On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell defended his record on civil rights, reacting to left-wing criticism following a slur against Black voters earlier this week, calling the outrage “offensive and inappropriate.” According to NBC News, McConnell termed the criticism an “outrageous mischaracterization of my record as a result of leaving one word out unintentionally the other day, which I just now have revealed to you, is tremendously disturbing” at a press conference in Kentucky.
When he expressed his opposition to Democrats’ voting rights legislation on Wednesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made quite a stir. “If you look at the facts, African Americans vote at the same rate as Americans,” McConnell said at the time, implying that Black voters are not US citizens. He confirmed after the press conference that he had mistakenly missed the word “almost,” yet he returned to the microphones to correct himself once again. “The omitted word is ‘all,’ not ‘almost,'” he explained. “Sorry.”
Following Wednesday’s remark, the hashtag “MitchPlease” became popular on Twitter, with several Democratic lawmakers using it. Among them was Illinois Representative Bobby Rush, who tweeted a photo of himself in front of the White House with the message “African Americans ARE Americans. #MitchPlease.” Kentucky Democrat Charles Booker, who is running against Republican Sen. Rand Paul in November, tweeted a recording of McConnell’s speech with the caption: “I need you to recognize Mitch McConnell for who he is. Whatever this craven fool believes, being Black does not make you any less of an American.”
McConnell branded such criticism as “hurtful and insulting, and I hope some of the detractors recognize it’s just incorrect” on Friday. “I was there for Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” McConnell said, adding that he was also present “when President [Lyndon] Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in the Capitol in 1965.” “I’ve had African American speech writers, schedulers, and office managers throughout the years,” he noted. You are a lesser American, regardless of what this craven person believes.”
