McConnell SLAMS Biden’s speech on ‘voting rights’ as ‘divisive,’ ‘unpresidential’

In Georgia on Tuesday, President Biden delivered a speech on voting rights in which he compared the current situation to the Civil War, and likened some fellow elected officials to traitors.

The following day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor to condemn the president's speech.

"Yesterday," Sen. McConnell began, "[Biden] delivered a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart. Twelve months ago, this president said we should see each other not as adversaries, but as neighbors. Yesterday, he called millions of Americans his domestic enemies."

Sen. McConnell went on to point out that while President Biden had warned last year that "disagreement must not lead to disunion," during his speech yesterday "he invoked the bloody disunion of the Civil War to demonize Americans who disagree with him."

"He compared, a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors. How profoundly, profoundly unpresidential," Sen. McConnell added

"Look," he continued, "I've known, liked, and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at that podium yesterday."

President Biden's speech drew criticism from many for the language he employed to describe his fellow Americans. As the New York Post reports, he even went so far as to compare supporters of Democrats' voting rights bills to civil rights icons and likened those who oppose them to segregationists such as Bull Connor and George Wallace, and Confederate leader Jefferson Davis.

The Biden administration's Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed the House of Representatives in 2021, but with a 50-50 split in the Senate, many believe they are unlikely to make it any further.