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Mitch McConnell, US Senate Minority Leader (Republican):
"African Americans vote at the same rate as Americans"
This sentence at a press conference is causing a lot of trouble for US Senator Mitch McConnell.
Is it an unfortunate slip of the tongue?
Or is a Republican saying what he really thinks?
Namely, that Black Americans are somehow different from »Americans«.
The topic quickly boils up on Twitter.
The tenor of the posts: someone is showing their true colors.
Non-white Americans post selfies using the hashtag #MitchPlease.
Marked "We are Americans".
The debate was preceded by an attempt by the Democrats to reform the electoral law.
So far, this has largely been regulated by the states.
But the Republicans in the Senate blocked the first step towards standardization.
President Joe Biden wrote that he was deeply disappointed that the Senate did not stand up for democracy.
("I am profoundly disappointed that the Senate has failed to stand up for our democracy.")
The Democrats accuse some Republican-dominated states of using their electoral rights to prevent minorities from voting.
In Georgia, for example, it has recently been banned from serving drinks and snacks in the queues at polling stations.
In the past, there were long queues, especially in neighborhoods that were predominantly black and Latino.
Mitch McConnell tried to refute the allegations - then he slipped the questionable formulation.
Mitch McConnell, US Senate Minority Leader (Republican):
»The worries are unfounded when you look at the statistics.
African Americans vote at the same rate as Americans.”
He probably didn't convince his opponents with this remark.
