Former President Donald Trump is urging baseball fans to boycott Major League Baseball over its decision to pull this year’s All-Star Game and 2021 Draft out of Georgia over its recently passed election law.
“Baseball is already losing tremendous numbers of fans,” Trump said in a statement Friday night, reports Fox News. “Now they leave Atlanta with their All-Star Game because they are afraid of the Radical Left Democrats who do not want voter I.D., which is desperately needed, to have anything to do with our elections.
He also called for a boycott of “all of the woke companies that are “interfering with Free and Fair Elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta, and all!”
Coca-Cola and Delta are among companies based in Georgia whose CEOS have spoken out agains the new law.
Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey told CNBC this week that the law is “unacceptable” and a “step backward. (It) is wrong and needs to be remedied, and we will continue to advocate for it both in private and now even more clearly in public.”
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, meanwhile, also called the law “unacceptable,” in a memo circulated to staff and said “entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie” about widespread voter fraud in 2020.
More than 100 other companies around the country, including Twitter, Zillow, and Uber on Friday issued a joint statement through Civic Alliance to express concern about the new voting law.
“We believe every American should have a voice in our democracy and that voting should be safe and accessible to all voters,” the statement says. “We stand in solidarity with voters 一 and with the Black executives and leaders at the helm of this movement 一 in our nonpartisan commitment to equality and democracy. If our government is going to work for all of us, each of us must have equal freedom to vote and elections must reflect the will of voters.”
MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred said Friday that the league would move both events out of Atlanta this year because it would be the “best way to demonstrate our values as a sport,” as the league “fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”
Georgia’s new law, signed by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, has come under fire by critics who say it makes voting more difficult for Black people and other racial minorities and is already facing legal challenges from civil rights groups.
President Joe Biden has derided the measure as “Jim Crow on steroids,” and told ESPN this week that he would back MLB moving the game out of Atlanta.
“Today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that. People look to them, they’re leaders,” he told ESPN’s Sage Steele.
The new law prohibits electioneering within several dozen feet of a polling station, including giving food or water to voters waiting in line, requires identification when people register for an absentee ballot and expands early voting on weekends.
Kemp has made a series of television appearances in the past week to defend the new law, which came into play after controversy following Trump’s election to Biden in Georgia.
Trump’s call for a boycott is not the only time the former president spoke out against sports leagues. He slammed the National Football League for allowing players to take a knee while the national anthem was being played before games, and last year called the National Basketball Association a “political organization” after teams called off playoff games to protest police brutality.
He also accused the NBA of being “bought off” from China and claimed the basketball league favored its overseas profits over supporting pro-democracy policies.
Trump, in a separate statement, railed against the “fake news media” on the topic of election fraud, reports Fox News.
“Why is it that every time the 2020 ELECTION FRAUD is discussed, the Fake News Media consistently states that such charges are baseless, unfounded, unwarranted, etc?” Trump said.
“Sadly, there was a massive fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election, and many very angry people understand that. With each passing day, and unfortunately for the Radical Left CRAZIES, more and more facts are coming out.”
“Other than that,” he finished, “Happy Easter!”
Source: Newmax
