Meghan McCain tried to blame Democrats for the primary voting disaster in Georgia this week, but Stacey Abrams pulled her up short.
“There’s a lot of finger-pointing going on and you seem to be implying that it was Georgia’s secretary of state that was targeting communities of color,” McCain said on “The View” Thursday. “But most of the counties that had issues this week were run by Democrats.”
Abrams, a gubernatorial candidate in 2018 and a possible vice presidential pick, told McCain that the Republican secretary of state was the election superintendent. As such, he’s responsible for overseeing all voting in the state — even in Democratic areas ― and problems were rife throughout Georgia, she noted.
“Your access to democracy shouldn’t depend on your county of residence,” Abrams said.
The pair also went at it over What McCain described as Abrams’ comparison of the U.S. to Turkey under dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
″[Erdogan] is a horrific, murderous dictator. Do you really think it’s fair to call the United States no better than Turkey?” McCain asked.
“I didn’t call it no better than Turkey,” Abrams said. “I said that we’re on the path to populist authoritarianism similar to what we saw with Erdogan.”
Abrams pointed out that Trump has already begun to follow in Erdogan’s path by stacking the courts with judges who support him, eliminating independent guardrails on democracy and using his power to call for the militarization of public institutions.
“We’re seeing evidence of that in the United States,” Abrams said.
“We have to acknowledge the authoritarian nature of Donald Trump,” she added. “And we’ve got to nip it in the bud if we want democracy to continue here, and if we want to continue to be the moral leader abroad.”
Check out Abrams’ take on the Georgia primary in the video above. Her clash with McCain begins at 3:16.
Abrams’ warning on Trump’s “authoritarian nature” is shown in the following tweet:
