Trump says Georgia's racist voter suppression law doesn't go far enough
Donald Trump is still making life difficult for his party — even out of office.
Donald Trump on Monday became the latest to criticize Georgia’s new voter suppression law.
However, his criticism is not that the law adds unnecessary hurdles to vote that will disproportionally impact voters of color and young people. It’s that the law does not make it difficult enough to cast a ballot.
“Too bad the desperately needed election reforms in Georgia didn’t go further, as their originally approved Bill did, but the Governor and Lt. Governor would not go for it,” Trump said in a statement Monday night (random capitalizations his).
“This Bill should have been passed before the 2020 Presidential Election, not after,” he continued, apparently believing that greater voter suppression in the state would have prevented his loss.
Trump went on to call for a boycott of the “woke companies that don’t want Voter I.D.” — advocating for the same kind of “cancel culture” that he often rails against.
Trump’s criticism comes as major corporations such as Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola — both of which are headquartered in Georgia and employ thousands of its residents — are speaking out against the law. And the state will face economic repercussions for passing the voter suppression measures, as Major League Baseball announced it will move the 2021 All-Star Game from the Atlanta Braves’ stadium in protest.
GOP Gov. Brian Kemp attacked the companies for their statements against the law, defending Republicans for passing a measure that makes it more difficult to cast a ballot and lying about what the law does in the process.
Now Kemp will have to defend himself from his right flank following Trump’s criticism of the law — which requires ID to vote by mail, limits the use of ballot drop boxes, and makes it a crime to hand out food and drink to voters waiting in long lines. It also allows legislators to take over county election boards, leading to fears that Republicans will meddle to make it harder to vote in counties where Democrats dominate, such as Fulton and Gwinett.
The law is different from what Republicans had initially proposed, which would have ended Sunday early voting — which Black voters used in higher numbers — and ended no-excuse absentee voting. Those provisions did not make it into the final bill.
It’s part of a pattern of Trump pulling the rug out from Republican lawmakers by pushing a narrative that is unhelpful to his party.
For example, Trump’s deluge of lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election was a factor in the GOP’s devastating Senate runoff losses in Georgia, which cost Republicans control of the Senate.
Ahead of those Senate runoffs, Doug Heye, a former communications director at the Republican National Committee, told the Hill that Trump’s lies about fraud were “essentially suppressing the GOP vote” in the state. That did not stop Trump from continuing to lie about on his own defeat even as he campaigned in Georgia for Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who both lost their Senate seats in January.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
Recommended
Missouri governor hopeful Bill Eigel rejects affordable childcare proposal
Eigel has previously supported stripping funds from public schools and once opposed an expansion of early kindergarten.
By Jesse Valentine - April 15, 2024Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte hosts event with religious extremist
J.P. De Gance is the founder of Communio, an organization that uses social media marketing tools to push a far-right agenda.
By Jesse Valentine - March 27, 2024Texas Gov. Greg Abbott floats building a wall on the Oklahoma border
It’s not the first time Abbott has engaged in Civil War adjacent rhetoric.
By Jesse Valentine - February 22, 2024