Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) hammered corporations Monday for getting involved in political fights and engaging in “economic blackmail” to push the Democratic Party’s agenda.
McConnell issued a statement warning corporations of “serious consequences” if they continue to denounce and take action against states such as Georgia for its election reforms. He went on to accuse President Joe Biden and others of lying about the Georgia reforms and accused corporate heads of acting as Democratic puppets.
“We are witnessing a coordinated campaign by powerful and wealthy people to mislead and bully the American people,” McConnell said. “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.”
McConnell said the outrage over the Georgia law is performative, noting that “plenty of Democrat-run states allow fewer days of early voting than the new Georgia law requires.” The minority leader also said that most Americans favor voter I.D. requirements.
“This disinformation has a purpose,” McConnell asserted. “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.”
“Our private sector 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,” he continued.
“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,” McConnell said. “Businesses must not use economic blackmail to spread disinformation and push bad ideas that citizens reject at the ballot box.”
Corporations such as Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines have issued statements condemning Georgia election reforms signed into law last month. Major League Baseball (MLB) condemned the state and moved its 2021 All-Star game and rookie draft out of Atlanta over the law. The MLB move has already sparked some blowback in Congress, where Republicans are leading a push to remove special protections the MLB has against U.S. antitrust laws.
“In light of @MLB’s stance to undermine election integrity laws, I have instructed my staff to begin drafting legislation to remove Major League Baseball’s federal antitrust exception,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) said Friday. “An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans support requiring an ID to vote, and any organization that abuses its power to oppose secure elections deserves increased scrutiny under the law.”