Trevor Noah denounces Mitch McConnell’s comments on corporations: ‘This is the monster you’ve created’

Senate minority leader asked companies to stay out of politics – except for donations

Trevor Noah has taken Mitch McConnell to task after the Senate minority leader asked companies to stay out of politics.

Noah reacted on Wednesday’s instalment of The Daily Show to comments made by McConnell after Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines both publicly denounced new Georgia voting legislation, which limits ballot access.

“My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics. Don’t pick sides in these big fights,” McConnell said, adding: “I'm not talking about political contributions. Most of them contribute to both sides, they have political action committees, that's fine, it's legal, it's appropriate, I support that.”

McConnell’s comments have been met with dismay, including from Noah, who mused: “That’s my Mitch right there! ... ‘Keep your mouth shut and hand over the money.’ That’s literally what bank robbers say.”

Noah added: “This is especially hilarious coming from Mitch McConnell, because don’t forget: he helped create the situation today where politicians are so dependent on big business for campaign spending that they basically let companies write all of the laws.

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“But you see, Mitch, after you spent decades helping companies intervene in politics, you cannot be upset that companies want to intervene in politics. The monster you created is coming after you! Just like you enabled Trump, and then he came after you.”

A 2020 New Yorker article titled “How Mitch McConnell’s Became Trump’s Enabler-In-Chief” described McConnell as “the master of the Washington money machine”, adding: “Nobody has done more than he has to engineer the current campaign-finance system, in which billionaires and corporations have virtually no spending limits, and self-dealing and influence-peddling are commonplace.”

In the wake of McConnell’s comments, Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern noted that “the landmark 2003 Supreme Court case McConnell v FEC [on campaign financing] had that name because Mitch McConnell himself filed a lawsuit against federal laws that limited corporations’ ability to spend money influencing elections.”