Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) is calling President Joe Biden’s comparison of the Georgia election law to “Jim Crow” “disgusting and offensive.”
“President Biden said of the Georgia law, ‘This is Jim Crow on steroids.’ With all due respect, Mr. President, you know better,” Owens said on Tuesday.
He added, “It is disgusting and offensive to compare the actual voter suppression and violence of that era, that we grew up in, with a state law that only asks that people show their ID.”
Owens explained he expects “this kind of fear mongering” in the 1960s, but “not today.”
Touching on literacy tests and poll tests, Owens claimed they were initiated by the Democratic Party.
“The intimidation of Black Americans by the KKK was initiated by the Democratic Party. Jim Crow that I grew up in in the South of segregation was initiated by the Democratic Party,” Owens said.
Watch the video below:
"President Biden said of the Georgia law, 'this is Jim Crow on steroids.'
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 20, 2021
With all due respect, Mr. President, you know better."@BurgessOwens calls @JoeBiden's comparison of Jim Crow and the GA election law "disgusting and offensive." pic.twitter.com/p31WUSi5hs
Owens argued, “Where Black misery today thrives and is prevalent, lack of education, lack of jobs, high crimes, the call to defund the police is all done in Democratic Parties.”
Biden previously called the bill “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “a blatant attack on the Constitution.”
“Recount after recount and court case after court case upheld the integrity and outcome of a clearly free, fair, and secure democratic process,” the president said in a statement.
He continued, “Instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or winning campaigns on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote.”
The law requires new ID requirements for requesting mail-in ballots, prohibits giving food or water to voters in line at polling stations, provides the state legislature with more power over voting operations if issues are being reported, limits the number of drop boxes for absentee votes, and makes the early-voting period for runoff elections shorter.