Rep. Burgess Owens Rips Stacey Abrams: It's an 'Insult' to Assume Black People Can't Get ID

Freshman Republican Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah is slamming failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams for insisting that voter ID laws disproportionately affect black people.

Owens told the hosts of “Fox & Friends” Wednesday that the suggestion that black Americans are incapable of procuring IDs is itself racist, as is anyone who makes this absurd suggestion, and that Democrats only make this claim for political reasons.

“The greatest threat for Democrats is American people, no matter what color, who are part of the middle class, those people who are no longer dependent on the government. They have faith, they have a vision for their family,” Owens said.

“They look for it because they understand and experience the American dream. The greatest threat. And that’s why they do not want black people to experience that, that’s why they’re tearing down and burning down businesses every single year in urban communities that are trying to reach that middle class,” he explained.

“So to say that black people cannot get an ID is an insult. We’re as smart, as tenacious, as desirous of independence as anybody else. If anyone says that, who says that’s not the truth, is again, just pure racist.”

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Owens was reacting to Abrams’ virtual testimony before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday examining newly passed election reform laws, particularly those in Georgia, that the Democratic majority says is Jim Crow in 2021.

I’m not being dramatic; they actually called this hearing “Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote.”

As you can imagine, some Americans, like, for example, Owens himself, took issue with drawing the comparison between more stringent identification requirements for mail-in or absentee ballots and literally restricting Americans from public and private facilities based on the color of their skin.

Not only is the retired football star turned politician a black man himself, but he also actually witnessed Jim Crow segregation. So Owens certainly had a thing or two to say to these absurd insinuations, which were first made by none other than President Joe Biden. (Who, by the way, also worked with segregationists as a young senator but hey, who’s keeping track?)

“As someone who has actually experienced Jim Crow laws, I’d like to set the record straight,” Owens testified before the panel Tuesday, saying that “any comparison between this law and Jim Crow is absolutely outrageous.”

The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, zeroe... (Read more)

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