Fox News anchor Chris Wallace pressed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Republicans’ push to enact voter-suppression laws across the country, asking the senator point-blank on Sunday how it made sense for Georgia to make it illegal to give food and water to citizens waiting in line for hours to vote.
Last week, Republicans in Georgia passed a sweeping bill that imposed a whole new slate of voting restrictions, such as new voter ID requirements on absentee ballots, limits on the use of ballot drop boxes, granting the state new powers over county elections, and making it criminal to provide voters with food and water, among other measures.
The new Georgia law, which follows President Joe Biden’s victory and a Democratic Senate sweep in the previously solidly red state, is part of a larger GOP effort to pass voter restriction laws across the country. As of February, per the Brennan Center for Justice, state legislators in 43 states have proposed more than 250 voter-suppression bills.
ADVERTISEMENT
Interviewing Graham on Fox News Sunday, Wallace brought up Biden’s strong condemnation of Republicans rushing to restrict voting rights, airing a clip of the president calling the effort “sick” while likening it the Jim Crow era.
“Senator, are Republicans going too far in some of these various states?” Wallace asked the South Carolina lawmaker.
Graham, who allegedly attempted to pressure the Georgia secretary of state to consider tossing out mail ballots following last year’s presidential election, took offense.
“You know what’s sick is that the president of the United States played the race card continuously in such a hypocritical way,” Graham huffed. “He said the filibuster was a relic of the Jim Crow era.”
Graham went on to call HR 1, the national voting-rights bill that House Democrats recently passed, the “biggest power grab in history” before once again lamenting that Republicans are being painted as racist for restricting voting access.
“Any time a Republican does anything, you’re a racist, if you’re a white conservative, you’re a racist,” he fumed. “If you’re a Black Republican, you are either pop or Uncle Tom. They use the racism card to advance the liberalism agenda. HR 1 is sick, not what they’re doing in Georgia.”
Wallace, meanwhile, directly confronted Graham about the specific provisions of the Georgia law.
“It would limit the number and location of drop boxes. It allows counties to cut off early voting at 5:00 p.m. before a lot of working people get off and could go vote, and this is the one that I think is creating the biggest fuss, it prohibits—it makes it a crime—to give food or drink to voters waiting in line,” the Fox News Sunday moderator noted.
“Senator, why on earth, if Americans are willing to wait hours to vote, would you make it a crime for people to come and give them a bottle of water?” Wallace added.
“Well, all I can say is that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, I agree with you there,” Graham conceded, before pivoting back to complaining about HR 1 and expanded mail-in voting.
