U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding voting rights:
“There is a regrettable and unpresidential thread that’s been woven throughout the whole Biden presidency.
“Whenever this President finds himself facing bad headlines, he tries to change the subject by fearmongering about civil rights and voting rights and pretending that we’re in the 1950s and ‘60s.
“Remember early last year, when the full impact of the Democrats’ inflation was coming into focus?
“That’s when President Biden flew down to Georgia, screamed that Jim Crow was coming back and our democracy was on death’s doorstep, and compared Republicans to Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis.
“Well, here he goes again.
“Last weekend, down in Alabama, the President suggested that the right to vote in America is ‘under assault’ today, on par with Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettis Bridge nearly 60 years ago.
“But nobody actually believes this. Nobody seriously believes that race relations or voting laws or any of these issues are anywhere near where they were in the 1960s.
“It’s just nonsense.
“President Biden again referenced the Republican state voting laws that he last year called ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ — as if all of that hysteria hadn’t been completely disproven in the meantime!
“Last November, the exact same Georgia voting law that Democrats called evil and racist and the death knell for democracy created record high turnout, lightning-fast voting lines, and a supermajority of African-American voters reporting voting experiences that were ‘excellent.’
“Do you know the share of black voters in Georgia who described their voting experience under the new Republican law as ‘poor’?
“Zero percent.
“President Biden said this law was the second coming of segregation… and zero percent of black voters said they had a poor voting experience.
“But here he goes again!
“The same lies. The same hysteria.
“We are back in this bizarre Twilight Zone where the President of the United States periodically says these absurd, apocalyptic things with zero basis in reality — and everybody just carries on like it didn’t happen.
“Well, there goes the leader of the free world, shouting unhinged and false things about the end of democracy again! Oh, you know, just another day. What else is on T.V.?
“It’s surreal, and frankly, it’s embarrassing: This President walking onstage every couple of months, shouting angry things, and appearing confused about whether it’s 2023 or 1963.
“And nothing happens! The world keeps turning.
“Republicans keep passing popular, commonsense laws that make it easy to vote but hard to cheat. Voters of all races continue having good voting experiences.
“The President, his advisors, and a few radical activists are the only people stuck in this fake parallel universe.
“Our democracy is in fine shape, no matter what a few extreme voices are shouting.
“It’s this White House’s grip on reality that is concerning.”
