President Joe Biden reiterated his claim Tuesday that Georgia and other states that are passing laws to discourage voter fraud are enacting “new Jim Crow laws” that “are just antithetical to who we are.”
In pursuing that outrageous, inflammatory claim — hearkening to the worst days of racial segregation — Joe Biden is betraying his promise on the 2020 campaign trail, and in his Inaugural Address, to heal a divided nation and to unite Americans in a common cause.
There is no basis whatsoever for the “Jim Crow” claim. The vast majority of Americans — including 73% of black Americans in a poll this week — favor the use of photo identification in voting.
Biden and the Democrats claim that the push for new laws is based on the “lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. But even if the 2020 result was entirely accurate, it lacked credibility to many Americans. The use of widespread vote-by-mail in many states that had never used it before, for example, created confusion on Election Night.
The fiasco with Major League Baseball proves the point.
Last week, Biden encouraged the league to move its All-Star Game out of Atlanta over the Georgia law, which actually expands voting in many ways. The league moved it to Denver, Colorado, a “whiter” city in a state where some voting laws are more restrictive than in Georgia.
The White House tried to claim that the president had not “dictated” the move, even as it tried to defend the league’s decision, and as Biden continued to cite “Jim Crow.”
The people hurt most directly by the loss of the All-Star Game are the residents of Atlanta, a majority-black city — one that was crucial to Biden’s election victory and to Democratic control of the Senate.
There is no better example of how Democrats have hurt black Americans while exploiting black voters and false claims of racism for political purposes.
Moreover, Biden’s stance is a direct betrayal of the promise he made to Georgia voters in the 2020 election.
Last October, while campaigning in Georgia, Biden devoted an entire speech to the idea of healing.
“I want to talk about how we’re going to heal our nation,” he told voters in Warm Springs. “I know this country, I know our people, and I know we can unite and heal this nation. Warm Springs is a good place to talk about hope and healing.”
America needed “a President who doesn’t divide us, but unites us,” he said. “A President who appeals not to the worst in us, but to the best. A President who cares less about his TV ratings and more about the American people. A President who looks not to settle scores, but to find solutions.”
Biden then warned: “Time and again, throughout our history, we’ve seen charlatans, the con men, the phony populists, who sought to play on our fears, appeal to our worst appetites, and pick at the oldest scabs we have for their own political gain.”
He invoked the Pope, and the Bible:
Pope Francis asked questions that anyone who seeks to lead this great nation should be able to answer. And my answer is this: I run to unite this nation and to heal this nation. I’ve said that from the beginning. It is badly necessary. The Bible tells us there’s a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to heal. This is that time. God and history have called us to this moment, and to this mission. … And if we do so, we’ll once more become one nation under God, indivisible, a nation united, a nation strengthened, a nation healed. That is my goal. That is why I’m running. That is what we must do.
Later, in November, when the news networks declared that he had won the election, Biden declared: “This is the time to heal in America.” In his Inaugural Address, Biden spoke of “unity, not division,” and gave his “sacred oath” that he would write an “American story” of “love and of healing.”
In his abuse of “Jim Crow” to inflame the debate around voting, President Joe Biden is violating that oath, and breaking his explicit promises to voters in Georgia and beyond.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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