As business executives speak out against a new elections law passed in Georgia, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is blasting corporations which he says are falling for a misinformation campaign about the law.
In a statement on Monday, McConnell said, “We are witnessing a coordinated campaign by powerful and wealthy people to mislead and bully the American people.”
“The President has claimed repeatedly that state-level debates over voting procedures are worse than Jim Crow or ‘Jim Crow on steroids.’ Nobody actually believes this. Nobody really thinks this current dispute comes anywhere near the horrific racist brutality of segregation. But there’s an old cynical saying that ‘history is just the set of lies agreed upon.’ And a host of powerful people and institutions apparently think they stand to benefit from parroting this big lie,” he continued.
“The Washington Post has repeatedly debunked White House lies about legislation in Georgia: ‘In reality, Election Day hours were not changed and the opportunities to cast a ballot in early voting were expanded.’ Plenty of Democrat-run states allow fewer days of early voting than the new Georgia law requires. More than 70 percent of Americans, including a majority of Democrats and a supermajority of independents, favor commonsense voter I.D. requirements; even so, Georgia will accept alternatives to driver’s licenses to verify absentee voters. All the facts disprove the big lie.”
He added, “This disinformation has a purpose. Washington Democrats want to pass a sweeping bill that would let them rewrite all 50 states’ election laws and turn the Federal Election Commission into a Democrat-run partisan body. This power grab is impossible to defend, so the left wants to deflect. Instead of winning the debate, they want to silence debate by bullying citizens and entire states into submission.”
McConnell went on to claim it is “is jaw-dropping to see powerful American institutions not just permit themselves to be bullied, but join in the bullying themselves. Wealthy corporations have no problem operating in New York, for example, which has fewer days of early voting than Georgia, requires excuses for absentee ballots, and restricts electioneering via refreshments.”
He argued that corporations “must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex.”
“Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling.”
Finally, he said, “From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government. Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order. Businesses must not use economic blackmail to spread disinformation and push bad ideas that citizens reject at the ballot box.”
His comments come as several CEOs have spoken out to criticize the new law.
Major League Baseball (MLB) announced on Friday that it would relocate its All-Star Game to “demonstrate our values as a sport.”
“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said.