Biden: Georgia needs to ‘smarten up’ to avoid losing business
President Joe Biden praised businesses for opposing new voting laws while telling Georgia and other states to “smarten up.”
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Biden said “it’s reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws that are just antithetical to who we are.”
“There’s another side to it too. When they in fact move out of Georgia, people who need help most, people who are making hourly wages, sometimes get hurt the most,” he continued.
Biden then went on to say that he supports and respects businesses’ decisions to protest the new voting legislation.
“I think it’s a very tough decision for a corporation to make or group to make, I respect them when they make that judgment, I support whatever judgment they make. The best way to deal with this is for Georgia and other states to smarten up. Stop it, stop it,” he said.
Biden said last week that he would “strongly support” moving the MLB All-Star Game out of Georgia to protest the new voting laws, joining other corporations condemning the new laws such as Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola.
Less than two days later, the MLB announced it would relocate the game, citing Georgia’s “restrictions to the ballot box.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) told reporters Tuesday that he does not support corporations taking sides on “incendiary issues” such as the new Georgia legislation.
“I’m not talking about political contributions,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky. “Most of them contribute to both sides. They have political action committees. That’s fine. It’s legal. It’s appropriate. I support that. I’m talking about taking a position on a highly incendiary issue like this and punishing a community or state because you don’t like a particular law they passed. I just think it’s stupid. … What I’m saying here is I think this is quite stupid.”
McConnell continued, arguing that companies will lose business by choosing sides.
“Republicans drink Coca-Cola, too, and we fly, and we like baseball,” he said. “It’s irritating one hell of a lot of Republican fans.”