Former pro baseball player Curt Schilling says Major League Baseball’s decision to pull the All-Star game out of Georgia in protest of the state’s new voter law will backfire and “hit the organization in the pocketbook.”
“That we’re debating and arguing about whether or not you should have a voter ID to vote in our elections is laughable and it’s a conversation we shouldn’t be having,” Schilling, a Hall of Fame pitcher who won four World Series, told Newsmax TV’s “The Count” Saturday.
“But you’re looking at a multi, multi-billion-dollar industry that is all about kowtowing to the loudest voice, which is Hollywood, which is, you know the media, which is D.C., which is unfortunately not the majority. But I will say this. It’ll hit him in the pocketbook at some point because the fan base in baseball is absolutely a majority conservative. This is what happens when the loudest people get the vote.”
The law, which was endorsed by the state’s GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, faces legal challenges as civil rights groups say it aims to suppress voting among Black people and other racial minorities. It 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.
President Joe Biden has derided the measure as “Jim Crow on steroids,” and told ESPN this week that he supported 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.
Former President Donald Trump is urging baseball fans to boycott the league over its decision to pull the game and 2021 draft out of the state.
“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!”
Schilling told Newsmax the move will only impact the working-class fan, middleclass- stadium workers and small businesses around the hotel.
“Having the All-Star economy is a $100 million boon for local economies,” he said.
“This is going to do nothing but hurt the Atlanta economy. For what? Nothing’s going to change. What is the goal? Is the goal to get the law rescinded? Is the goal to continue to ask for and demand fewer and fewer restrictions to having a government ID where anybody can get one, anyone can have one? It’s laughable.
“We’re having conversations we shouldn’t be having. The conversations should be about the law, and the fact of the matter is, when you point out to liberals who argue with nothing about emotion about the facts around voter ID and the need and necessity for it, they scream and yell really loud with no facts and, you know, those are the conversations that should be happening about this.”
Schilling also said the “morally and ethically” deprived groups of people in D.C. and Hollywood “are leading the thought police right now and this is exactly what happens when you allow that to happen.”
Source: Newmax
