Rep. Burgess Owens took aim at President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party over claims that Georgia’s new voting law is “Jim Crow on steroids.”
“President Biden said of the Georgia law, ' This is Jim Crow on steroids .' With all due respect, Mr. President, you know better. It is disgusting and offensive to compare the actual voter suppression and violence of that era that we grew up in with a state law that only asks that people show their ID,” Owens, who grew up in the Jim Crow South, said Tuesday during a Senate judiciary hearing called “Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote.”
Owens then turned his attention to the Democratic Party as a whole, characterizing it as using scare tactics from the 1960s and saying that the party was behind the “intimidation of black Americans” by the Ku Klux Klan.
“This is the type of fear mongering I expect in the 1960s. Not today. And by the way, literacy tests and protests were … initiated by the Democratic Party. The intimidation of black Americans by the KKK was initiated by the Democratic Party,” he continued.
"President Biden said of the Georgia law, 'this is Jim Crow on steroids.'
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 20, 2021
With all due respect, Mr. President, you know better." @BurgessOwens calls @JoeBiden 's comparison of Jim Crow and the GA election law "disgusting and offensive." pic.twitter.com/p31WUSi5hs
“Jim Crow, that I grew up in in the South of segregation, was initiated by the Democratic Party. The soft bigotry of low expectation now projected on black Americans, not Italians, not Asians, not Polish, not Jewish, but only black Americans, is being done by the Democratic Party.”
“Where black misery today thrives and is prevalent, lack of education, lack of jobs high crimes, the call to defund police is all done [by the Democratic Party],” Owens added.
His comments come as Democrats continue to rail against Georgia’s new voting integrity law, with corporations also slamming the measure as one that will disenfranchise black voters.
Sen. Ted Cruz issued similar comments to Owens's in a Twitter thread on Monday, accusing the party of having "expertise in bigotry & discrimination."
“Impressive candor for Senate Dems to hold a hearing on the history of Jim Crow laws," Cruz said on Twitter before reeling off a list of controversial Democrats. “Dems wrote Jim Crow. Sadly, they’ve got a lot of expertise in bigotry & discrimination.”
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“This is nonsense, on many levels,” Cruz continued. “(1) GOP, the party of Lincoln, was founded to END slavery. Dems ferociously defended slavery. (2) In 1964, 82% of GOP voted for Civil Rights Act. Only 69% of Dems did & Dems filibustered to try to kill it. (3) It’s not just ancient Dem history (which Lefties angrily insist). The CURRENT Dem governor of VA displayed a Klansman in his yearbook. (4) Dem Robert Byrd, the Senate Majority Leader from 1987-89, was an 'Exalted Cyclops' in the KKK. (5) Joe Biden gave a gushing eulogy for Klansman Byrd ELEVEN YEAR AGO."
6/x (8) Just last month, EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT voted for a new program that explicitly discriminates based on race, forgiving Ag loans for farmers only in specified races. This is wrong & only divides us further.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 19, 2021