Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams defended herself after President Trump invoked her name in his address Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress.
When speaking about wasteful spending, Trump said his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found $1.9 billion was used to form a committee focused on the decarbonization of homes. That committee, he claimed, was headed up by Abrams.
“We know she’s involved — just at the last moment, the money was passed over by a woman named Stacey Abrams,” he told the crowd. “Have you ever heard of her?”
The prominent Democrat shot back in a post on social platform X late Tuesday, suggesting the president was too focused on cutting taxes for billionaires such as his senior adviser Elon Musk, rather than on delivering for the American people.
“I’m proud of my work protecting civil rights & lowering energy costs for Georgians,” Abrams wrote on X.
“Someone has to deliver — because Trump is taking our hard-earned money to cut Elon Musk’s taxes,” she added.
The president’s claim has been labeled as “exaggerated” by a New York Times fact-checker. PolitiFact also deemed a version of the claim — that Abrams “stole $2 billion from taxpayers” — as “false.”
The claim stems from a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that directed Congress to give grants to organizations across the country to make energy-efficient home improvements.
Power Forward Communities, a coalition of five organizations focused on decarbonizing housing, received one of those grants for $2 billion. Abrams served for one year as a senior adviser to one of the five organizations that make up the coalition but did not lead the group.
In an interview on CNN on Wednesday morning, Abrams gave a wider response when asked to respond to Trump’s mention of her name.
“He is trying to distract Americans from his failure to deliver on any of his promises, and instead of doing his work, he’s going after those of us who are actually doing the work of the American people,” Abrams told host John Berman.
“I am very proud of the work that I’ve done to protect voting rights, to lower the cost of energy for real people in the state of Georgia, and working with organizations that want to do it around the country, because Donald Trump is failing in his promises and focusing on petty retribution instead of fulfilling his promises to the American people,” she added.
The Georgia Democrat was also asked to describe her connection to the coalition that received the federal grant money.
“I led a project in southwest Georgia that has lowered the cost of energy for struggling families, and I’m extraordinarily proud of that work,” Abrams said.
“I did not work for the entity that received the grant,” she continued later. “Ultimately, I worked for one of the partner organizations, but I was very much a part of pushing and showing America that we have the ability to lower prices, that the money is there, the will is there, the capacity is there.
“What is not there,” Abrams added, “is Donald Trump and his lackeys’ willingness to actually let American people get the benefit of these services.”
