President Joe Biden sided with woke businesses like Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines in their criticism of Georgia’s new voting law on Tuesday, telling the Peach State it needs to “smarten up” and “stop it” or else risk losing more business.
What happened?
The president — who was caught last week telling an outright whopper of a lie about the new election reform measure — continued to pillory the law while speaking with reporters on Tuesday, again wrongly branding it the “new Jim Crow.”
When a reporter asked whether the famed professional golf tournament “The Masters” should move out of Georgia in protest, Biden said, “I think that’s up to the Masters,” before launching into an offensive about the law.
“Look, you know, it is reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws are just antithetical to who we are,” he said.
Though he noted, “There’s another side to it, too. The other side to it too is: When they, in fact, move out of Georgia, the people who need the help the most — people who are making hourly wages — sometimes get hurt the most.”
Yet despite acknowledging the woke business protest movement could ultimately hurt working-class people, Biden didn’t admonish the companies, but rather Republican lawmakers in Georgia for forcing their hand. He added that he supports the companies in whatever way they decide to protest the law.
“I think it’s a very tough decision for a corporation to make or a group to make, but I respect it when they make that judgment, and I support whatever judgment they make,” he continued. “But it’s — the best way to deal with this is for Georgia and other states to smarten up. Stop it. Stop it. It’s about getting people to vote.”
What else?
Biden has not been shy in his criticism of the new law, which aims to bolster the integrity of elections in the state in part by requiring photo ID for absentee voting and establishing secure drop box locations.
Earlier this month, he publicly backed Major League Baseball’s decision to move this year’s All-Star Game out of the state. And in March, during his first presidential press conference, Biden wrongly claimed that the law prevents working people from voting by shutting down voting after 5 p.m.
The latter earned a “Four Pinocchios” mark from Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler — the worst grade possible. In his assessment, Kessler noted that the law, rather than restricting voting hours, actually expands them.
