It's President Joe Biden, not the state of Georgia, who needs to "smarten up" over the state's recently passed election law, Gov. Brian Kemp told Newsmax TV Wednesday.
"He needs to smarten up and learn what's in the bill, compared to his own state of Delaware," the Republican governor told Newsmax TV's "Wake Up America."
Biden on Tuesday backed up businesses that are either boycotting Georgia, including the Major League Baseball association, which has moved its summer All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver, and said the state needs to "smarten up" to avoid more businesses leaving the state.
He also said he supports businesses who protest the new law, adn that he respects them for "whatever judgment they make" and that it is "reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws that are just antithetical to who we are."
Kemp said in response that "facts don't matter" to Democrats when someone disagrees with them.
"They are coming after you; they're coming after your ball game," said Kemp. "It doesn't matter what state you're in. They're coming after your ball game, they're going to boycott your business, and they're going to boycott your way of life if it happens to be different from theirs."
That means Republicans must "wake up and really fight here," because the Democrats' opposition isn't about race, but it's about passing the federal elections reform bills, which are the "federal takeover of elections in an unconstitutional power grab," said Kemp.
The governor also accused the MLB of "hypocrisy" over moving its game and said the decision will hurt Atlanta's economy and the "little guy" businesses that will lose money as a result.
"There's no doubt who it's hurting," Kemp said. "It's hurting the little guy. The big corporations, you know, big entities like Major League Baseball are screwing the little guy on this one."
People and businesses have been looking forward to the game, he added, including restaurants, vendors, hotel owners, and more, and they are the ones getting hurt by the MLB's decision to move its game to Colorado when its laws are virtually the same or even more strict.
"This is just the biggest amount of hypocrisy that I've ever seen," Kemp said.
He also told Newsmax TV that there a "lot of Democrat politicians" who are coming out saying it was a bad idea to move the game, because "we shouldn't punish our own people by moving the game or by boycotting but that is their choice."
Kemp added that Democrats will have to decide if they will stand up and fight for the people of Georgia, or if they'll fight for Biden or people in Colorado.
"People should know that even people like Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden that are saying 'oh we'll leave it up to the league but we respect their decision,'" said Kemp. "Make no mistake, they were in the back room, the smoke-filled room pressuring these people to do that. They cannot have it both ways."
Kemp also said he spoke with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and offered to make sure he understood fully what was in the elections bill, because there was "so much misinformation being spread all the way up" to Biden, "but he really wasn't too concerned with that. The next time I talked to him he was telling me the game was moved."
But none of the entities, including the MLB, Coca-Cola, or others who have condemned the bill, including Biden, "have mentioned anything specific" about what their problem is with it, said Kemp.
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