Trump, GOP lawmakers direct ire at MLB over All-Star Game decision

Truist Park. — (Image credit: Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)

Hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet may still be ok, but baseball is on the outs with some prominent Republican politicians.

MLB announced Friday that it will pull the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta, Georgia, because of the Peach State's controversial new voting law, which critics, including President Biden, say will lead to voter suppression.

The move even prompted one of former President Donald Trump's rare post-Twitter statements. "Baseball is already losing tremendous numbers of fans, and now they leave Atlanta because they are afraid of the radical left Democrats," he wrote Friday night before issuing a warning to major corporations based in Georgia. "Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with free and fair elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta, and all?"

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Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), meanwhile, suggested they'll seek payback by working to end MLB's antitrust exemptions, which have been in place since a 1922 Supreme Court decision.

National Review's Michael Brendan Dougherty, however, called such an effort "fake," arguing that "destroying MLB" is not within the senators' power.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.