The June 27 Biden-Trump debate will be in Atlanta, a city rich with political drama
After it appeared voters wouldn’t get the chance to see the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates square off this year, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump agreed to two debates last week.
The first debate will take place June 27 in Atlanta, Georgia—welcome news for the city, which was one of three finalists bidding to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention. It ultimately lost out to Chicago, but it wasn’t because of the lack of political drama within the state.
Atlanta became an epicenter of conspiracy theories and “election fraud” alleged by the Trump campaign during the 2020 election. Fulton County is now the site of the former president’s election inference case. And the battleground state carries significant electoral weight, having flipped blue for the first time in nearly 30 years during the last presidential election.
The debate's location has history for Trump and will likely give him and Biden plenty to spar over.
More: Biden and Trump to debate in Atlanta, announces CNN
Trump’s history with Fulton County, Georgia
It’s fitting that the debate will be held at CNN’s studios, nestled in the center of Fulton County. The studios are less than a mile from the State Farm Arena, which served as a ballot processing site during the 2020 election.
State Farm Arena quickly became the subject of conspiracy theories about illicit votes spread by Trump and his associates on social media in the hours following the election. Trump claimed that surveillance video showed election workers staying after hours and removing “suitcases full of ballots” from under a table.
The truth was much more straightforward. A plumbing issue at the arena had delayed Election Day operations, forcing some election workers to stay late to continue processing ballots. After a lengthy investigation by multiple agencies, it was determined that no fraud took place.
The Fulton County courthouse
Former President Trump is now intimately familiar with the Fulton County Courthouse, just half a mile from the site of the upcoming debate. After an investigation by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, Trump became the first former president to be indicted on felony charges in Georgia. He and 18 allies were charged with trying to interfere with the 2020 presidential election in Georgia after pressuring state officials to overturn the results.
Prosecutors in Georgia proposed August 5 as a start date for the trial.
Georgia’s potential as a swing state
The Georgia State Capitol, located a mile from the debate stage, played a significant role in the 2020 election.
It was where Biden was certified as the first Democrat to win Georgia in almost three decades, defeating Trump by nearly 12,000 votes. Georgia will remain a crucial swing state for the candidates in the 2024 election. Both Trump and Biden have made multiple stops in the Peach State during their reelection campaigns, showing how vital these votes are to the candidates.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2024 presidential debate on June 27 will be in Atlanta, Georgia