ROME — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump both spent the weekend in Georgia ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

The dueling rallies presented voters a split-screen view of the rematch between the two candidates, and offered vastly different views of how they would address the major issues of today.

For nearly two hours in Rome, Trump painted a dystopian image of a nation in decline on Biden’s watch. He berated the Democrat over immigration policy, foreign policy approach and green energy incentives. He even blamed the president for delays at airports.

His campaign handed out posters of slain nursing student Laken Riley, whose killing has become a rallying cry for his supporters, to attendees as they entered the Forum River Center in northwest Georgia. Her death, he said, could have been avoided.

“What Joe Biden has done on our border is a crime against humanity and the people of this nation for which he will never be forgiven,” Trump said, repeating a pledge to seal the border and oversee the largest deportation in history.

Biden set up shop at the Pullman Yards complex in east Atlanta, where he extolled the climate change and tax policies that have helped juice Georgia’s electric vehicle industry and said “freedoms are literally on the ballot.”

He welcomed the endorsements of three powerful political advocacy groups that represent voters of color that plan to spend $30 million to mobilize Biden voters. And he noted that his opponent was in the home territory of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Trump loyalist who heckled Biden during the State of the Union.

“It can tell you a lot about a person who he keeps company with,” Biden said to applause from the crowd.

The rival rallies served as a visceral reminder of Georgia’s importance on the 2024 map. Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes four years ago, becoming the first Democrat in a generation to carry the state. Polls suggest the two are in for a tight race in November.

Democrats would love to keep Georgia in the blue column, but Republicans see capturing the state’s 16 electoral college votes as an imperative. Trump put it this way to thousands of supporters: “If we win Georgia, we win the election.”

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