In a rebuttal to President Joe Biden's claims of "Jim Crow 2.0" in Atlanta Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell held nothing back during a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon.
“The President’s rant yesterday was incorrect, incoherent, and beneath his office. He used the phrase ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ to demagogue a law that makes the franchise more accessible than in his own state of Delaware. He blasted Georgia’s procedures regarding local elections officials while pushing national legislation with almost identical language on that issue," McConnell said. “The President implied things like widely-popular voter I.D. laws are ‘totalitarian’ on the same day Washington D.C.’s Democratic mayor told citizens to bring both a photo I.D. and a vaccine card anytime they leave their house."
“There was no consistent standard behind anything the President said. He trampled through some of the most sensitive and sacred parts of our nation’s past. He invoked times when activists bled, and when soldiers died. All to demagogue voting laws that are more expansive than what Democrats have in his own home state. Georgia has more days of early voting than Delaware or New York. Georgia has no-excuse absentee voting which Delaware and New York do not have. If Georgia or Texas present Jim Crow emergencies, then so do a whole lot of Democrat-run states," McConnell continued. “The Senate Democratic Leader is going on cable TV and saying Georgia is ‘greatly restricting or eliminating early voting.’ This is a lie. Provably false. Georgia has more early voting than New York."
He went on to blast Biden's efforts to eliminate the filibuster, something the president said he wasn't in favor of during the 2020 presidential campaign, and held him accountable to his promises to unify the country.
“Twelve months ago, this President called on Americans to ‘join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.’ Yesterday, he shouted that if you disagree with him, you’re George Wallace. If you don’t pass the laws he wants, you’re Bull Connor. And if you oppose giving Democrats untrammeled one-party control of the country, well, you’re Jefferson Davis," McConnell said. “Twelve months ago, this President said that ‘disagreement must not lead to disunion.’ But, yesterday, he invoked the bloody disunion of the Civil War to demonize Americans who disagree with him. He compared a bipartisan majority of Senators to literal traitors."
“How profoundly unpresidential," he continued. “I have known, liked, and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at that podium yesterday."
The whole speech is worth a watch: