Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., softened his stance on corporations getting involved in politics on Wednesday, a day after he warned companies not to weigh in on hot button issues.
“I didn’t say that very artfully yesterday, they’re certainly entitled to be involved in politics, they are,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “My principal complaint is they didn’t read the darn bill.”
“They got intimidated into adopting an interpretation … given by the Georgia Democrats in order to help get their way,” McConnell said.
A day earlier, McConnell had said it is “stupid” for corporations to take positions on divisive political issues but noted that his criticism did not extend to their donations.
“So my warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics,” McConnell said in Lousiville on Tuesday. “It’s not what you’re designed for. And don’t be intimidated by the left into taking up causes that put you right in the middle of one of America’s greatest political debates.”
In recent weeks, McConnell has excoriated corporate America for boycotting states over various GOP-led bills. For instance, Georgia’s recently passed a controversial voting law, which came about in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s campaign of falsehoods about the election result in the state last fall.
This led the CEOs of Delta and Coca-Cola — which are based in Atlanta — to condemn the new measure. And last week, Major League Baseball pulled this year’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta in protest of that same law. That game will instead be played in Colorado.
“There’s nothing about what the new Georgia law does by any objective standard — so my complaint about the CEOs is they ought to read the damn bill,” McConnell said Wednesday. “They got intimidated into adopting an interpretation of that given by the Georgia Democrats in order to help get their way.
Baseball’s decision drew the most outrage from Republicans, with Trump calling for a boycott of baseball and multiple other companies that spoke out against the Georgia law. McConnell said on Tuesday that the latest moves are “irritating one hell of a lot of Republican fans.”
McConnell, long a champion of big money in politics, however, noted on Tuesday that corporations “have a right to participate in a political process” but should do so without alienating “an awful lot of people.”
“I’m not talking about political contributions,” he said. “I’m talking about taking a position on a highly incendiary issue like this and punishing a community or a state because you don’t like a particular law that passed, I just think it’s stupid.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
