Trump: Georgia Republicans ‘afraid to be called racist’ before passing voter law

Former President Trump on Monday suggested that a widely criticized elections law recently passed in Georgia is not restrictive enough and said Republicans in the state weakened the bill out of fear of being “called racists.”

“My reaction is the Georgia bill is far too weak,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity during a wide-ranging interview from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he now lives.

“It’s just where you have to have signature verification. They don’t have it. Why don’t they have signature verification? You want matching. You want matching signatures. They have many things that they didn’t put in. Look, what happened is the governor and others were afraid to be called racists.” 

Earlier this year, lawmakers in Georgia approved a bill to overhaul the local election laws, tightening requirements to register to vote and scaling back other voter access measures such as shortening the period in which a Georgia resident can apply for a mail-in ballot. 

Critics say the bill unfairly targets minority voters who, in some cases, lack personal identification or reliable transportation to a polling place.

President Biden described the measure as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.”

“This law, like so many others being pursued by Republicans in statehouses across the country, is a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience,” Biden said. “It must end. We have a moral and constitutional obligation to act.”

The bill’s passage was also met with widespread condemnation from the corporate business world, with major Georgia-based companies like Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines blasting the measure. 

Trump and other Republicans have suggested such tight voting restrictions are needed to combat the fraud they say is rife in modern elections and characterized the backlash against the Georgia bill as a symptom of so-called cancel culture. 

“So they gave a very weak bill,” Trump said on Monday. “And they’re called racists anyway. They had a much stronger bill a few weeks before this one came out.” 

The former president suggested the partisan battle over the Georgia elections law shows “the Democrats play a far tougher game than Republicans.”