Biden should bench the need to influence MLB

Note to President Joe Biden: Keep baseball out of it.

Biden has made no secret that he abhors Georgia’s new sweeping elections law, calling it “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “an atrocity.”

“If you want any indication that it has nothing to do with fairness, nothing to do with decency — they passed a law saying you can’t provide water for people standing in line while they’re waiting to vote,” Biden said. Of course Biden and most Democrats have many facts wrong — for one, folks on voting lines in the hot George sun can certainly have water given to them — but by poll workers. This is an effort to keep partisans from swaying voters near the polling sites.

There was enough misinformation from Biden regarding the Georgia voting law that fact checkers at the Washington Post gave his claims “four Pinocchios” — its worst rating.

But Democrats control the narrative and the outrage boils on.

Corporate America has also weighed in, and Georgia-based businesses, including UPS, Home Depot, Porsche Cars North America and the Atlanta Falcons, have criticized the legislation, according to statements collected by CNBC.

And now Major League Baseball is being called on to move its 2021 All-Star Game this summer at Truist Park in Atlanta. In case the organization needs help deciding, Biden offered his two cents.

In an interview on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” on Wednesday night, President Joe Biden said that he would “strongly support” moving the 2021 MLB All-Star Game out of Atlanta.

“I think today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly,” Biden said. “I would strongly support them doing that. People look to them. They’re leaders.”

They would be leaders reacting to misinformation, but why quibble?

Whether MLB bows to pressure — and PC optics — and moves the game is up to them. For the president to use his position to influence a company’s decision based on his own views toward opposition legislation is out of line.

It was when former President Donald Trump told a rally in 2017 that football players who kneeled during the national anthem should be fired or suspended.

A key difference: Trump was criticized for his opinions.

Of course, one of the worst examples of straying from his lane came from former President Jimmy Carter, who announced that the U.S. would boycott the Moscow Olympics in 1980. The Soviet Union failed to meet Carter’s deadline to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. In turn, they boycotted the 1984 Olympics. The Soviet Union withdrew its troops in 1988. Athletes were pawns.

The MLB All-Star Game is not the Olympics — and Biden isn’t taking a stand for America against the machinations of a foreign country.

He is, however, furthering his party’s agenda of demonizing Republican legislation because it’s Republican legislation.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp fired back, calling Biden’s push to move the All-Star game “ridiculous,” according to Politico.

He added he wouldn’t bow to the corporate pressure, saying that corporations that have opposed the new law won’t get back on board due to activist pressure.

“There is nothing I can do about that,” Kemp said. “I not going be bullied by these people. But I’m also not running a public corporation. They’ll have to answer to their shareholders.”

President Biden can decry Georgia’s law all he wants — hopefully after some much-needed fact-checking, but inserting himself into corporations’ response to the legislation — that’s a swing and a miss.