January 22, 2022

The Internet Can’t Stop Dunking on Mitch McConnell

#MitchPlease has been trending since Wednesday.

Mitch McConnell called the criticism of his comments "offensive and outrageous." Tom Williams/AP

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It has been an ugly week for Mitch McConnell.

Addressing reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, the Senate Minority Leader made an offensive comment about Black voters. “If you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” he said, seeming to imply that Black Americans aren’t Americans. 

The internet wasn’t having it. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) tweeted, “After centuries of building this nation, Republicans still don’t consider Black voters to be Americans…We cannot pretend that the days of Jim Crow are behind us.” Illinois Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush tweeted, “African Americans ARE Americans. #MitchPlease.” And Patriot Takes, a left-wing organization that posts unflattering videos of GOP political figures, resurfaced this video clip from 2015:

The hashtag #MitchPlease has continued to trend on Twitter since Wednesday.

On Friday, McConnell tried to walk the statement back, which only led to more confusion and outrage. In a news conference in Kentucky, he called the backlash to his statement “offensive and outrageous,” and said had misspoken on Wednesday by omitting the word “almost.” This was, apparently, another mistake, because shortly after consulting an aide, he returned to the microphone to clarify the word he should have included was “all.” (And beforehand, McConnell’s office had told CNN McConnell meant to say “other” Americans.)

“I was there for Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in the audience…I was actually there when President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in the Capitol in 1965,” McConnell said Friday, in an attempt to defend his civil rights record. “I have had African American speech writers, schedulers, office managers over the years.”

The reactions to McConnell’s implosion keep rolling in. Here’s a sampling:

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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