

New damning reporting from Fox News reveals that the rift between Donald Trump and Brian Kemp has only intensified as the two Republicans refuse to get on the same page about a “consensus candidate” and let the “proxy fight for the future of the Georgia GOP” continue in the Georgia Senate race. 

According to the report, Trump’s team is “frustrated” and “pissed off” at Kemp’s camp for backing the entrance of failed and fired former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley. One source even went as far as to say that Kemp has “chosen the path of the weak, […] instead of leading” when it comes to finding a suitable candidate in the increasingly messy Georgia U.S. Senate GOP primary.   

Read it for yourself: 

Fox News: Trump team ‘pissed off’ with Kemp over candidate pick in Georgia’s Senate GOP primary battle
Paul Steinhauser | July 25, 2025

KEY POINTS:

• President Donald Trump’s political team and top advisers to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia apparently aren’t on the same page when it comes to the key southeastern battleground state’s Republican Senate primary.
• Sources in Trump’s political orbit and Republican sources in Georgia confirm to Fox News that there was an agreement between the president’s political operation and Kemp’s political team that they would work together to find a candidate that they could all unify behind to take on Ossoff in the Senate race.
• Those sources also confirm that Kemp and Trump – the ultimate kingmaker in GOP politics – met two weeks ago to discuss the Senate race in Georgia.
• But when the governor floated the name of former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley, a source close to the president’s political team said “they were told to stand down, because Trump’s team wasn’t ready to move forward on anybody.”
• And when Kemp and his team did move forward with Dooley, it upset Trump’s advisers, who, according to sources, were “already pretty annoyed” that Kemp had passed earlier this year on taking on Ossoff in the Senate race.

• “We had a deal to work together,” a top political source in the Trump orbit told Fox News on Friday.  “Kemp went out on his own – which has frustrated and pissed off Trump orbit.”
• The source added that “the best option for the GOP in Georgia was and is Brian Kemp. Unfortunately, he has chosen the path of the weak, and – instead of leading – has decided to circumvent and self-anoint a candidate no one has heard of and the president hasn’t met.”
• Kemp’s political team first floated the Dooley trial balloon about two months ago. A longtime Georgia-based Republican strategist said the reaction in the Peach State among Republicans “was very negative.”