Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Rips Biden, Stacey Abrams Using Only 14 Words

By Abby Liebing January 12, 2022 at 4:23pm

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited Atlanta Tuesday to speak about voting rights legislation. But their appearance did not have the effect they may have wished for.

A number of prominent voices, including many from their own side, harshly criticized the visit. There were also notable absences that made the situation worse for Biden and Harris.

Several voting rights groups announced they would be boycotting the events and openly criticized Biden and Harris.

“We don’t need even more photo ops. We need action, and that action is in the form of the John Lewis Voting Rights (Advancement) Act as well as the Freedom to Vote Act, and we need that immediately,” Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter said, according to CNN.

Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor of Georgia with voting rights reform as a major part of her platform, also did not show up for the president and vice president. She cited a scheduling conflict, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy grabbed onto Abrams’ notable absence to comment on just how useless and self-serving Biden’s visit to Atlanta was.

McCarthy said that Biden’s speech at the event was “was so self-serving and out of touch that even Stacey Abrams kept her distance.”

Rep. Kevin McCarthy says Biden’s speech in Atlanta “was so self-serving and out of touch that even Stacey Abrams kept her distance.” pic.twitter.com/RwIR7J0n62

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 12, 2022

McCarthy more broadly criticized Biden for neglecting to address the serious crisis that education is facing since COVID has derailed it. But his comment about Abrams and Biden’s speech was astute.

Abrams’ lack of an appearance spoke strongly to Biden’s overall lack of success and ratings. As his approval ratings have plummeted throughout his first year in the presidency, Abrams may have wanted to distance herself, since she has to groom her image if she wants to become governor.

The failure in Atlanta is just one more indication of how Biden is lacking approval, even among his own constituents.

As former White House advisor Ben Williamson said, “There’s bad, and then there’s ‘Gubernatorial candidate in a state you carried cancels on you’ bad,” the Daily Wire reported.

The fact that voting rights groups, just when the event was announced, so quickly boycotted it, should have been an indication that this visit to Atlanta was not bound to be outrageously successful.

While Albright of BVM rejected the “photo op” in Atlanta, other minorities, who the voting rights legislation is meant to help, spoke out against Biden.

“We beg you to stay in Washington tomorrow because we don’t need you here in Georgia,” Phi Nguyen, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta said, as CNN reported.

“We need legislation that will ensure that our democracy accurately reflects the growing diversity of this state and of this country. Mr. President and Madam Vice President, we beg you to ground that plane the same way that we continue to beg you to ground the planes of so many of our community members who are being deported because we still lack a pathway to citizenship,” Nguyen added.

This resistance and displeasure with Biden just continue to grow. Now that it is growing particularly among his own political supporters, things do not look good for the president and there seems to be more fracturing inside the Democratic Party.

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