Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in a Monday speech from Chicago warned that the radical left is spreading a “sinister” agenda meant to deny the progress the nation has made in addressing racism.
Scott, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination and is the only Black GOP senator, spoke from New Beginnings Church on the South Side of Chicago. In a lengthy address that touched on unemployment and crime, Scott blamed a progressive movement for exploiting race and class as a way to benefit their leaders.
“If the deck is permanently stacked against us, progressives would rather lower the bar for people of color than raise the bar on their own leadership,” Scott said.
“They say they want low-income Americans and people of color to rise, but their actions take us in the opposite direction. Their actions say they want us to sit down, shut up and don’t forget to vote as long as we’re voting blue. Instead of solutions we are offered distractions and division.”
Scott is badly trailing former President Trump in primary polls, and he is also behind rivals such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Scott has come under scrutiny in recent months from Black leaders for denying the existence of racism and discrimination in America.
In the last GOP presidential debate, he received backlash for saying America “overcame” slavery and that it was former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” that was the worst thing to happen to Black Americans.
Despite that criticism, Scott repeated the talking point Monday, insisting the welfare plan led to joblessness and one-parent households.
“I spend so much time denouncing, rebuking and debunking that the worst thing that happened to our country wasn’t slavery because it was,” Scott said. “Our country has made, however, tremendous strides since then on the issue of race, but lawlessness and fatherlessness and joblessness have gotten worse in the last 60 years.”
“I believe in the fact pattern that reveals that liberal elites dump money into a system that requires our fathers to leave the household in exchange for a check to come in the mail,” he added.
While the speech was delivered from the South Side of Chicago, much of Scott’s message seemed more directed to traditional GOP primary voters.
He criticized liberals as being soft on crime, and he took shots at the “1619 Project” by The New York Times, which focuses on slavery’s role in the founding of the United States.
“They’ve written a new curriculum to teach our kids that our founding of this nation was 1619 when slavery started and not 1776,” said Scott.
Scott, who has pushed back against the idea that systemic racism exists in America, highlighted his own family’s background as evidence that the nation is not inherently racist.
Scott shared how his grandfather was pushed out of school by third grade and that he grew up in a single-mother household after his parents divorced when he was 7 years old. He said he watched his mother work up to three jobs at a time to keep food on the table.
“None of us think America is perfect, but I gotta tell you, our progress is undeniable and is palpable,” Scott said. “You can’t tell me things haven’t changed. You can’t tell me America has not made progress. You can’t tell me that lie. Because I’ve lived it.”