On her Twitter bio, NBC's Jane Timm describes herself as a "Senior reporter telling stories about voting rights." With such an activist description of herself, it was fitting that she joined Hallie Jackson Reports on MSNBC on Friday to question if corporations care about "voting rights." After all they are still giving money to Republicans.
After congratulating Timm for some "great reporting" on Michigan's redistricting process, Jackson changed gears, "Also great reporting is that voting rights stuff we talked about. Break it down, right? Big companies, like I think Amazon is part of it, Facebook, that donated to Republican senators even though they signed this Business for Voting Rights letter. What else do we know?"
Timm replied, "Yeah, you know, this summer we had this outpouring of public support, companies coming out and saying voting rights is critical. Now, some companies didn't really want to get behind the For the People Act, which was a sweeping bill, had a lot of campaign finance reform. But the John Lewis Voting Rights Act was the one that 200 companies got behind in a July letter and said 'you know, we’re on board with, we need this, it is critical to our democracy.”
Jackson and Timm seemed utterly confused by the idea that corporations give money politicians on both sides, often regardless of the positions they take. It is their way of currying favor and influence and the "voting rights" effort was an easy way for them to virtue signal to the MSNBCs of the world. Still, Timm was aghast at the idea of corporations donating to Republicans:
But what we’re seeing is that’s not stopping the donations from flowing. Even after that letter, some of these companies kept writing big checks to Republican re-election campaigns. And it’s those Republicans that are the very people who voted against this bill and while we may say some of the donations came before the John Lewis Voting Rights letter of support and before the vote last, this week, we knew this was going to happen. We knew Republicans were going to block this. They telegraphed it, the party was very clear they were not going to support new voting rights legislation. We’ve known that for months. But the donations, they kept flowing, Hallie.
The likely explanation is that nobody outside of the media and the Democratic Party honestly believes these bills are "critical to our democracy." Corporations just claim to support them because they, rather mistakenly, believe it will help their public image. At the same time, MSNBC should stop trying to make it a grave societal misdeed to donate to one of the country's two major political parties.
This segment was sponsored by Tide.
Here is a transcript for the November 5 show:
MSNBC
Hallie Jackson Reports
3:53 PM ET
HALLIE JACKSON: Also great reporting is that voting rights stuff we talked about. Break it down, right? Big companies, like I think Amazon is part of it, Facebook, that donated to Republican senators even though they signed this Business for Voting Rights letter. What else do we know?
JANE TIMM: Yeah, you know, this summer we had this outpouring of public support, companies coming out and saying voting rights is critical. Now, some companies didn't really want to get behind the For the People Act, which was a sweeping bill, had a lot of campaign finance reform. But the John Lewis Voting Rights Act was the one that 200 companies got behind in a July letter and said “you know, we’re on board with, we need this, it is critical to our democracy.”
But what we’re seeing is that’s not stopping the donations from flowing. Even after that letter, some of these companies kept writing big checks to Republican re-election campaigns. And it’s those Republicans that are the very people who voted against this bill and while we may say some of the donations came before the John Lewis Voting Rights letter of support and before the vote last, this week, we knew this was going to happen. We knew Republicans were going to block this. They telegraphed it, the party was very clear they were not going to support new voting rights legislation. We’ve known that for months. But the donations, they kept flowing, Hallie.
