The January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was the result of a months-long disinformation campaign that falsely alleged that Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election. Now the events of January 6 themselves are the subject of disinformation, and we can see the results in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. Importantly, one result is that Trump’s electoral viability is stronger than it should be with the Republican base.

Three months after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try to overturn his November election loss, about half of Republicans believe the siege was largely a non-violent protest or was the handiwork of left-wing activists “trying to make Trump look bad,” a new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.

Six in 10 Republicans also believe the false claim put out by Trump that November’s presidential election “was stolen” from him due to widespread voter fraud, and the same proportion of Republicans think he should run again in 2024, the March 30-31 poll showed.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was a passive bystander in the lead-up to the insurrection, although he did denounce the lies just as the Capitol was being stormed. That classic example of too-little-too-late should be fresh in his mind, but he’s just issued a press release that shows a striking shortness of memory about how irresponsible rhetoric can lead to unfortunate consequences.

McConnell is angry that the leaders of major American corporations, including Major League Baseball, have come out forcefully against a new election law in Georgia. He accuses them of “not just permit[ting] themselves to be bullied, but join[ing] in the bullying themselves.” Baseball’s decision to relocate it’s All-Star Game from Atlanta is supposedly an example of this.

The story McConnell spins is its own form of disinformation, however, even as it’s presented as a corrective against the lies of the left. Opposition to the Georgia law isn’t reliant on any single provision of the law but more on it’s overall intent and likely effect.

The intent can be surmised not just by what’s in the law but also by what was only stripped out under heavy pressure. As Eugene Scott of the Washington Post reported in February, Georgia’s Republican state legislators originally wanted to eliminate all early voting on Sundays in a clear effort to suppress the effect of black churches leading “souls to the polls.” McConnell stresses that “plenty of Democrat-run states allow fewer days of early voting than the new Georgia law requires,” which is true. But, as I said above, people aren’t fooled about what this law is supposed to do.

The single most dangerous provision of the new law is explained well by Vox:

Under current law, key issues in election management — including decisions on disqualifying ballots and voter eligibility — are made by county boards of election. The new law allows the State Board of Elections to determine that these county boards are performing poorly, replacing the entire board with an administrator chosen at the state level.

At the same time, the bill enhances the General Assembly’s control over the state board.

It removes Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who famously stood up to Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia, from his role as both chair and voting member of the board. The new chair would be appointed by the legislature, which already appoints two members of the five-person board — meaning that a full majority of the board will now be appointed by the Republican-dominated body.

To simplify: The state board, which now will be fully controlled by the Republican legislative majority, is unilaterally empowered to take over (among other things) the process of disqualifying ballots across the state. Given that Georgia Republicans have helped promote false allegations of voter fraud, it’s easy to see why handing them so much power over local election authorities is so worrying.

The greatest area of concern here for Democrats is Fulton County, home to Atlanta and a disproportionate number of Black voters. Republicans have baselessly alleged that this Democratic bastion was a major site of fraud, citing (among other things) a purported video of ballot-stuffing in the county. Though official investigations, court cases, and independent fact-checks found no evidence of such fraud — in the video or otherwise — the myth that it happened persists.

The new bill would allow Republicans to seize control of how elections are administered in Fulton County and other heavily Democratic areas, disqualifying voters and ballots as they see fit.

If this were the only election “reform” in the bill, it would be sufficient to merit an international outcry. President Trump could potentially go to jail for asking Georgia election officials to wrongly declare him the winner, but these changes would allow the legislature to do exactly that if they don’t like the results of a future election. The law is supposed to restore confidence in the integrity of the state’s electoral system, but does so by telling the people of Atlanta that their elections can be taken over and adjudicated by a Republican-controlled legislature.

McConnell doesn’t address this criticism at all, and instead focuses on how many days of early voting are allowed. This allows him to argue that corporate pressure is unmerited:

“Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex. Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling.

“From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government. Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order. Businesses must not use economic blackmail to spread disinformation and push bad ideas that citizens reject at the ballot box.”

This is the new line from the Republican Party. To them, they’re on the wrong end of “cancel culture,” which is a bullying effort to punish conservative belief systems through non-governmental means. This could be an individual citizen who is banned from a social media platform or it could be a state legislature that is punished for enacting a “popular” law.

That’s a debate we can have, but the Georgia election law is controversial because it’s transparently anti-Democratic and singularly focused on helping Republicans win elections even when they lose. Since McConnell is willing to ignore this and offer a completely dishonest explanation, he’s setting Republican voters up for another rude clash with reality.

Fewer than 100 days removed from almost being lynched by a MAGA mob, you’d think he would know better.