Jen Psaki takes gloves off with Fox reporter at press briefing

um in georgia talking about the voting bill that was just signed from the governor uh community organizers have threatened boycotts and big companies like delta coca-cola home depot in part from some of the information that's come from the president in his last news conference he said that uh the bill requires voting to end early at 5 00 pm um and you've said and some others said that words matter the bill actually uh standardizes voting hours by counties and ads saturdays and sundays voting and it also allows extended hours from 7am to 7pm so is there gonna be a correction it standardizes the ending of voting every day at five right it just gives options it gives options to expand it right but it standardized it at five it also makes it so that outside groups can't provide water or food to people in line right it makes it more difficult to absentee vote are those things all correct is seven to seven and early voting it can standardize adding saturday and sunday so my question is is the tone going to change out of the white house or the tone for a bill that limits voting access and makes it more difficult for people to engage in voting in georgia no that's actually not what the the governor of georgia has said well i think that is not based in fact what the governor of georgia has said so no our tone is not changing we have concerns about the specific components of the package including the fact that it makes it harder and more difficult for people to vote by limiting absentee options by making it not viable not possible for people to provide water to people who are in line by not standardizing longer hours so if you're making it harder to vote no we don't support that this is jen saki sparring with fox businesses edward lawrence now jen is tackling the crux of his question which basically amounts to asking whether the tone of the white house will change because he suggested the white house is mischaracterizing the georgia bill sb-202 that was signed into law lawrence's question is in line with the broader republican talking point that in fact the georgia law doesn't amount to voter suppression which just so we're clear it does here's why first if you've heard anything about this law you know that it makes it illegal to hand out food or water to people standing in line to vote so let's work backwards who would be in need of food or water people who've been waiting in line for a long time what people have been waiting in long lines statistically it's people of color like for example those overwhelmingly black voters in fulton county georgia who waited 8 9 10 11 hours in line to vote so when you criminalize handing food or water to someone who will need it then guess what that is a method of discouraging them from standing in that line to vote that is voter suppression the law also allows any individual to file unlimited challenges to the eligibility of a voter it limits the number of drop boxes it applies voter id loss to mail-in ballots it creates a fraud hotline so that people can issue anonymous tips about what they suspect may be fraudulent behavior a nod to the non-existent fraud that republicans claim without evidence occurred in the last election and here's the most insidious provision so normally election issues in georgia are adjudicated by county boards of election but now the state board of elections can simply decide that those county boards aren't performing well and they can replace the entire county board with an administrator that they chose at the state level but it gets worse because the republican-led general assembly also now has more control over that state board in that instead of appointing two members of the fire person board they can now appoint three members of the five person board meaning that they've given themselves the ability to control that board with the people that they've appointed in other words republicans now have full power to decide whether or not certain ballots will be disqualified if they decide that there's fraud since they have the final say in adjudicating these issues so whereas they cried fraud in fulton county in 2020 and nothing could be done because there were barriers in place to protect the voters republicans have now effectively made themselves the gatekeeper to those barriers all of that is to say that yes this bill is unequivocally intended to not only enact more barriers than it purports to dismantle but sets the stage for republicans to use cert power for themselves if they see fit there is no planet on which they wouldn't have moved forward to challenge and try and overturn the election results if these measures were put in place during the 2020 election the point isn't some expansion of voting rights the point is a power grab and putting the final say in the hands of partisan legislators instead of the people of georgia so if any change of tone is in order i can assure you that it's not from the white house now what edward lawrence seems to be referencing here is a quote by joe biden from a few days ago where he said quote among the most outrageous parts of this new state law it ends early voting hours so people can't cast their vote after their shift is over now technically just on the issue of early voting hours it's not true that this new law would reduce hours even though it doesn't necessarily expand them what the law does is standardize 9am to 5pm hours at a minimum while giving counties the option to vote 7am to 7 pm if they choose for a number of counties that already offer that there won't be a change from the last election but in fact some rural counties in georgia hadn't even been opened the full eight-hour day so implementing a standard nine to five schedule actually expands hours for those counties now what biden was saying was that those counties that don't expand their hours from 7am to 7pm will make it difficult for people to get to the polls if they're only open during the same hours that they work which is why standardizing hours from 7-7 would be better than nine to five which of course is common sense but leave it to fox news to find any sentence they can parse in their desperation to make a mountain out of a molehill with that said what edward lawrence said here and what he was referencing here were not the same because the way he explained it suggested that all voting was expanded to 7am to 7pm when that's not the case counties only have the option to extend it if they want to and then he asked based on that poor framing and understanding of the bill whether the white house was prepared to change its tone and so of course he got dismantled by gensake the fact is that fox is hoping to just catch the white house with some slip of the tongue and make that the story while ignoring the fact that sb 202 will overwhelmingly make it more difficult to vote in the state of georgia if they were actually interested in the facts they would acknowledge that instead of trying to land some gotcha moment that never materializes but they're not interested in facts because they are propaganda armed for the republican party and the republican party's sole priority here is to make it difficult to vote because lower turnout equates to better results for republicans that's all let's be honest here this isn't about adjudicating any fraud issues because those issues were already adjudicated in over 60 court cases around the country and there were no more than a handful of instances of fraud out of the more than 155 million votes cast in the last election it's not about election integrity or election security because there is no lack of integrity or security as it currently stands bills like sp202 in georgia are solutions to imaginary problems they are voter suppression bills parading as election security bills because the gop doesn't want to change its message so it's trying to change the electorate instead and look these efforts will inevitably be challenged mark elias the democrat's top election lawyer has already filed suit on behalf of a few organizations including the new georgia project and black votes matter and of course democrats need to figure out how to reform the filibuster and pass the for the people act which would afford states like georgia federal protections to counter these republican efforts but beyond all of that consider too that by doing this georgia republicans have just woken up every democrat in the state and there is no better way to make sure that someone votes than by trying to prevent them from voting if you try to steal people's rights they'll work that much harder to get them back georgia republicans are about to learn that the hard way [Music] to see more videos like this don't forget to subscribe to my youtube channel and click the notification bell and please subscribe to my podcast no lie with brian tyler cohen where i not only break down the biggest stories of the week but i also interview major players in the world of politics including vice president kamala harris elizabeth warren nancy pelosi katie porter pete butterjudge cory booker jamie raskin and many more again that's no lie with brian tyler cohen available anywhere you listen to podcasts

Channel: Brian Tyler Cohen

Views: 1,489,477

Rating: 4.8994193 out of 5

Keywords: Brian Tyler Cohen, Trump, Republicans, Democrats, brian cohen, jen psaki tone, psaki press briefing, fox reporter jen psaki, georgia voter suppresison bill

Id: oQTSQfcyoQE

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Mike734]

Shouldn’t let that guy in with a valve mask.