Former Senator Loeffler on Voting Rights in Georgia

CLAY: We’ve been talking quite a bit about Joe Biden’s address yesterday in Atlanta, Georgia, where he attempted to argue that, if you don’t support changing the filibuster, you are a modern-day Jefferson Davis. You are a modern-day supporter of George Wallace and so on. We bring in now, former senator from Georgia Kelly Loeffler, and I’ll say this right off the top, congratulations to the Georgia Bulldogs and the Atlanta Braves, because the state of Georgia had been a while without championships and suddenly you’ve got two in pretty short order. Congrats, Senator.

SEN. LOEFFLER: Well, go Dawgs and go Braves. We were so proud to bring home the National Championship. We have the best team in the country, but we also have the best fans in the country, and that was certainly the biggest news yesterday, not Joe Biden bringing his pack of lies to Georgia, but so proud of the Dawgs.

CLAY: So, what did you think of the speech? You’ve lived in Georgia for a long time. You know the people there. Joe Biden decides not to pay attention to the roaring rates of covid, to inflation, to the fact that kids I think in Atlanta as well, all over the country, many cities are not able to be in person right now. Instead, he shows up and decides to divide us. What did you think of his speech and the arguments that he made?

SEN. LOEFFLER: Well, Clay, the word I keep hearing and seeing is “unpresidential,” and I just saw Leader McConnell strip the bark off of President Biden from the Senate floor — and basically as incoherent and fact-free as that speech was yesterday, it was very clear why we have to check on power in Washington, and I think Georgians are saying, “What was that all about? We need to move on. What was that?”

Because today the inflation report comes out — up 7%, no end in sight — and so, you know, it’s really hypocrisy when these are the same Democrats that used the filibuster 300 times when I was in the Senate in 2020. Filibuster after filibuster to stop the Senate from working during a pandemic, and so it just shows you: They have the House, the Senate, the White House, and that power is never enough. They always want more. So Georgians are not having it. They’re moving on with their lives, and they want answers as to what’s going on in the economy.

BUCK: Hey, Ms. Loeffler, it’s Buck, and I know that you’re very involved in the voter integrity issue now. We had, obviously, Biden, Kamala Harris making their speeches yesterday and suggesting really as though, in not just Georgia but all across the country, there’s some return to the disenfranchisement and racism of the pre-Civil Rights era in America. Was pretty astonishing to hear what they were saying. What is the reality right now in Georgia of what voter integrity measures should be put in place for this upcoming election and certainly in time for the next presidential election, and what is it that the Democrats really want to get on their side?

SEN. LOEFFLER: You’re exactly right, Buck. When you boil that speech down, he was calling half the country racist. He was calling 52 members of the Senate racist. Is this a president that not only promised to stop the virus but promised to unite the country? And probably the most divisive speech we’ve certainly heard in Georgia and probably in the country. Not what we need at this time. I’m standing on the side of election integrity because, frankly, the Democrats can’t admit that that’s part of voting rights!

You have a right, when you vote, to know that your voice will be heard at the ballot box, that your vote will be counted and not canceled by fraudulent votes. And they just have a hard time acknowledging that integrity is an important part of voting rights. So, what part of the bill don’t they like? Voter ID? Well, 77% of black voters support voter ID. So they’re talking about always being on “the right side of history.” They’re clearly on the wrong side of it, and the wrong side of the issue, if they really care about voting rights.

BUCK: We’re talking to former Senator Kelly Loeffler in Georgia to discuss Joe Biden’s ridiculous speech yesterday. What is the talk in Georgia political circles about Stacey Abrams supposedly having a conflict and not being able to be there for Biden’s speech? Why wasn’t she there, in your mind? And what does it say that she was not there? …

SEN. LOEFFLER: Yes. It’s not a loaded question. It’s actually pretty clear that Abrams did not want to be there to lend Biden any of her political capital in a state that she’s running in. But her shadow organizations were outspoken against his visit. They told him to get back to Washington and get the work done. And, you know, he was here in Georgia at a time when obviously we’re celebrating the National Championship.

But more importantly, Georgia has been open for business for a year and a half. Our unemployment rate is 2.9%. We want someone to come here and say, “This is how Washington’s getting out of the way so that you can get back to work and get kids back to school,” and they don’t want to talk about it because they don’t have any answers. They don’t care about that, because they owe everything to politics, and they feel like they owe nothing to the American people.

So I think that you know that was kind of a sideshow and a distraction from the real issue that Biden isn’t governing. I think he owes the American people an apology. The American people deserve so much better than this right now. Look what we just went through for the past two years of the pandemic, and then he comes in and tramples voters and their voices this way, that is suppression, when you’re telling voters that they’re racist that that they need to open up ballots to anyone who wants to vote. We saw that in my own election in the Senate runoffs. Hundreds of thousands of voters stayed home because they didn’t think their vote counted.

BUCK: I want to ask you about that. Do you think that we have gotten all the answers that we need about everything that happened in the election process — in Georgia specifically — in 2020?

SEN. LOEFFLER: Absolutely not. Georgians don’t have the answers they need. We need answers on the $50 million of Big Tech money that came in. I filed an open-records request with the secretary of state and respected a lawsuit to ask, “How is that money spent?” and the list goes on. There have been virtually no prosecutions of hundreds of cases of election fraud that haven’t been wrapped up, and now we’re back into an election year, and the list goes on.

And so, we need accountability so that those voters will come back because we are on the ground through greater Georgia doing the work every day. We never took the tent down after 2020. We kept going and said, “We are gonna contact everyone who’s been disenfranchised, everyone who’s disengaged,” and even unregistered. We’re out registering voters. So we’re not gonna give up, and we’re not gonna succumb to these false allegations that Biden’s making against Georgians, and I think it’s gonna motivate people to get out.

CLAY: Senator Loeffler, appreciate you making the time. Congrats again to the Bulldogs and the Braves, belatedly. We hope to talk to you again soon.

SEN. LOEFFLER: Sounds great. Thanks, y’all.