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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., blasted companies for parroting President Biden's now-debunked claims, including that Georgia's new voting legislation is "Jim Crow on steroids."
"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 in a statement. "Businesses must not use economic blackmail to spread disinformation and push bad ideas that citizens reject at the ballot box."
FACT-CHECKER DINGS BIDEN, MEDIA PUNDITS FOR DISINGENUOUS 'JIM CROW' CLAIMS ABOUT GEORGIA VOTING LAW
The MLB pulled this year’s All-Star Game and MLB draft out of Georgia, and companies, including JPMorgan and Delta Airlines, condemned the recently signed voting law.
"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," McConnell said. "There is no consistent or factual standard being applied here. It’s just a fake narrative gaining speed by its own momentum."
In this March 25, 2021, file photo Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, second from right, leaves the Georgia State Capitol Building after he signed into law a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections. (Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)
"This disinformation has a purpose," he continued. "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."
Delta CEO Ed Bastian sent a notice to employees last week saying he wanted to "make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values."
"The right to vote is sacred. It is fundamental to our democracy and those rights not only need to be protected but easily facilitated in a safe and secure manner," Bastian said.
"After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill, coupled with discussions with leaders and employees in the Black community, it’s evident that the bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives. That is wrong."
The Georgia House of Representatives is already hitting back. The state House voted Wednesday to strip Delta of a multimillion-dollar tax break in a symbolic rebuke.
The Washington Post Fact Checker dinged Biden last week for falsely claiming the new Georgia law "ends voting hours early," giving him its harshest rating of Four Pinocchios for spreading the misinformation. Biden repeatedly claimed last week that the law signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, would make it harder for working-class people to vote.
"What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It’s sick. It’s sick," Biden said. "Deciding that you’re going to end voting at 5 o'clock when working people are just getting off work."
Biden doubled down the following day in a written statement: "Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over."
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Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote Biden's claim couldn't be substantiated.
"One could understand a flub in a news conference. But then this same claim popped up in an official presidential statement. Not a single expert we consulted who has studied the law understood why Biden made this claim, as this was the section of law that expanded early voting for many Georgians," Kessler wrote.
FOX Business' Thomas Barrabi and Audrey Conklin and Fox News' Paulina Dedaj and Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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