Top Senate Republican blasts Biden's 'rant' on voter rights, vows to oppose bill
McConnell accused the president of giving "a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart."
Top US Senate Republican Mitch McConnell on Wednesday blasted President Joe Biden's push for a voting-rights bill, underscoring the difficulty Biden's Democrats face in trying to steer legislation through a Congress they narrowly control.
Biden has called for Democrats to jettison the chamber's longstanding "filibuster" rule requiring 60 of the 100 senators to agree to advance most legislation, a move that McConnell said would irreparably damage the Senate.
"The president's rant yesterday was incoherent, incorrect and beneath his office," McConnell said on the Senate floor, referring to Biden's speech in Atlanta on Tuesday in which he appealed for voting-rights legislation and called Republicans cowardly for not supporting it.
McConnell accused the president of giving "a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart."
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters the administration was disappointed by McConnell's opposition to the bill.
"It is even more disappointing that someone who has supported and advocated for voting rights in the past ... is on the other side of this argument now," Psaki said.
